Fragmented Beginnings
When Jenara woke, her gown was singed, its silver constellations now dim and flickering like dying stars. Her chest heaved. Her vision swam with alien fractals that refused to stop twisting in her periphery no matter how hard she blinked. The pendant around her neck pulsed faintly, as if alive. The chamber was eerily quiet now, save for the waning hum of the machinery beneath her.
A voice intruded on her confusion. Metallic. Clinical. “Congratulations, Starweaver Jenara. The experiment was a qualified success.”
Standing before her was Executor Alveren, the architect of the Initiative. He was an older man who held himself like an emperor, his pale, angular face and cropped silver hair illuminated by the soft afterglow of the dais. He wore an impeccable black uniform threaded with crimson, bearing the insignia of the galactic scientific cohort.
“Success?” she rasped. Her voice felt alien to her, hollowed out. “What… what did you do to me?”
The Bargain of Light
Alveren’s sharp gaze dropped briefly to her pendant, a flicker of doubt crossing his expression before he masked it. “You have become a bridge, Jenara. Our bridge to dimensions beyond this one. Your existence will shine in ways our ancestors never dreamed—with energy to power Earth-7 for centuries. You’ve saved billions.”
With dizzying clarity, memories of the briefing came back to her. She had agreed to this. To becoming the vessel that would interface with the vast energy of “the Fold,” the great unknown phenomenon beyond their understanding. All for a future where her people might never know hunger, disease, or war again. Her mother, long a rebel against the corporations that now carved up the galaxy, would have hated her for it.
But they had given her no choice.
Something dark twisted deep in her gut—an energy not her own. It felt alive. Watching. Waiting. Even as Alveren spoke, she could feel it hum through her blood like a song played on dissonant strings.
Her gaze narrowed. “What did I bring back?”
Alveren hesitated. And it was enough.
In that lingering silence, memories of the light—searing, fractured, endless—flooded back. Shapes. Voices. Things within the Fold. Not passive. Not benign. “You don’t know,” she realized, her voice rising. “You don’t know what I’ve become. What you’ve unleashed!”
The Reckoning
Outside, the station’s blaring alarms confirmed her fears. Something from the Fold was now seeping into their world. Workers screamed through the comms. Drones swarmed like angered hornets in containment rooms. The very light from the experiment surged through the dark cityscape visible from the massive observation window, eating the stars themselves.
Jenara stood, her gown now less fabric and more raw energy hanging like nebulae around her body. Her cadence steadied, her posture upright, regal in its clarity of purpose. Her hand slipped to the glowing heart of the pendant, and she felt her mother again—her fire, her rebellion.
“Shut it all down!” she demanded.
Alveren’s expression hardened. “We don’t shut progress down—”
Jenara’s hand shot out before he could finish. A web of energy arced from her to him, pinning him to the wall. Her voice cut sharp as a blade. “No more chains. Not yours. Not theirs.”
The air seemed to warp around her as she strode toward the exit, now glowing brighter with every step. Behind her, Alveren’s strangled words faded into static, consumed by the explosion of light enveloping the station.
Exodus of One
Jenara stood in the open vacuum of the station’s edge, her long silver hair snapping wildly as she gazed at the stars she’d once longed to touch. The cries behind her in the collapsing station were distant now. Her gown shimmered. She no longer looked like the daughter of a revolutionary. She had become otherworldly, a specter of power and sorrow.
The entity within her whispered of freedom, endless and consuming.
And for the first time, Jenara allowed herself to listen.
Genre
Science fiction/psychological drama
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: Why It’s Crucial to Truly Love Yourself
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