Chapter 1: Husk
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A grey ball of dust and stone was silently swirling through space in never-ending motion. Red light from an almost extinguished star illuminated it and its smaller brethren. Even if any sound were possible in space, you would hear none here.

The surface of the rock was, from a distance, smooth on one side and jagged like a broken tooth on the other. It looked like it used to be part of something bigger but got ripped out by incredible forces. The rough side had both shiny faces and puckered rock like parts. Nothing but dust clung to it.

On the other side of the ball, hills and valleys mixed with the occasional crater from a small meteor, created a complex landscape. At one of the edges, a single, lonely, mountain cast its shadow. On closer inspection, small rocks could be seen sticking to its surface, as if they were being held there by an invisible force.

A single thing stood out amongst the utter chaos. It was a square hole, carved out int the foot of the mountain.

Time kept going and so did the rock, until, as it sometimes does, coincidence struck. Specifically, it struck the square hole at the bottom of the mountain by means of a smaller rock. This tiny rock had spent the better part of its unconscious existence flying through the void of space as part of an asteroid belt that orbited the center of this galaxy. At some point, it had been knocked out of place by another asteroid. Now it was heading towards this dusty grey ball.

The small rock flew through the entrance in the mountain and disappeared from view. Inside a big square room, it hit a similarily square transparent crystalline surface. The rock shattered into many parts, but on the crystal square, there was not a single scratch. Instead, it started glowing ever so softly. It kept on glowing, becoming brighter and brighter until it bathed the entire room in a strong yellow light. The light grew so strong that the crystal surface could not be seen anymore.

Outside, yellow light started pouring from the cracks in the mountain. Starting almost unnoticeable, but gradually increasing in strength, the dust on the grey ball started to tremble, then move. It began rolling and skidding towards the mountain, entering the cracks and going inwards towards the light.

Soon the smaller rocks also followed the dust, while the light became brighter still.

The movement of the grey ball, which was now radiating bright yellow light, started to slow down until it hung motionless in space. After a moment all of its smaller brethren started circling the ball, closing in on it.

The light became paler and paler, and when it was almost white, the first of the grey balls, smaller brethren smashed into the mountain. Unable to resist the impact the mountain cracked open, and large chasms appeared everywhere on the ball.

When the second, and largest of its brethren hit the summit of the mountain, the grey ball burst. However, instead of breaking apart and floating off as one would expect, the bigger chunks of rock started heading inward as if the ball of dust was eating itself. Within a small window of time, all the rocks disappeared, and in their place was a massive glowing orb of light.

Had it been possible to look from a far enough distance, one would have seen that in a dark part of space, amongst many fading red lights, a bright light starting to illuminate its surroundings. The nearest of the red lights, so close that it almost looked like a speck on the bright yellow, got swallowed and then everything was still once more.

Far from the bright light, at least compared to the small rocks or the no longer existing red light, six massive planetoids, that had been still for eons, started shifting. It began with the smaller ones, closer to the new star, slowly moving in a circular pattern around it. But eventually even the most massive of planetoids, an enormous blue glistening ball, couldn't resist the pull and began orbiting the new sun. This unfamiliar movement created cracks on the blue planets surface, and slowly, smidgens of gas started leaking from the cracks.

Some time passed again, when, on one of the planetoids, second from the sun, strange irregular shapes could be seen. The shapes, although infinitely small compared to the size of both the planets and the star, were still many times bigger than most of the rocks on any of the other planetoids. None of the irregular shapes existed on any of the other planets, including the yellow one closest to the sun nor the red one that ranked third. If one had scrutinized the irregular shapes very closely, small movements would have been seen between them...

Shambling, with uneven movements, numerous grey dusty silhouettes moved between the blocky broken pieces of hole-filled rock that decorated this lifeless landscape. Although some of these rectangular-shaped blocks remained upright, most lay collapsed into empty heaps. Long stretches of flat broken stone seemed to pave the areas between them, while rubble and debris lay loosely scattered everywhere.

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