Through the Distant Universe

I continued my journey through the dead city, and it was an exhausting path, draining the last vestiges of my strength. It felt as though I'd been walking an eternity from the outskirts, where the charred, two-story houses stood blackened, to this central part, though the actual size of the city, as I later understood, was deceptively small compared to the giant metropolises I'd read about in my urban planning books. However, every kilometer felt like ten, and every hour – like a day, stretched by unbearable pain, suffocating air, and a crushing silence. The exosuit's servomotors hummed, a monotonous drone echoing the pulse in my temples, but even their mechanical groan was lost in this absolute stillness.

Gradually, very slowly, the rusty, time-worn two-story houses were replaced by something else – structures that began to reach for the sky with a defiant disregard for gravity. Their facades, which must once have been gleaming and futuristic, were now covered in a thick layer of dust, ash, and ingrained soot, like ancient mummies wrapped in dirty bandages. The sky, obscured by a perpetual, bile-yellow haze, began to peek through between the much higher, more grandiose structures. Here, in the heart of this, as it turned out, not so extensive, but incredibly dense and vertically oriented city, I discovered what had once been its soul, its pride, its symbols. These were monumental constructions, whose mangled remains still struck the imagination with their once-flawless grandeur, rising from the dead earth like petrified, disfigured dreams.

The first thing that caught my eye was a giant spire, which must once have pierced the heavens like a needle aimed at infinity. It even towered over the other skyscrapers, whose glass or metal facades paled in its shadow. But now it was broken in the middle, its upper part having collapsed onto the neighboring skyscrapers, leaving behind a colossal crater of destruction and a whole scattering of twisted debris. What must it have been like when it was whole? Surely, it was a symbol of unsurpassed power and a yearning for the stars. The metal from which it was made shimmered in the dim light, demonstrating layers of incredibly strong, iridescent alloys, the technology of which was completely unknown to me. As an engineer, I could only admire and be horrified at the same time.

And everywhere, among the wreckage, I stumbled upon gigantic statues. Some were dozens, even hundreds of meters tall, towering over the ruins like fallen gods. They depicted figures clad in either battle armor or ceremonial robes; their poses were majestic and full of hidden power. Their faces, if they were preserved, were serene, wise, full of dignity, as if they were looking at eternity, but now they were disfigured, covered with cracks, devoid of their pedestals, thrown from their pedestals. One of these statues, depicting, apparently, a woman with outstretched arms, her palms turned to the sky in a gesture of either acceptance or supplication, was broken into three enormous fragments. The head lay aside, the eyes of gray marble gazed into the emptiness of the dusty sky. The arms were torn off, but even their remains were massive, each of them could be the size of a spaceship, if I had a spaceship. I tried to imagine how many people had worked on this, how many generations had erected these symbols of their power and faith, investing in them not only labor, but also soul.

This civilization was incredibly advanced, their culture, their technology surpassed everything I had ever known or could imagine, even in the wildest science fiction novels. Their architecture, their art - everything spoke of a striving for the ideal, for perfection, for a deep understanding of beauty and harmony. And the more terrible it was to realize what force was able to crush such grandiose creations, leaving behind only these hideous, distorted testimonies of its omnipotence. It was not just a war, not just a conflict, but a total, absolute annihilation, a purposeful erasure of all living things, everything that could remind of past glory. A force that left no stone unturned, but at the same time preserved these disfigured, disfigured, but still recognizable forms, as if in mockery, as if in edification to future generations, who should not have been here. Evidence of the genocide of my kind.

A feeling of reverent awe before their grandeur mixed with a chilling horror at what had destroyed them. I stood in the middle of a graveyard of giants, a witness to a monstrous act of vandalism of cosmic scale. Every time I thought I had seen the worst, this world presented me with a new lesson in pain, expanding my limits of understanding of horror. My understanding of the scale of the tragedy increased with each new, destroyed monument, with each piece of wreckage that was once part of something great. It was not just a planet inhabited by people, it was a whole world, a whole civilization, with all its beauty and greatness, with all its hopes and dreams, erased to dust. And this thought, this realization, inflicted far deeper damage than any physical pain that I was experiencing, penetrating into the very essence of my being and freezing my soul.

As I surveyed this silent, monumental destruction, a calm, dispassionate voice of the AI cut through the oppressive atmosphere like a blade.

"Warning: one of the less damaged spires, approximately two kilometers north of you, most likely contained the main communications hub. There is a minimal probability that it can be rebooted. Access to its network may provide critical data on the planet's history, the nature of the invasion, and possibly navigation for the way forward. Based on the data, an underground bunker with supplies should also be there."

I looked in the indicated direction, searching in the gray haze of dust for the AI's indicated landmark. In the distance, through the haze, loomed the same spire. It was taller than the others, but lower than the main one, its upper half still reaching towards the sky, although it was wounded and broken, but not as catastrophically as the first one. A thread of impossible hope, cold and sharp as a jagged shard of ice, pierced my despair. Information. Knowledge. This was a risky chance, a ghostly beacon in this boundless sea of destruction, but what else did I have? My path up to this point had been a blind wandering through debris and pain. Any glimmer of understanding, however weak, was worth the risk.

I moved towards the spire, making my way through the ruins, which now seemed even more sinister, as each piece of debris held the imprint of a monstrous force. Initially, I assumed that something that had pierced it had passed tangentially, grazing only the edge, demolishing a couple of nearby buildings. But as I got closer, the true picture became clearer. Having reached the spire and gone around it from the other side, I realized the full scale of the destruction. This was not just a tangential hit. Something monstrously powerful had not just cut the spire in half, as if it were made of clay and not of iridescent alloys, it carried dozens of buildings with one shock wave, turning them into dust and twisted metal. I saw perfectly straight lines of fractures, as if something had passed through the city like through butter. Moreover, it had dragged itself through the city, leaving behind a colossal, perfectly straight furrow, stretching God knows where, to the horizon, shrouded in a red haze, as if a giant blade had cut through the planet. And by a miracle, this accursed line of destruction had passed by another, seemingly undamaged communications spire, which, according to the AI, was my goal.

I became curious, what was the crater from the impact like? I went towards it. It was about 50 meters deep and 300 meters wide. What could have caused such an impact? Or did someone fall, survive, and then was dragged dozens of kilometers through the city? From the realization of this fact, I immediately felt reverence and horror. And when I was about to go further to the hub, I saw something that caught my attention: something was gleaming in the middle of the crater.

I thought about it for several tenacious seconds, but in the end, I decided to go down. I carefully found places to descend and moved down, as the surface was solid and not very cluttered with debris, the impact had simply scattered all the structures around. But the longer I descended, the more I understood that under the layer of sand, dust, and waste, the walls of the crater were made of glass. Which means something had landed with a monstrous heat, turning the soil into molten, fragile substance.

And after a few minutes, I reached the bottom of the crater. I began to look for what had caught my attention. And in the end, I found it. It was a fragment… of something. As if the last pointed phalanx of some claw. The obsidian-black material under the few rays of light shimmered with garnet, ruby, and carmine rays, creating the illusion of a crimson nebulosity inside the stone or crystal. It was incredibly smooth and sharp, so sharp that it seemed as if a titan could cut it with a careless movement. Perhaps it had broken off during the fall.

After some thought, I also decided to take it with me. There is some kind of attraction in this thing, and it is simply beautiful. I carefully picked it up, feeling the unnatural cold emanating from it, penetrating even through the gloves. The feeling was frightening, but at the same time, I felt a strange, almost magnetic attraction, as if I had not accidentally stumbled upon this thing, which, of course, was complete nonsense. I took it, hiding it in one of the inner pockets of my armor.

I looked at the crater walls. And at that moment, I hated myself for the fact of the descent, because now I had to climb up this glassy slope again. And after a long climb upwards, I headed towards the ill-fated spire, hoping to find shelter and rest there, and perhaps even to learn what had really happened here.