October 7, night.
Rhine stepped off the World Ladder and into the New Star World… only for the sky to mock the word “night.”
The sun still hung high, bloated and merciless, like someone had pinned a furnace above the horizon and forgotten to turn it off. Heat rolled across the land in visible waves. The air tasted of dust and scorched stone.
World Completion: under 10%.
Rhine had seen the warning in the World Ladder interface, and he’d heard the same thing in the World Chat: once a world’s completion rate was low enough, time got weird. Some worlds ran “fast” on the inside, burning through decades in what felt like weeks.
One player had joked that their homeworld’s sun had died—global freeze, crops gone, oceans sealing over. Their world line had lasted barely two months before the System called it.
New Star, though… was the opposite extreme.
Not cold.
Cooked.
Rhine lowered his hat, squinting into the glare, and started walking.
The ground was cracked and gray, as if the soil had been baked into ceramic. No trees. No grass. No insects. Not even bones. Just emptiness, stretching toward a haze that blurred the horizon.
He pushed his psionic sense outward, careful not to overextend—this world felt thin, unfinished, like a stage set the System hadn’t fully painted yet.
Something answered.
A pale slab half-buried in ash.
Rhine dug it out with a flick of telekinesis, then brushed away the grit.
It was a memorial stone.
The engraving was sharp, almost new:
Life above all.
In gratitude to the martyrs who fell for the New Star Defense Line.
—New Star United Government
Date of death: Red Sea Calendar 867 / 04 / 09
Rhine stared at the date.
Red Sea Calendar 867.
That was… far too “established” for a world that was supposedly still under construction. And the wording—Defense Line, martyrs, government—didn’t sound like a place that had only been “live” for a handful of months.
A bad feeling crept up his spine.
He didn’t linger.
If New Star had a government, it had surveillance. If it had surveillance, it had checkpoints. And if it had checkpoints, a fresh arrival from the World Ladder was the kind of anomaly that got you dissected.
So he didn’t enter like a tourist.
He stowed away.
Rhine pulled up the coordinates he’d picked in advance—Dawn City, District 12, Feiyue Road, Building 28—and let the World Ladder’s last residual pull snap him into place.
The heat blinked.
The glare softened.
He was standing on a rooftop.
Below him lay a city sealed beneath an enormous dome—transparent like glass, but with a faint milky sheen that caught the sunlight and scattered it. Inside, the streets were clean. The buildings were uniform, pale concrete and white tile. Everything looked planned, measured, and… dead quiet.
No cars.
No chatter.
No life.
A low chime rolled through the dome, like a bell struck underwater.
Doors opened in unison.
People filed out—hundreds, then thousands—moving with practiced efficiency. They wore identical white uniforms. On every chest sat the same emblem: a gray-green planet with a thin ring around it.
Rhine kept to the shadows of the rooftop wall, watching.
No one looked up.
No one searched.
They formed neat lines in the plazas and along the main roads, all facing the same direction—toward the dome’s inner surface, where light began to gather.
A projection bloomed across the sky of the city: crisp, high-definition, impossibly large.
A woman in a dark uniform appeared, seated behind a clean white desk.
Her voice carried everywhere.
“New Star United Government—Daily Broadcast.”
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t need to.
“Today is Red Sea Calendar 867, April 9. The twentieth year since the New Star Defense Line was established.”
Rhine’s jaw tightened.
Twentieth year.
So the memorial stone hadn’t been random. It had been a breadcrumb.
The anchor continued, tone steady as a metronome.
“Our time is limited. The sun’s anomaly has entered its final stage. We estimate less than two months remain.”
A ripple went through the crowd—not panic, not outrage.
Just the collective intake of breath that came from hearing the same doomsday clock repeated for the thousandth time.
The broadcast pivoted.
“Now, the production report.”
Numbers filled the air beside her:
Raw ore: 18,564,000 tons
Grain: 5,226,000 tons
Purified water: 1,100,000 tons
Synthetic protein: 5,240,000 tons
Fuel: 2,400,000 tons
Battery cells: 4,500,000 units
“District rankings,” the anchor said. “Top three.”
“Dawn City, District 12—first.”
A cheer rose. Not wild. Not joyful. More like a reflex—hands clapping because hands were expected to clap.
“Mica City, District 12—second.”
Another wave of applause.
“Vinegrove City, District 12—third.”
More clapping.
Rhine watched the faces.
They weren’t Awakened. No aura pressure. No obvious mutations. No casual miracles. Just ordinary people—tired, sunken-eyed, moving on rails.
Workers.
Not warriors.
The anchor folded her hands.
“The New Star Defense Line exists to protect every citizen. We will not abandon anyone. When the ark ships are completed, every last person will board. New Star will step into a new beginning together.”
The crowd applauded again, louder this time.
Rhine didn’t.
Inside the dome, the propaganda sounded like hope.
Outside the dome, he’d walked a wasteland that didn’t look like a world anyone could “save.”