"To see tomorrow, one must kill yesterday." — Unknown

I was born with the first breath of the Earth.

Before gods, before names—I was.

I have been called many things. Gaia. Lilith. The First. The Watcher. The humans gave me names because they needed to name things to make sense of them. To them, I was a god. A spirit. A demon. I was all of these things and none of them.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

I have seen the rise of beasts and men. The first creatures crawling from the sea, the first spark of fire in trembling hands. I have watched empires rise like flowers in spring and wither just as quickly. Civilizations grew, burned, and rotted in the same cycle, repeating history as though time itself was a wheel.

There was a time when I cared.

There was a time when I walked among them, when I listened to their prayers, when I let them call me mother, savior, queen. I have held love in my hands, I have burned with rage, I have wept when they died, and I have rejoiced when they lived.

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But that was long ago.

Emotions are… distant now. Concepts. I remember love, just as I remember hunger and sorrow and joy, but I do not feel them. Not the way they do. Time stretches too long for things like that to last. They fade, like ink in water. Like the ruins of their cities, swallowed by sand.

That is what eternity does.

Now, I watch with detached curiosity as they make their final escape.

They call it the Helios Event.

The sun has reached the end of its cycle, they say. A hyper-charged X-Class solar flare, powerful enough to strip the planet bare. It will burn the atmosphere, boil the oceans, turn the ground to glass. There will be nothing left.

So, they run.

They perfected interstellar travel centuries ago but never used it like this—an exodus, the final migration of mankind. Great silver ships lift into the sky, carrying the last of them into the void. They leave behind everything that once defined them. Their history. Their monuments. Their gods.

And me.

I wonder if they remember I exist.

I could go.

I could leave this place as they have. My body is not bound by flesh and bone—I could step beyond this world, stretch into the cosmos, carve out a place for myself among the stars.

But I don’t.

Because Earth is not just my home.

It is me.

To leave it would be like a tree abandoning its roots, a heart leaving its body. I could survive, but I would not be the same.

I will not be the same.

I stand on what remains of solid ground and watch the sky turn gold.

The first wave of fire tears through the clouds, and I feel it before it touches me. The oceans rise, pulled toward the heavens before vanishing into steam. The ground cracks and melts. Cities crumble, their bones turning to dust in the heat.

And I feel it all.

Every broken stone, every dying breath of wind.

I close my eyes.

And for the first time in eternity—

I let go.