It was a warm and bright morning in Goldmist, the central district of Cora. That was very wrong and everyone was scared.

Just about 50 years ago, at this time of the year, Goldmist was covered with piles and piles of soft snow and the children and adults alike were playing on the frozen river, Zenina. However, 50 years ago, an unexpected event wreaked havoc in their everyday lives.

Billions of years in far history, when the Red star was young, there was a planet covered in a thick layer of ice, and underneath it were streams of red hot raging fire burning. For thousands of years, basking in the warmth of the Red star, the little icy planet slowly incubated a seed of life planted in the dark depths of a frozen sea, by the gods who existed before the birth of the first star.

As time went by, the seed of life slowly sprouted through the layers of ice, making cracks all over the icy surface. The young sapling continued to feed on the magic of the first elements of the planet, fire, and water, and eventually grew into a magnificent tree of life. From its roots, the land was formed, floating over the vast oceans and its fallen leaves created the lush green forests, slowly transforming the cold icy planet into a beautiful magical world.

Then, one day, the tree bloomed covering its boughs with beautiful red and white flowers, which developed into tiny fruits. The petals of flowers were taken away by the wind, fell on the newly formed land, and on icy cold rivers. Where the red petals fell on the land, there grew a kind of magical flower, bright red in color, carrying sweet golden nectar. Where the white petals fell in the water, there grew a kind of white fish, glowing in the light of the moon. The tree nourished lovingly as the fruits grew, and when the time came, the first sentient magical beings were born from the fruits of the tree of life, on the magical planet later called Cora.

They had two forms, one resembled the ancient gods and one represented their magical powers, as winged serpents who could manipulate water and winged dragons who could breathe the purifying fire. They shared a strong kinship, a magical bond that helped them to grow and thrive in the new magical world.

Winged serpents, who called themselves Quazi people, chose the snow-capped mountains to live, as their preferred food, the silver cloud fish were abundant in cold mountain pools.

In serpent form, they are about 20 feet long, and the bodies are covered with glossy strong scales which emit a bluish-white glow when they use magical powers. Their wings were made of long white feathers.

In their humanoid form, they are fair-skinned and about 7 feet tall. The hair was as white as snow, and the eyes gleamed in a beautiful silvery gray. The magic extended into white feathery wings, which can be summoned at will.

Winged dragons, also called the black dragons, were named as Zenai people preferred low land where the bleeding heart flowers bloomed all year round in patches of entangled vines.

In dragon form, they are like their kin, about 20 feet in length as an adult. Their scales were as black as night, yet when they used magic their bodies glowed in fiery red. Their wings were not made with feathers but with thin elastic skin stretched over the cartilaginous structure.

In their humanoid form, they stood about 7 feet tall and their skin was dark golden. They had black hair and eyes gleamed in honey color like the sweet nectar in bleeding heart flowers. Similar to the Quazi, Zenai also had powers to summon the magical wings which resembled black dragon wings.

They loved and cherished their new world and used their magical powers to build and create. They explored the newly formed and constantly changing lands and oceans. Their lives were thousands of years long and there was no hurry at all to do anything. They made songs and music enriched with the sounds of gurgling rivers and raging fire. They watched the stars and continuously expanded the boundaries of knowledge to travel among them and to be free.

It wasn't like there were only the good things that happened in their long lives. Some disasters broke mountains in half, huge ocean waves engulfed the land and cities sank and were lost. But, it all happened in a blink of an eye, they learned to forget and move on.

Until that fateful day, an accidental magical disaster, forever sealed the fate of their wonderful planet, Cora.

The Red Star Magical Research Institute was a dedicated educational centre for uncovering the universal truths of magic. It was founded by the scientists who first created the transport portals which revolutionized magical transportation. It also made people interested in new knowledge and inventions. That's how the institute, which was once only confined to the home laboratory of a scientist, became a huge building complex divided into many different subjects and employed over 1000 scholars.

The largest of the departments in the Magical Cosmology unit was the Magical Aerospace Development (MAD) which mainly focused on developing magically powered space crafts and distance shortcuts to avoid lengthy trips.

Senior Felix and his team had been working on artificial space tunnel creation for about 10 years, and they were making progress on a small scale. It was exciting news when Felix's group created a minuscule wormhole in magically enhanced space. Even though it was unstable and needed an immense amount of energy, the scientific community hailed Felix as a genius in magi cosmology.

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The F team immediately moved into creating an enhanced version of a wormhole, but some major issues arose not only due to the mass-energy requirements but also the safety space they needed. The main MAD laboratory wasn't big enough even with the enhancement and the energy they estimated to be used could cause failures in the energy grid of surrounding areas.

"How about the moon research center, no body's working on any major research there these days"

"We could power up our energy reserves when it gets closer to the Red star."

People in the F team cheered, that was a swell idea. Soon, they arranged for their equipment to be transported to the moon. It took some time to set up the laboratory as the equipment is all very sophisticated and sensitive. The researchers had started many small-scale experiments to standardize the procedures, and after a few years, they were confident that they could work on a large scale.

However, the clearance committee for the scientific research was divided in favor of Felix and the team and disapproved of the large-scale wormhole creation experiment due to the safety and uncertainty of the adverse effects.

Well, some could say even the superstitions played a role in being scared.

It was an old saying, that when our beautiful universe was created, the gods banished the souls of the damned from the universe which existed before into a timeless nothingness around the new universe, and all the goodness was concentrated into a tiny bubble where we live now. And picking holes in the boundary surrounding them didn't sit well with old folks.

But, it was the era of magi science, people questioned every thought, every word, and every belief. No evidence, no conclusions, that's the rule. It wasn't long before finally the committee ruled out disapproval of the community that honored the old ways.

No one actually knew what happened on the 23rd day, only speculations were made by gathering various hearsay stories and gossip. It's said that the F team was very lax on protective measures, as the location is largely isolated. Some even said that recent successes made them overconfident. So, it could have been a technical malfunction, safety equipment failure, or personnel error, but the magnitude of the resulting magical explosion dwarfed anything they had ever known before.

The aftermath was nothing but disastrous. People in Cora begin to feel the effects of the explosion immediately after the event. The sudden change in the moon's gravitational field made Cora's orbit unstable, resulting in massive-scale natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamies.

The loss of lives and property damage was never calculated completely. After initial shock, and after blaming each other for allowing such foolish things to be carried out, Corish people shrugged and started to clean and rebuild. Accidents happen once in a while, no use crying for spilled milk. It was a pity that young Felix and his research team were all annihilated in the explosion, the scientific community honored the memory of the brilliant young inventor.

But, the accident had irreversible consequences, which no one foresaw.

With time, slowing down of the planet's rotation speed was a well established fact. The main reason was found to be the friction created by tides. However, the losing momentum was very small, hence no adverse effects were caused.

To say it started gradually was an understatement. Soon after the accident, Cora started to experience abnormally high and low tides, most coastal lands became uninhabitable, and the changes in planet rotation speed were visible and the effects were tangible.

In some places, the nights were getting shorter while at another place, days were getting shorter. Slowly, the side facing the Red star started to get unbearably brighter and warmer, and where the Red star was not visible anymore, Cora showed signs of returning to its cold icy past.

The long and thin land stretch where the Red star rested just above the zenith, under the twilight, people mourned for the loss of their once beautiful magical world.

Many old people, Quazi and Zenai alike, made their choice to pass away. Yet, some lingered, looking for a solution.

"Why do we have to die out, there's so many planets, if we can reach one, we can start new"

They argued and reasoned.

But their misfortune didn't end there. The cold and fathomless darkness in the Northern hemisphere began to take shapes and to whisper unintelligible yet terrifying things. They didn't know where it came from, but it was a harsh realization for most people. Some thought that the darkness is attracting the souls of the damned from nothingness through the cracks of the boundary. Some thought young Felix and the perished ones were twisted by their creation.

But, there were more pressing concerns. Cora's oldest of plant species, called the First trees, as they resemble the tree that gave birth to them, also believed to be a lesser form of the original tree of life, started to die out.

The last thread to Cora was broken. It was obvious that life on Cora was nearing the end. The people who elected to stay started working on a project, a spacecraft to reach a new young planet and start their lives again. They divided into groups, some guarded the borders of what they called the twilight zone from the creeping tendrils of darkness. The fires of black dragons burned constantly, day and night as they still say out of habit.

After years of labor, finally, they came up with an acceptable solution. They had created a globe-like pod that could transport them through space, to a predetermined location.

The pod consisted of an inner chamber, which was designed as a resting place for inhabitants. All the people who decided to leave were supposed to go for hibernation or cold sleep. The middle of the inner chamber, the last of the First trees, was placed with the patch of the ground it grew. The layer around the inner core contained magically enriched corish soil and dormant seeds of all corish plant life. The next layer (outer core) was made of magically enriched pure ice in its crystalline form. The outermost layer was a thermal-resistant protective layer that would keep the globe protected.

Not everyone was willing to take a chance on such a long journey. Among them, a few were chosen to launch the Biopod into the selected course to a young waterlogged planet that was found to be harboring a rich atmosphere.

The plan was that the Biopod would land on the surface of the planet, and slowly dissolve releasing magically enriched water, soil, and plant life into the young planet, and most probably mingled with any life form if there is any on the new land. But, the inner chamber won't be released until the world is magical enough for their First tree to establish. Then they will wake up from the cold sleep and will be able to start their lives in the new world.

The day had come, and the chosen people took their places, shifted into their magical forms, and went to cold sleep.