One hundred years ago.
The skies did not roar. The heavens did not scream.
There was no dramatic explosion, no fire raining down, no frantic warnings from global observatories. The Earth, silent and unprepared, accepted the intruder without question—as if the planet itself had been waiting. One second the stars shimmered as they always had. The next… a glowing scar raced across the sky.
It appeared just after midnight, a streak of pale lavender light breaking through the atmosphere. Beautiful, serene, almost like a wish flying across the firmament. But this wasn't a comet. It wasn't debris. It wasn't man-made or natural, at least not by any known science.
It was a meteorite—at least, that's what the early headlines called it.
And it fell.
Through the dark clouds it came, no louder than a whisper, until it vanished beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. No impact. No tremor. Just gone.
That should have been the end of the story. An anomaly, sure, but nothing more.
They would call it later: Starduss.
Not stardust. Starduss—named after the shimmering powder that began to fall across the globe days later, like cosmic pollen carried by the wind.
And so it began.
No Clue. No Warning. No Origin.
The first dust fell over the northern hemisphere. Europe, mostly. A thin, invisible layer. People breathed it in. Washed it from their roofs. It coated leaves, vehicles, glass windows.
Scientists found it strange—too smooth, too reflective. "Micrometeoric sediment," some called it. "Organic silicon," others guessed.
But no one agreed on a source. And no one, at first, thought to panic.
It was dust. What harm could dust do?
The dust carried no scent. No mass. It floated into homes, across oceans, clung to hair and clothes. It passed unnoticed, like the breath of something sleeping just above the clouds.
Still, the dust was not inert.
Within days, the sickness began.
Sudden Seekness
The first reports were mild: fatigue, fevers, respiratory issues. Nothing alarming in isolation. A new flu strain, perhaps. People shrugged it off—until hospitals overflowed.
The fever didn't just burn. It scorched. Patients screamed in their beds. Their skin blistered without fire. Doctors wore hazmat suits. Nurses passed out from exhaustion. No sleep, no solution, no clue.
Children stopped breathing in their sleep. Elderly choked on their own blood. Young men collapsed mid-stride, their veins darkening before their bodies even hit the ground.
And yet, bloodwork showed nothing. No bacteria. No virus. Just… failure.
Organs shutting down. Brains frying. Nervous systems rebelling.
The Starduss wasn't a sickness in the traditional sense. It was something else.
The Unknown Creator
Whispers started.
It came from the stars, they said. Not from Earth.
"Something sent this."
"It's not a natural event."
"This is targeted. Engineered."
Online forums exploded with speculation. Meteorologists gave up. Virologists walked off news sets mid-interview. Astronomers refused to speak on record. Something was wrong, and they knew it, but none dared to name it.
"Alien."
It wasn't a question. It was a conclusion. One spoken in hushed voices.
Somewhere, in classified basements and shadowed rooms, the term Unknown Creator entered government records. The meteor was not just an object—it was a delivery system. The dust was a message, or a weapon. Or both.
But humanity had no sender to reply to. Only silence in the stars.
The News and the Panic
When the media caught up, it was already too late.
"Unexplained Illness Sweeping the Globe."
"Dust May Be Contaminated—Experts Urge Masks."
"Is Earth Under Attack?"
"Panic in Paris: Over 4,000 Collapse Overnight."
"Quarantine Zones Breached."
"Mass Riots in Brazil Over Vaccine Access."
"No Cure, No Containment, No Hope."
No region was spared. Rich or poor, armed or defenseless, cold or tropical—it did not matter. The Starduss flowed everywhere. And once inside the body, it didn't leave. It changed people.
First physically. Then mentally.
The infected didn't always die. Some… twisted.
Some grew claws. Some had black ichor instead of blood. Some began hearing voices, screaming in alien tongues. Not all turned monstrous—but none remained entirely human.
And worse… some thrived on it.
Global Lockdown
The United Nations met for the last time just twelve days after the first infection wave. No agreements were reached. No aid was promised. Every country turned inward.
Borders closed. Skies emptied. Flights grounded forever.
The internet slowed to a crawl as servers went offline, governments shut down channels, and war zones expanded like tumors.
The phrase "Global Lockdown" took on new meaning.
There weren't just curfews—there were shoot-on-sight orders.
Some cities sealed their gates, closed their underground trains, walled themselves in. Others burned everything in a hundred-mile radius.
Satellite images showed the darkening of Earth. City lights faded. Roads emptied. All major power grids began to fail. Nature, ironically, thrived. The oceans calmed. Pollution disappeared. Humanity retreated.
But still, the dust fell.
No Cureness. No Time.
Every major pharmaceutical company tried. Governments poured their final funds into labs, biological think tanks, military virology. Promises were made—cures in weeks, immunity serums in development.
They all failed.
The dust could not be removed. Once inhaled, it embedded in the bloodstream. It restructured DNA silently, like a parasite playing god. Every known treatment only accelerated mutation.
Radiation? Ineffective.
Fire? The infected walked through it, screaming, but unyielding.
Surgery? The organs regrew, twisted.
Injections? The Starduss reacted violently.
There was no vaccine. No antidote. Only death, or something worse.
The Fall of the World
Within one year, 78% of Earth's population vanished.
Not all to death. Some wandered into the wilds, transformed into things that no longer answered to human names. Others joined new cults, worshipping the stars, offering themselves to the "Creators" they believed would descend.
Governments collapsed like dominoes. Cities fell silent. Megalopolises became graves. Airports turned into refugee camps, then became fire pits.
The old world ended without ceremony. No climactic battle. No mass rebellion.
Just… silence.
And then, from the silence: screams.
Humanity Still Fights
Yet, even in death's shadow, humanity refused to die.
They built bunkers, miles below the Earth. Shelters made of steel and bio-filters. Massive underground cities—called safeshelves—engineered to outlast decades.
Communities formed, guarded by AI drones and bio-coded doors. Entry was forbidden to the infected. Life was simple: rationed water, freeze-dried meals, exercise cycles, education consoles.
They built new weapons—pulse guns, plasma mines, cryo spears. Tools not to cure, but to kill whatever came from the Starduss.
New languages evolved. New oaths sworn. Every child born underground was told the same story:
"The world above has fallen. But one day, we will rise."
Above ground, resistance factions roamed, scavenging old tech, protecting what remained of humanity's memory. They fought the transformed, the mutants, the creatures that once were men.
And even then, something worse awaited them. Something that hadn't awakened yet.
But it would.
One Final Whisper
They say there was a final experiment. A last-ditch effort to understand the Starduss.
A program known only to the highest few. A single subject, altered not by choice but by design.
Buried beneath one of the earliest laboratories, long since abandoned by the living, he sleeps.
A meta-human. Neither infected nor pure.
Not born. Created.
He is known by no name, yet the world will come to remember him as the last chance. The final variable. The only one who might understand the truth of what the Starduss is… and what it wants.
He is the last test subject.
And when he wakes… everything will begin again.