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The first time you die, you don't even realize it's happening.
You decide to stay on your home planet for your first flight. You take the suit into the mines to the west, through the water current inside the geyser mountains. You speak with Tektite in the northern crater, send a probe inside the seed and stare in disbelief at the pictures being sent back to you. Greyscale images of a space much too large for the container in front of your eyes, showing indistinct shapes like... vines or roots, distressingly similar to the ones reaching out from the seed.
Further the scout soars, and then it lands on the bone of a terribly large skeleton. It's filled with trees, and you can see a trail of smoke, the edge of a campfire. As you continue to request photos, you see a figure approaching. They're wearing a spacesuit so much like your own. In their hand, barely visible, is a harmonica.
You show the picture to Tektite and they gasp, leaning in close to the screen.
"That's Feldspar!" they say, and urge you back to the village. You have to show this to Hornfels.
You do so. The flight back and the landing is bumpy, but you make it. You rush into the building, and they're in front of the statue, talking with Hal about its sudden, mysterious activation. They ask you about it, and you tell them what happened at a rapid, impatient clip. They laugh, ask what the rush is.
You show them the photo. They stop laughing.
"Where is this?" they ask, voice terribly quiet.
"Inside the seed that crashed up north," you say. You explain the series of events, show them the preceding photos of the journey the scout took.
"Dark Bramble," Hornfels murmurs. "It must be. See those shapes? They look just like the roots of the Bramble." They thank you profusely for this information, and resolve to contact Gossan right away.
But they don't get the chance. It's difficult to hear the village from within the observatory, but even you notice when the light goes dim. It doesn't disappear entirely, but it's the middle of the day. There were no clouds. So why has the sky gone dark?
Light returns, but it's wrong. The light from your sun is a gentle orange, not this harsh white. Not this blaze of blue that wipes the definition from the scenery. It does not carry this harsh heat, a thousand times worse than plunging your hand in fire.
You don't understand. What's happening?
The light engulfs the world, and your mind goes blank.
Except. No. You are aware, in this numb void. Incomprehensible text flashes in your vision and you recall your day, everything you've done since you left the observatory, everything that's happened since you locked eyes with an ancient statue of a long dead species. Since this happened the last time, a strange occurrence that you mistook for a vivid hallucination.
You still aren't sure it wasn't.
Your vision goes dark. And then, impossibly, you wake up.
Above you, something flashes in the orbit of Giant's Deep. Just like it did hours ago, when you woke up after your traditional pre-launch night under the stars.
You lay there for a long time, minutes upon minutes. Giant's Deep drifts out of sight, and the sun creeps over the horizon. Slate gives a polite cough from their seat next to the campfire.
"I get that it's kinda stressful, launching into space for the first time, but you do want to do this, right?" they ask pointedly. "You're not going to be getting those codes if you keep laying there."
"Actually," you correct, sitting up. Slate's eyes widen, forehead wrinkling.
"You think you're funny, but just wait until you get locked out of the lift."
"I won't be," you promise. It feels surreal, walking back to the lift and tapping in the codes you only just learned hours ago. Slate watches, bewildered, as the lift activates and starts carrying you up. You wave at them, and they slowly wave back.
And then you're facing your ship for the second first time, and the absurdity finally hits. You've already done this. This day has already happened, and you're doing it again, and you don't know why. You stand in the lift for an uncountable amount of time, shaking in confusion and fear, though you don't entirely know what you're afraid of.
The memory of pain is paler than the actual experience. One of your teachers said that, once. You can't remember the context. You can remember the ghost of searing heat, the one moment of awareness before you found yourself in darkness, and then here, again.
Your mind shies away from the possibilities of what happened. You have an idea. You want so desperately to be wrong.
(You aren't.)
The second time you die, you see it happen. Perhaps not as if you are watching yourself perish, but you see the cause and you can do nothing as it rushes towards you.
You've made it into space, this time. You've decided to visit Esker, see what sort of ruins are on your moon. There are traces of the Nomai all over your solar system. You found most of the ones on your own planet, both in the past and today-that-wasn't. You've never seen the ones on your moon, not up close. Occasionally, you would catch sight of them when you pointed your telescope in that direction. You want to see them in person.
Leaving the atmosphere is rougher than you expected, but you survive, your ship survives. The controls are easy to navigate, after the many hours you trained with them. It's different to be in the proper weightlessness of space, rather than the enclosed space of the caves, but that is a challenge you are keen to overcome.
It takes a few tries to land, once you find the Attlerock. You manage to damage the landing gear after a particularly harsh crash, but it's an easy fix. Your teachers definitely made sure you knew how to fix anything that might go wrong with your ship.
Esker is glad for the company, for the chance to speak with someone in person for once. "It gets lonely up here," they say, "even with the ability to listen to the other travelers."
You ask if they've found Feldspar with their signalscope. They have, though it's strange: the signal seems to be coming from Timber Hearth. But Feldspar went missing ages ago, and they haven't heard anything about them coming home. "I thought my signalscope was broken, but Gneiss couldn't find anything wrong with it."
You tell Esker what you found out from the seed, though you don't have any pictures to show them as proof. Not this time.
The two of you chat for some time, and you learn so much about the history of your space program, about this outpost. You promise to visit them again soon, maybe bring news from one of the other astronauts, though unease swirls in your gut as you do so. You don't know if you'll be able to do that. You don't know how much time has passed, how much you have left before—
But maybe it won't happen again. Maybe it was a hallucination, and you'll fly off and explore the system and make it back to Timber Hearth with countless discoveries to share, physical proof included. You imagine finding Feldspar and the other lost travelers and bringing them home, uniting them all again. They can play around the same campfire for the first time in years, their combined song heard by all.
Over the edge of this crater, you see the sun begin to warp, and you know that fantasy is nothing but a dream.
Esker rocks forward in their chair, eyes wide as they watch the sun collapse. "What—" they start and can't continue, shocked into silence.
You close your eyes. The light of the supernova sears through your lids, and only fades after everything else does.
Void. Memories. Waking under a familiar sky.
Slate doesn't stop you when you head for the lift, this time. You wonder if they remember anything, if they know, somewhere deep in their subconscious, that this has already happened. Like a paper erased and written over, ghostly traces left behind. Do they feel the same unease as you do? Do they know about the growing separation between your mind and your body, the tiny whisper that tells you it's all pointless, you're stuck, doomed to die again and again until there's nothing left to kill and all that's left is an empty husk, going through the motions.
You need to find out why this is happening. How to stop it, if you can. There must be a way to fix this. You vow to find it, no matter what it takes.
(It's not like there are consequences anymore. If you do something wrong, all you have to do… is wait. You can start fresh as many times as it takes.)
The next time you die, it's not because of an imploding star. It's because of a stupid mistake, and you have just enough time before you slip back into that strange void to curse yourself.
It's one of the first lessens they hammer into you. Always put on your suit when you use your ship. Even if you're just going to another part of the same planet. Even if you're inside a hospitable atmosphere. You need to train your instincts, because you never know when you'll leave that livable space, and then where will you be?
Floating through space, choking from the lack of air, watching as your ship drifts away from you. Or you from it, but really, what's the difference? You don't have your suit, which means no propulsion, which means no getting back to your ship.
Your head feels light and like it's being squeezed in a vice. Your lungs scream for air. You wish you had the ability to speak right now, because there are many words you learned from Gossan that you'd like to use right now.
Your vision fades out from the edges, steadily encroaching. Pain fades from your body, and you are numb in this darkness.
It's empty for longer than you think is necessary. You take a moment to wonder when, exactly, you got used enough to this strange not-death to become annoyed with it.
Memories flash before your not-eyes, and you resolve to worry about it later.
The first breath you take when you awaken is desperate and deep, and the burn you feel in your lungs is only a phantom. You lay there, clutching at the edges of your sleeping bag, savoring the taste of oxygen on your tongue. You never knew before to treasure it; that this, too, was something that could be torn away from you without mercy.
Tears prick in the corner of your eyes, leftover from a time when they couldn't. You swipe at them roughly, and the movement draws the attention of your companion. Slate catches your eyes, worry plain on their face.
"Are you alright?" they ask, words softer than you've ever heard. You manage to suppress a laugh, knowing it would edge towards hysterical and knowing that no one has time to deal with that. You don't want to deal with it.
"Just a nightmare," you croak out. "I'll be fine."
"If you say so," Slate says doubtfully. You nod and stand, heading for the lift without making any further eye contact. You don't want to know how they might react to whatever emotion is swirling within yours.
Slate speaks up when you reach the lift. "Oh, hold on, you're going to need—"
"Already got ‘em," you cut them off, punching in the codes and griping the console when the lift raises. Was it always this jerky, or are you really this unsteady? Why? This isn't your first death.
Might be the worst, you think. You take a deep breath, just to make sure you can.
The worst so far, you correct yourself, and close your eyes in exasperation. Sometimes, you wish you could stop thinking. You know there are worse fates out there in this terrible system; you've learned about the sand pits on the Hourglass Twins, the volcanic moon of Brittle Hollow. Not to mention whatever's going on with Dark Bramble. It's statistically unlikely that you'll never fall victim to anything worse than suffocation. It doesn't mean you want to think about it.
You shake your head, pushing those thoughts away. They won't do you any good, so you won't think about it. Yes, you're going to die many more times. But you're also going to explore this system, and find the answers, and get out of this loop. That's what you're going to focus on.
It's actually easy to do, to your surprise.
You die again. You keep dying, either because of the supernova or because of an unavoidable danger on whichever planet you're on. (Some deaths were caused by silly mistakes, but you decide early on that beating yourself up over them just wastes time. You only have so much before you're sent back to your starting point. You can't afford to waste any of it.)
You lose track of how many times you've died. You tell yourself it doesn't matter, that because of the nature of this loop, technically you've never died at all, but it doesn't soothe you. You bury the ache instead; all the hurt and uncertainty and the tears you won't let yourself cry. You can't remember the last time you've slept, because meditation doesn't count and the night before your launch feels like a million years ago.
(You wonder, sometimes, how much time has eclipsed. Barely a day, if you ask anyone else.
You ask Gabbro about it once. They pause in their playing, gazing out at the tornados for a long, aching moment. "I don't know," they say. "It's hard to tell time, here, and it's harder to keep track when every loop feels the same. Between that and the meditation… I don't know. A while. An eternity. I don't like to think about it."
They go back to their flute and the song they play is the same as always, yet subtly different. It feels somber this time, somehow, and it makes something like grief well up inside you. Gabbro isn't meant to be morose. You hope they feel better soon, if they can.)
So yes, you die. A lot. But you learn so much more than you ever could have imagined, between those deaths. It's more than worth it. (It has to be.)
You gather your information. You read every scrap of writing left behind by this ancient species, building up an image of what, exactly, is happening. To you, to your solar system, to the universe in its entirety. You learn about what brought the Nomai here in the first place, what kept them here and everything they did in their attempts to reach their initial destination.
The Eye of the Universe. That mysterious focal point, older than the universe itself. Its starting point, perhaps. Its true north.
You watch the locator on the Attlerock spin indefinitely and remember a piece of trivia Hal told you once. A compass will continually spin if it's stuck in a magnetic loop, if it's too close to its north. You assume this tracker works similarly. They couldn't lock onto the Eye because it's too close. It's here.
You wonder how close the Nomai came to finding their precious Eye, and why they ultimately didn't. What stopped them when they were so close? What piece of information were they missing, and how can you possibly have any chance of finding it yourself? Their race was so much more advanced than yours. If they couldn't find the Eye, what hope do you have?
You sit on the edge of the Lunar Lookout and listen to the traveler's songs until the sun dies. Sometimes their tunes overlap, and the harmonies they weave are wonderful. You wish you could have heard them all play together, even once.
(You run from the solar system, once, and you get that chance. As you drift in the far reaches, you listen to their combined melody and finally allow yourself to cry. For them, for your star, for yourself. For all the other stars you see fading out of the fabric of space, until only a score remain. You do not know how much time is left for them, or if there's any time left at all. Have they already burnt out, wherever they rest, and it's only the last of their traveling light that you can see? Is your star the last to go, the final grain in the hourglass?
You don't know. You feel like you are close to finding out. You feel like the answer to this mystery will break your heart.
For now, you try not to worry about it. You listen to the other astronauts (to your friends) play their song until they can no more. And then you wake up, and you head out again.)
The last time you die in the loop, you don't realize it's the last. Why would you? You never know you've done something for the last time until it's over and past, and you look back and realize: that was it.
You've found the Ash Twin Project. The Nomai masks stare down at you, three lit, five dark. You wonder where the other statues are. You hope they never have the chance to trap another like they've trapped you and Gabbro.
You translate the text on the wall. They speak of the Sun Station, and their failure. They speak of a new challenge. The final message here feels too short. Surely they would have written down their findings. Surely they had a chance to look into the comet, to study it like they have everything else in this system.
You feel a prickle of unease, and you go to find the comet. Your last project before you attempt to fit all the puzzle pieces together. Presumably, their last project as well. You wonder what could have stopped them from going beyond this.
You soon find out.
You have noticed the bones scattered across the system, left on every planet like abandoned dolls. Bodies found at tables and desks, slumped in chairs or crumpled to the ground. You have met Solanum and seen her body laying on multiple quantum surfaces. You know something must have happened to them, some catastrophe that caused such a sudden end.
You land on the Interloper and slip inside once the ice has thawed. You know that it freezes above you while you're inside the caves. You know that you won't be able to make it out before the cycle resets. By now, you are accustomed to the inevitability and impermanence of your death. It's even helpful, in cases like this. Ember Twin has been your grave many times over.
Your scanner warns you about the presence of ghost matter the second you slide into the first large chamber. Fear clenches your heart for one awful moment before you realize that you're fine. You haven't gotten too close. You take a picture.
The chamber you stand in is clear of the ghostly aurora, but one of the tunnels glows with a patch further down. You avoid it and listen to the log left beside one of the safe passages. The Nomai's strange language is no less odd to hear for all the times you've encountered it. Your translator provides more helpful subtitles, and you read the story of Pye and Poke and Clary. Their last story, as you discover later on.
It feels… anticlimactic, somehow, for this to be what killed this enigmatic race. Foreign matter under too much pressure, a ticking time bomb from the moment it entered your solar system. A countdown that finished before Poke ever got a chance to warn anyone, before she could even leave this icy prison.
This is what wiped out the Nomai. This is the reason why there are random pockets of hostile gas lurking on every planet in the system. Your species only survived because of luck. Ghost matter cannot pass through water, and thousands of years ago, when this gas spilled forth and blanketed the planets, your ancestors retreated into those shielding depths. And so they survived, and so you survived.
You will not survive this encounter, though. Trapped within this rock, you don't know how far the supernova has progressed. You don't know how thick the ice has become, if it is enough to keep you down here or if you can still break free. Not that you have much of a chance of leaving. At the heart of the comet, you take photos of all the tunnel entrances. Before, you could only see the barest glimpse of sickly green from this sort of distance. Now, the gas has expanded. Every path is blocked.
You direct yourself through the crevasse above the crystal core. You stare, hypnotized, at the pit which your scanner shows is full to the brim with invisible death.
You haven't died by ghost matter yet. You wonder what that feels like.
(Excruciating.
You feel like your entire being is being torn apart, your skin flayed and your blood boiled. Your vision warps, blue and green and every other color imaginable twisting together, blurring as your eyes melt in their sockets.
You do not feel this for long. Ghost matter causes a painful death, but not a long one.)
The next time you wake, you are resolved. You have the pieces. You know what the Nomai hoped to accomplish, and you have the power to finish what they started.
You take the warp core out of the Ash Twin Project, off the planet entirely, and all the while your heart beats in your throat. This is it. If you die, now, before you have a chance to finish this—that's it. There is no net to catch you if you fail.
You've become so used to death, to the certainty of waking afterwards. You used to fear it, at the start. Now it is nothing more than routine.
It's terrifying, the thought of permanent death. You have lived without consequence for years within this day. To be faced with them for the first time in forever is overwhelming, and you feel truly fragile. It is so easy to die.
You fly into the Dark Bramble, and you hold your breath as you drift slowly forward. The first time you came here, you died within the belly of one of these beasts. The anglerfish, so much larger and more terrifying than the baby on display at the observatory. They slumber beside you as you make your way through the maze of this place, and they are blind but that has never made them harmless. Too much noise, any contact, and you will be done for.
You are on a time limit, now. But you cannot make yourself rush, because that is the road to failure.
You make it, somehow, directing your ship towards the nucleus of this parasitic plant and then past it to the one seed without a beacon. Inside, the Vessel lays dormant and trapped. It is a grave and it is your only hope.
You replace the warp core. You input the coordinates. And then, you are there.
The Eye is astounding. So much like the phantom moon and yet vastly different, shrouded in darkness where it lays far beyond the light of any sun. Flashes of lightning illuminate the cloud layer, shifting purples and blues. You are caught, for just a moment, by the terrible beauty of it.
But you are racing against time, and so you must push forward.
You step into the black hole the Vessel generates and you are flung away. You land without a stumble on the surface of this enigmatic planet.
You can see the swirling, marbled texture of the ground in the strange dark light of the eternal storm. Gravity keeps you rooted to the surface, so much stronger than any you've encountered before. It takes all of your power just to place one foot in front of the other. You cannot run. You cannot fly.
You have a deadline. But time feels distant from this place, meaningless. You will reach your destination. It will take the exact amount of time it needs to. There is no need to worry.
This is the ending of it all. Everything is as it should be.
You stop on the edge of the grand crater, edges curling towards the sky and the crackling singularity above it. You take a step, and gravity shifts to welcome you, holding you steady. You walk, and soon the abyss is below you. Waiting.
You take the plunge.
When your mind is once again capable of understanding the world around you, you find yourself… back at the observatory. But it is not the observatory you know: it is dark and silent and changed. The writing on the museum labels is different, unrecognizable in a disconcerting way. It looks like your own writing, and it looks like none you've ever seen. Each letter is careful, identical to each like it. It is printer perfect and it sets your teeth on edge.
It speaks about you, as if the writer has seen all you have done and accomplished during your impossible journey. All you have discovered is documented, labels updated even though you have never spoken any of this aloud.
The anglerfish is nothing more than a pile of bones in its tank and you do not miss it.
Of all the lifeforms who will perish in the oncoming death of the universe…
You know it is inevitable, that the death of your sun and all the stars in the sky is not something you have any hope of preventing, but to see it so plainly written… It hurts, squeezing your heart. The universe itself is dying, and you cannot escape it. That is just the way it is.
You ascend to the second floor of the observatory. Waiting for you is your solar system's planetary model, but it too has changed. Now, a galaxy swirls in miniature, millions upon millions of stars no larger than a speck of dust blazing in their prime. It is adorable, and it is achingly beautiful.
You reach for it. You fall into it.
You are somewhere else, again. A forest, grand trees that reach ever upwards into the void, lit only by innumerable galaxies. As you walk among them, you watch as they all burn out. One, and then another; slowly, mournfully, they all ignite and dissipate into nothing.
Soon, the only light is that from your flashlight. You turn it off, and you drift.
You do not know how long you exist in that moment, but your trance is broken by a muted beep from your suit. Unidentified signal nearby. You equip your signalscope, and you walk towards the sound of another's breathing.
It is you, mirrored and not, and when you stop, they do as well. You cannot see through your visor from the outside, and yet you know that they watch you with the same vague curiosity as you watch them. Slowly, you reach for your flashlight and watch them do the same. You both turn off your lights.
When you turn it on again, you see a tree. Click, and it is younger, smaller. Click, and it is a sapling. Click, and you find yourself in front of a campfire, waiting to be lit. You have never carried an ignition source so close to a tank of pure oxygen, and yet the fire lights with no issue.
When you look beside you, Esker looks back.
"Do you hear music?" they ask, and you do.
You follow the trails to your fellow travelers, collecting their instruments and speaking with each of them. Gabbro audibly smiles at you when you approach where they lounge.
"Getting the band back together, huh? We're almost all here. There's just one left."
You look around the group, Esker, Riebeck, Chert, Feldspar. All the Hearthians you've met off-planet, all your friends. The group as you knew it is complete, and yet… there is someone missing. You can feel it, now that you know to look. You have a guess as to who it is. You look back to Gabbro, and they gesture towards the woods. "Go on, go find her."
Her—Solanum. At the thought, you can hear it, the lilting tones of a piano, similar to the traveler's song and yet compatibly different. This melody is new to her, but she has put her heart into it, all of her curiosity and love for this world.
You welcome her into the fold.
"I am glad you remembered me," she says, voice light and shy.
"I'm glad you're here," you say, and you know that everyone feels the same. You are the only one to have met her in person, but here, in this otherworldly place, she is known just as all the others are known.
They begin to play.
You remember your first time on the Attlerock, the abandoned hope you had for a ideal future. All of the travelers together for the first time in years, playing together for all to hear.
You gave up on that dream, watching the supernova expand. But here you all are, playing at the heart of the universe, their melodies swirling together to give birth to endless possibilities. Your mind cannot comprehend the breadth of that infinity, but you know that it is magnificent.
The song fades, and you are left with a choice. There is only one, really, but you could just stay here instead of taking that final step. You can stay, and let this place without time be your last eternity.
You speak with all your friends. They are mere echoes now, but they carry the same sentiments they would in a realer world. They reminisce about the past that brought them to this point. They hope for a wondrous future, whatever that may be.
Solanum tilts her head at you when you reach her at last. "I believe we've reached the end of our journey," she says, and she turns her gaze upon the future. "Are you ready to learn what comes next?"
You hesitate, and she lays a gentle hand on your shoulder. You can barely feel it, but the warmth of her compassion soaks down to your bones. "It's tempting to linger in this moment, where every possibility still exists," she says, "but unless they are collapsed by an observer, they will never be more than possibilities."
"You're right," you say softly. You look at that smoky globe, the shadows ever shifting. The future is whatever you make of it, but none of it is real. Not yet. Not until you reach out and allow it to be, however it will.
Your friends are all with you. They are all waiting, ready for whatever comes next.
It is time for something new.
You reach out, and the universe forms around you.