I.    

The sky had been dead for centuries.

A few old textbooks detailed accounts of how humanity tried to reach out to the stars, of how they attempted to walk among them. For the first fifty years or so, the galactic exploration of the human race worked to their advantage. Nothing seemed able to stop them. Then, right as they were on the verge of discovering a planet similar to Earth—a planet that might have even supported its own life forms—the sky went dark, and the planet shook with humanity’s fear.

It wasn’t until years later that we realized the stars were never coming back.