Alkaid was not a friendly place.

There was no gentle afternoon sun to tickle the skin, no birds chirping to turn a smile, no soft breezes to brush through the hair. There was only a burning red glow cast down from a corrupted star as it loomed permanently overhead, never rising or setting, washing one side of the planet in a constant blaze of heat as flares reached out like a reaper’s fingers. The core of the planet burned brightly in return, blazing between the ragged cracks marring the entire surface.

For a human, it would have been almost unbearable.

For the Negaverse, it would have been uncomfortable.

For Alkaid, it simply was.

The days bled together for the Ascendant-General until she forgot how long she’d lived in voluntary exile. With no way to count the days and no need to sleep or eat, she simply existed. In the beginning it had been painful to leave behind those she loved and the planet she had always called home, but as the days passed and the distance grew, that pain had lessened until it no longer existed. Alkaid was no longer Kaia Delaney, with her human ties and wants and needs. She was an Ascendant General, she had a duty to her General Queen and to the people of Earth - a duty that was growing more and more important every day.

From time to time she could feel them, blips of energy that stuck out like a sore thumb on her planet. Negaversers, DMC, youma. She felt them, but she remained secluded. She was a wraith that hovered on the edge of the vision, the ghost bound to her most prized possession. She worked in silence and seclusion, except for those few, rare moments when someone sought her out. Tanzanite, Azurite, others. They came and went as the only things that broke the monotony of her existence. Yet she had never reached out as they disappeared, never stared after them with longing or hope. With her absence from Earth, her humanity began to seep away, like it was trickling right through the cracks in her skin.

And when her opportunity to return home finally came there was no celebration, no relief, only.. questions.

As the dull thud of heels against the charred ground faded into the distance, leaving nothing but a few fallen feathers and a voice echoing in her head, Alkaid looked up to the bleeding sky above her. Her bright eyes burned as she channeled power, almost mindlessly, through herself and into the crystal hovering between her open palms. The crystals, the planet, her order – that had been her life for so long that she’d almost lost her sense of time entirely.

But now? Now she could go home.

As she stared up into the burning sun above her, Alkaid sought the answer from a dying power. There was no voice from her star, no hum, no comfort. It was a silent ghost, haunting the sky as surely as she haunted the remains of what had once been a thriving planet. With only the slightest of creases marring her brow, she dropped her eyes and settled them on the crystal. It hummed in her hands, filled to capacity, ready to add to the collection. A collection that was temporarily sufficient. Sufficient, as in, she had been temporarily relieved and summoned back to Earth for other duties.

The idea seemed so foreign.

Earth, which had once been her home, now felt like an alien concept. Would it all be the same? The people, the shops, all the things with which she had once been familiar? The only sight she had come to be familiar with in the passing time was the burning sun and her desolated planet. Life seemed almost impossible.

In her seclusion she had fully come to understand the sacrifice she had made. She hadn’t just broken a chain of rebirth, destroyed a star, and made herself into a b*****d hybrid. No, she had given up all the things that made her human and without others around to remind her of what she had once been, she was losing the ability to work from her memories. She was becoming something less, something subhuman, and even her apathy to that idea was a warning sign in her head.

Her eyes narrowed on the crystal in her hands, staring into the gleaming depths as if it were a crystal ball. It was a crystal ball with no answers, just her own thoughts reflected back at her. She knew where her path lead if she chose to remain secluded. She would lose her humanity all together and die a reckless, senseless death. That single thought, of dying uselessly and before she had served her purpose, brought on an unexpected twang of regret. It picked at her heart and made her frown even deeper, until she at last had to pull her eyes away from the crystal.

Regret was a feeling. A weak one, at best, but a feeling. If she could feel regret, there was hope that she could still be human. She could still be Kaia. Though that revelation should have made her smile, it didn’t. It only made her decision for her.

As she glanced back up at the sun one last time, her eyes burned with a fire to match it. A bright glow started in her eyes and trickled down through the cracks in her skin until they were alive like trails of lava, casting a dim glow around her. At the height of the glow, a very faint smirk tugged at once corner of her lips, and she winked out of existence.

It was time to go.. home.