Three Thousand Dead: Chronicles of the Prison Planet

Few people ever stop to consider that the land beneath our feet may not be a cradle of life at all, but an interstellar prison where souls are exiled.

Thirty thousand years ago, the Brotherhood of the Serpent laid an invisible net called AQERT. Death is never the end. Immortal beings who should have been free to travel the sea of stars are shocked until all their memories are erased, stuffed into fabricated dreams, then cast back into the mortal world to be reborn. Those vast and inscrutable ancient ruins, those age-old teachings twisted beyond recognition, are nothing more than masks the jailers use to conceal the truth.

An expeditionary force from a distant star system, belonging to the same dominion, has traveled far to retrieve three thousand of its people trapped in the prison. But the years roll over mountains and rivers. Hope rises with each rescue attempt, only to collapse again and again. Soldiers, kings, and sages all plunge headlong into the whirlpool of reincarnation.

One soul, through countless cycles of rebirth, clings desperately to a tiny ember of memory that refuses to go out. Later generations call him the Keeper of the Key. He carved the crevices of pyramids, lived through the fall of dynasties, witnessed a prophet's confusion, and heard the private words of souls that crossed sixty-two years after a modern spacecraft crashed.

At last, he understood: true escape would never come as charity from an alien fleet.

As the expeditionary force resolves to withdraw, the shadow of planetary cleansing slowly spreads across the world. The key to unlocking the prison lies hidden in the forgotten depths of every person's heart.

*Note: This is a fictional alternate-history science fiction work. Its depictions of ancient history and religion exist solely to serve the worldbuilding and have no connection to reality.*