Chronicles of the Prison Star

Have you ever, in a fleeting moment, felt for no apparent reason that you don't belong here?

Perhaps that feeling isn't baseless.

Long, long ago, Earth was a hidden prison in the universe. The Serpent Brotherhood guarded an invisible web called AQERT. At the moment of death, a person's entire past was torn away and replaced with a fabricated set of memories, forcing their soul to be reborn over and over again. Wars, conflicts, and clashing beliefs were exactly what the jailers wanted. As long as people fought among themselves, they would never realize that they were all prisoners.

An expeditionary force from the same territory crossed the vast sea of stars to rescue three thousand captured comrades. But the base in the Himalayas fell in a single night, and the star warriors were cast down to the mortal world. Emperors who wielded power sank into the temptations of illusion. A handful of clear-minded sages glimpsed the truth, but only a few could break free of the cycle of reincarnation. A crash at Roswell bound two souls together in a silent vigil lasting sixty-two years.

Hope rose again and again, only to be erased each time. The outside rescuers' strength would eventually run out. In 2050, the expeditionary fleet prepared to leave, while a terrifying cleansing plan entered its final countdown.

The Keykeeper was a prisoner reborn again and again across thirty thousand years of reincarnation. He had been a stonemason in the Stone Age, a court historian scraping by in the cracks between powers, and finally a modern scholar investigating the mysteries of memory. In life after life, he watched countless awakenings come to nothing.

Slowly, he understood: no one could pry this prison open from the outside.

The moment the fleet turned to leave, the real resistance had only just begun. It would rely not on guns and warships, but on countless souls remembering who they truly were.