Project MENA: Eterna Series Book 1

CHAPTER 1

12 February, 2232 AD

Somewhere Outside the galaxy

Kairon de Walton Fredrikson—Kai, to the few who had ever mattered: questioned his own audacity at the moment. His pale hands guided the Ghostwing’ the spacecraft, through billions of asteroids and drifting debris. From the outside, it might’ve seemed effortless.. Inside, however, Kai was anything but at ease. Was it necessary? Would running away solve the problem, he asked himself.

Trying to calm himself with a slow breath, he switched the ship to power saving mode. It was going to be a long journey, and energy conservation was crucial.

He uncurled his fingers from the controls, got up from the pilot’s seat, and made his way to the ‘Sleeping Chamber’: his own design.

The chamber was compact, lined with blue lights. Familiar. Steady. The door hissed shut behind him as he stepped inside. Shrugging off his jacket, he tossed it onto the hook and slid into the pod.

Thin mattress, cramped space; none of it mattered. He stared at the curved ceiling, muscles slowly easing even though his mind refused to still. The sleeping fuel crept into his veins, cold and subtle, numbing his senses, dragging him under. But just as the darkness took hold, a memory surfaced: sharp, unrelenting, sudden.

"Will you come with me if I ever have to run for my life?" His voice had been quiet, almost hesitant. They’d been lying together, her head on his chest, her fingers laced through his. Warmth. Steady breathing.

The only thing in the world that had ever felt real. "If you ask me nicely, well then yes," she had murmured, smiling that infuriatingly soft, knowing smile. The kind that made him forget everything else.

The memory was so vivid he could almost feel her there, could almost reach out and—No. Gone. Just like everything else. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be running. He should be fighting. Against what, he wasn’t even sure anymore. But this; this cold, endless nothing wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

The weight of it pressed down on him. Humanity. The word felt distant now. Had he abandoned it, or had it abandoned him? He had spent his whole life trying to fix a broken world, clawing at the edges of something that was never meant to be whole. And now, as he drifted further into space, the last remnants of that world faded behind him.

Maybe this was always meant to happen. His jaw tightened. He willed his body to move, to resist, to fight against the drug’s pull. Too late. The sedative had him in its grip, and his limbs refused to obey. The ship glided forward, engines murmuring as it carried him farther and farther from home.

Eterna shrank behind him, a pale blue dot swallowed by the endless dark. The people he had left behind: her, his friends, everyone who had ever trusted him; slipped further away with every passing second. And as the void closed in, a single thought burned through the haze, sharp and unrelenting.

This isn’t over.