Red Giant -

And somewhere, in a galaxy far away, a sensor on an asteroid station picked up a faint, garbled signal. It was a lullaby, half-static, sung in a language no one there spoke. But the melody—the melody was beautiful.

“We have eighteen months,” her AI companion, Solace, announced one morning. Its voice was calm, as always. “After that, the planet’s surface temperature will exceed the tolerance of the cooling systems.”

A pause. Then: “That is the transit of Venus. Its orbit has decayed. It will impact Helios in approximately three months.” Red Giant

The final transmission ended. The ceiling of the Archive groaned and split. Elara looked up one last time, through the widening gap, and saw Helios fill the entire sky. Its light was no longer red. It was white, then blue, then a brilliance beyond color.

“Solace,” she said. “What will remember us?” And somewhere, in a galaxy far away, a

Elara sat down on the salt. The crust cracked beneath her weight. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she laughed—a dry, brittle sound.

“We always knew,” she whispered. “We just thought we’d have more time.” “We have eighteen months,” her AI companion, Solace,

In the final years of Helios, the sky turned the color of rust. The star that had nurtured humanity for four billion years was dying, swollen into a red giant whose surface lapped at the orbit of a long-vanished Mercury.