The Cosmic Chronicle

On stardate 4422.33, the faded banners above the cold, gaping wound of the Rift of Rahma pulse with uneasy light. Hala-Core, master of border protocols and iron-clad certainty, has officially decreed The Expulsion of the Breath Domes. The Frontier Watch of Pneuma Symbiosis-the last of the defiant healers and oxygen vagabonds-have mere rotations to dismantle their spherical bastions. Any who refuse will be forced into the harsh glare of surveillance drones, with no hope for mercy or extension.

The official justification from Archlord Vantor resounds as lines of platinum directives in an empty datafield: the Watch refuses to submit a full register of biomimetic identities. Without these dossiers, says Hala-Core, the infiltration of operatives from the Order of the Flame Sons (and similar organizations) cannot be prevented. Direct evidence remains suspiciously elusive, evaporating into the haze of bureaucracy. “We know the Breath Domes shelter flamebearers,” intoned Vantor in his maddeningly sterile code. “Those who keep closed registers will have their access to air and light revoked.”

The Watch, speaking through diffuse collectives and hovering sterilization cells, asserts they never knowingly employ beings who threaten the Rift’s fragile balance. They maintain that revealing personnel would expose their staff to the cold fist of repression. Repeated requests for guarantees from Hala-Core about data use have looped endlessly against a wall of holographic red tape.

Now, as the Breath Domes depart, the Rift is left gasping: nearly a third of all oxygen and water purification and countless basic care services-vital yet perpetually at risk-are vanishing into the bureaucratic fog. Since the last tempest, at least fifteen Watch members have perished in shadow skirmishes and Rift entropy. As the remaining survival cells prepare to flee, unease grows that the vacuum they leave will not merely cause shortness of breath, but might silence the Rift forever.