In a fractured world ravaged by war and ancient forces, Rake, a determined scavenger, and Bastia, a fierce leader, as they navigate the remnants of Earth, now known as Urath. The planet, once teeming with life, is now a wasteland ruled by corrupt Agrilords. In the midst of chaos, Rake uncovers powerful, dangerous knowledge left behind by the Ancestors—an ancient race with psychic abilities that could shift the balance of power on Urath. As Rake and Bastia's journey unfolds, they form unlikely alliances to survive and fight back against the forces threatening their survival, but when a darker threat emerges, the stakes rise. Nefer Thul, a ruthless leader determined to use the Ancestors' powers, forces Rake and his allies into a battle that could either save or doom humanity. "Evolution Earth: The Ancestor" is a gripping tale of survival, redemption, and the cost of leadership. Can humanity overcome the darkness of its past, or will it be consumed by the very powers it seeks to control?
In a fractured world ravaged by war and ancient forces, Rake, a determined scavenger, and Bastia, a fierce leader, as they navigate the remnants of Earth, now known as Urath. The planet, once teeming with life, is now a wasteland ruled by corrupt Agrilords. In the midst of chaos, Rake uncovers powerful, dangerous knowledge left behind by the Ancestors—an ancient race with psychic abilities that could shift the balance of power on Urath. As Rake and Bastia's journey unfolds, they form unlikely alliances to survive and fight back against the forces threatening their survival, but when a darker threat emerges, the stakes rise. Nefer Thul, a ruthless leader determined to use the Ancestors' powers, forces Rake and his allies into a battle that could either save or doom humanity. "Evolution Earth: The Ancestor" is a gripping tale of survival, redemption, and the cost of leadership. Can humanity overcome the darkness of its past, or will it be consumed by the very powers it seeks to control?
Prologue
Tula - The Stargazer's Descent
The Indriya’s Grace hummed with a low, steady vibration, a rhythmic pulse that seemed almost alive. Tula Stargazer, Maha Sultana of Eurindia, stood at the central console of the command chamber, her golden robes glinting under the ambient glow of holographic displays. Around her, the crew moved with quiet efficiency, their precise movements reflecting the disciplined harmony she had cultivated in her leadership. The tension in the air was palpable as the ship approached its destination—Proxima Domitaura, the crown jewel of Domitauri civilization and the nexus of her life’s greatest mission.
Tula glanced at her reflection in the polished console. The face staring back was serene, but her thoughts churned like a storm. She wasn’t just a diplomat here to broker peace; she was Earth’s last hope to prevent annihilation. Her psypathic abilities, a gift and a curse, hummed faintly in her mind, their dormant power coiled like a serpent waiting to strike. This must succeed, she thought. It’s not just for Earth; it’s for the stars.
“Status report, Commander Draykar,” she said, her tone calm yet firm.
Commander Draykar, broad-shouldered and sharp-eyed, turned from his console. “All systems operational, Sultana. The Domitauri envoy has confirmed their readiness to receive us. No anomalies detected.”
Tula nodded, but her unease deepened. Her psypathic intuition tickled the edge of her consciousness. The Domitauri were known for their precision; nothing about this mission could afford to go wrong. She had to trust her instincts but remain grounded. “Excellent. Let’s proceed with caution. This treaty is our only chance to unite Earth against any larger galactic threats.”
Draykar hesitated, his expression grave. “Your psypathic insights have guided us this far, Sultana. But… there’s something about the timing of all this. It feels too convenient.”
Tula met his gaze, her voice lowering. “I share your concerns, Commander. Let’s remain vigilant.”
As she spoke, the stars outside the viewport stretched endlessly, a tapestry of light against the infinite void. To Tula, the sight was a reminder of Earth’s fragility. Her people, united under Eurindia, had come so far, but their survival now depended on a delicate balance of diplomacy and resolve. She couldn’t afford to fail.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
An alarm blared, slicing through the calm. The ship jolted violently, throwing crew members off their feet.
“Report!” Tula barked, gripping the console to steady herself.
“Explosion in the engine core!” a frantic engineer shouted. “Primary thrusters offline. We’re losing stability!”
Tula’s mind raced. This wasn’t a random malfunction. The timing was too precise, the failure too catastrophic. Sabotage.
“Seal off the core,” she commanded. “Redirect all power to stabilizers. Draykar, get me damage assessments.”
Draykar’s voice was tight. “Sultana, we’re being pulled into a gravity well. Proxima’s outer debris field is drawing us in.”
The viewport filled with a kaleidoscope of flashing debris, a deadly dance of fractured asteroids and ancient wreckage. Sparks flew from overloaded panels, the air thick with the acrid smell of burning circuits.
“Evacuate non-essential personnel to cryostasis chambers,” Tula ordered, her voice steady despite the chaos. Turning to Draykar, she added, “This wasn’t an accident. Someone aboard this ship didn’t want us to succeed.”
Draykar’s face darkened. “The Domitauri wouldn’t…”
“No,” Tula interrupted. “This came from within.”
The ship shuddered again, the deck pitching violently. Tula steadied herself, her mind already calculating contingencies. She had trained for moments like this, but the stakes had never been higher.
“Sultana!” a junior officer cried. “Cryostasis is our only chance. The structural integrity won’t hold much longer.”
Tula’s stomach twisted. She had come so close to securing the treaty, so close to uniting Earth.
Now, it was slipping through her fingers. She clenched her jaw. There was no room for despair.
“All personnel, into stasis,” she commanded. “Secure all mission data in my pod. If even fragments survive, Earth must have them.”
Draykar hesitated, his loyalty etched in his expression. “And you, Sultana?”
“I’ll make sure the crew is safe first,” she replied. “Go.”
The cryostasis chamber was a hive of activity. Engineers worked frantically to load vital data into the pods, their faces pale with fear. Tula supervised, her presence a steadying force amidst the chaos. As the ship groaned beneath them, she caught the gaze of her crew.
“We will return,” she said, her voice steady. “And whoever did this will answer for it.”
The pods hissed open, one after another. Tula hesitated only long enough to ensure her crew’s safety before stepping into her own. As the hatch sealed over her, she allowed herself a final thought of determination.
We will rebuild. And I will find the traitor who tried to tear us apart.
Moments later, the Indriya’s Grace shattered in the debris field, its remains scattering into the void. But the cryostasis pods hurtled toward Earth, fragile beacons of hope in the vast darkness of space. Somewhere in the echo chambers of time and distance, Tula’s journey was far from over.
The Psykopalypse
The sky above Earth fractured like shattered obsidian, cascading shards of light into a world already consumed by chaos. The war, spanning decades, had culminated in this moment of grotesque brilliance—a kaleidoscope of annihilation brought by desperation and hubris. On one side, Earth’s coalition, clinging to survival; on the other, the Domitauri, their civilization a Proxima-born titan of PsyKi mastery and quantum engineering.
As the final assault began, Commander Aileena Graves stood on the observation deck of the Cataclysmus, Earth's orbital flagship. Below her, the blue-green planet writhed under the siege of Domitauri's Psykoplasm—a psychic plasmatic force that dissolved organic and inorganic matter alike, leaving behind shimmering, translucent wastelands.
Aileena’s breath hitched as the holographic feed flickered, projecting the devastation across continents. Entire cities liquefied under the Domitauri assault, their structures warping and melting into iridescent pools. Yet it wasn’t the destruction itself that rattled her—it was the faint screams embedded within the Psykoplasm's shimmering glow, echoes of minds unraveling into pure thought before being snuffed out entirely.
"This is madness," muttered Dr. Elias Tark, the Cataclysmus’ chief scientist, his voice brittle. "We’ve crossed the event horizon."
"No," Aileena replied, her jaw set like iron. "We’ve stepped into hell. And we’re taking them with us."
The Cataclyst was Earth's final gambit—a weapon of unparalleled destructive capability forged from the fractured remnants of an alien technology, scavenged in desperate hope. A quantum tether would link its payload to Proxima Domitauri’s sun, creating an energy collapse designed to devastate the enemy fleet while sparing Earth. That was the plan, at least.
"Initiating tether sequence," the ship's AI intoned, its voice devoid of emotion. The room trembled as the Cataclyst began its countdown.
In the war's final moments, a Domitauri countermeasure struck. A shockwave of PsyKi energy—a weaponized disruption of the quantum and PsyKi fields—slammed into Earth and its orbit. For an instant, reality itself unraveled. The tether snapped. The Cataclyst, untethered and unleashed, merged with the Psykoplasm in a collision of physics and thought that defied understanding.
Far below, on the charred outskirts of Berlin, Sergeant Keira Malach stared into the roiling sky. The Domitauri craft hung there, monolithic and grotesque, emanating a dull psychic hum that resonated in her skull. Her squad was gone, consumed by the first Psykoplasm wave. She couldn’t even remember their faces anymore, only the anguish in their eyes as their bodies dissolved, their thoughts spilling into the aether.
She crouched behind a jagged pillar of steel—what had once been part of a monument—and clutched her rifle. It was a relic now, useless against an enemy who didn’t bleed. The air burned with ozone and a metallic taste that clung to her tongue.
When the Cataclyst detonated, Keira witnessed the birth of the Cataclysm.
The sky collapsed inward, folding into itself like paper consumed by fire. Colors she couldn’t name erupted, painting the horizon in hues that seared her retinas. A deafening silence descended—a void of sound so complete it crushed her thoughts. The ground beneath her fractured, splitting into jagged chasms that bled molten light.
Then came the wind.
Not air, but a torrent of energy, tearing through the remnants of Berlin. Keira felt her body lift as the world itself was unmade, the boundaries between solid and void, life and death, dissolving. Her last coherent thought wasn’t fear but sorrow—a fleeting regret for the child she’d left behind in another city, another life.
The Cataclysm didn’t merely destroy; it remade. Earth’s surface became an amalgam of chaos, its tectonic plates warped into a patchwork of jagged wastelands and shimmering lakes of PsyKi residue. The sky became a haze of perpetual twilight, its color oscillating between blood-red and deep indigo.
The Domitauri fared no better. Proxima’s once-thriving world was reduced to a hollow shell, its people consumed by the very energies they had sought to command.
On Earth, the survivors emerged to find a world unrecognizable. Urath, they called it now—a bastardization of what it once was. The Crypts and the Scar dominated the landscape, remnants of shattered ecosystems twisted into grotesque parodies of life.
But amidst the wreckage, fragments of Ancestor technology remained—glimmers of hope or doom, depending on who wielded them.
Centuries passed. Stories of the Cataclysm faded into myths, and the names Aileena Graves and Keira Malach became footnotes in a history written by the survivors; mutants and humans. The Ancestors’ legacy, however, endured—hidden in the depths of the Crypts, waiting to be rediscovered.
Yet one truth persisted: the Psykopalypse was not the end. It was merely the prologue to a world where the echoes of the past shaped the battles of the future.
And in the shadows of Urath, the scars of the Cataclysm whispered still.
If you're looking for your next sci-fi fix, something that brings together the raw, high-wire tension of Mad Max and the lost-world secrets and Dune-sized scope of Dune, then you need to set everything else aside and read Evolution Earth: Ancestor by Gregory Warren Burgess.
We are first dropped into Urath, a post-war, post-time-battered version of Earth. No leafy forests or teeming cities here: there's only desolation, scavenged technology, and tyrannical leaders known as Agrilords who hold all the power.
Our guides in this bad world are Rake, a scavenger who cares more for his next meal than saving the world, and Bastia, a natural leader struggling to keep her people alive at all costs. Rake is not your typical chosen-one hero from the start; he's a survivor who stumbles into something huge—ancient, dangerous information from psychic people named the Ancestors. His journey from scraping by to burdened with the weight of humanity's future is well-deserved and gripping. Bastia is the perfect foil—gruff, no-nonsense, and burdened with the weight of responsibility.
But a cool world without a compelling plot is nothing, and the Ancestors' mystery is the actual catalyst here. The concept of a lost psychic race is amazing, and Burgess does not simply employ it as a magic system; it's an unimaginable source of power that everybody desperately wants to command. Here is where the story really happens.
And then there is the big bad, Nefer Thul. He's no mustache-twirling villain; he's actually a scary threat because his reasons are clear. He sees the Ancestor power as a tool by which to bring his own order to Urathian disorder and is cold-blooded enough to be a good and actually scary villain. When he makes his entrance, the stakes, already through the roof, go all the way into the stratosphere.
What I liked best was that the book is at a great speed. It's action-packed, suspenseful showdowns and plot twists, but it never forgets to build its world and develop its characters.
Final Verdict
Evolution Earth: Ancestor is a fantastic start to what is bound to be an epic series. It's imaginative, action-packed, and packed with characters you'll be rooting for. It has you questioning gigantic themes about power and atonement long after the final page has been turned, and most crucially, it has you desperately wanting to read just a teensy bit more of it. Highly, highly recommended.