Raan Losti

Raan Losti was upon us: a time of great change, our Elders called it.

They said it in hushed tones around the glowpits, their wrinkled faces lit by flecks of emberlight that danced like nervous fireflies. They had seen two Raan Losti cycles before—both marked by upheaval, war, dissolutions of worlds and the births of new ones. But this one felt different. Heavier. As if the whole sky trembled beneath something unseen.

I did not believe in ancient omens then. I was a cartographer, a star-mapper for the Ascendant Fleet, and numbers had always spoken louder to me than prophecy. But that was before the lights began changing in the northern sky, streaks of ultraviolet fire that pulsed in perfect rhythm with the beat of my heart. Before the Nullwave rippled across the Kepler Expanse and turned our comm networks into grieving silence. Before the thing we discovered in the dust ruins of Serephon started whispering my name.

Before I realized that Raan Losti was not a cosmic season.

It was a calling.

—

The trouble started twelve days into the mission. Our ship—The Farstar—was only a mid-tier scout vessel, built for reconnaissance, not conflict. We were a small crew: Captain Shira Devran, stoic and sharp-eyed; Fennik Hal, our engineer and constant voice of sarcasm; Maro, our medic-savant who spoke too softly for his own good; and me—Lysa Ravel, cartographer, stellar surveyor, person-who-kept-to-herself because starmaps didn’t argue back.

“Approaching Serephon’s outer orbit,” Captain Devran announced that morning. “Sensors picking up anomalous readings. Gravity wells forming and collapsing like they can’t make up their minds.”

“That’s comforting,” Fennik muttered from his console. “Because when gravity can’t decide what to do, everything else just goes great.”

I scanned the readings over his shoulder. “They’re rhythmic. Too consistent to be random. Almost like…”

“A message?” the captain finished.

I nodded. “But structured through gravity flux instead of radio waves.”

Fennik sucked air between his teeth. “So someone out there is using spacetime itself as a telegraph. Fantastic. Nothing creepy about that.”

We descended toward Serephon. The planet had once been a jewel in the Kepler system—lush with sapphire forests and floating mountains. But five generations ago, something had scorched it black. No survivors. No known cause.

What we found waiting for us on the surface made even less sense.

—

The ruins were enormous: cyclopean arches half-melted and reformed as if someone had sculpted them with fire hotter than suns. The air pulsed with violet haze. And all across the broken city, geometric glyphs glimmered faintly as though lit from within.

I recorded them automatically, noting angles, mapping patterns. But it wasn’t the architecture that unsettled me. It was the hum—low, resonant, pulsing under my boots like a living heartbeat.

“Captain,” I said slowly, “the frequencies here align with the gravitational pulses we detected on approach.”

“So these ruins are… broadcasting?” Maro asked.

“In a sense,” I murmured. “But not outward. Inward.”

Fennik kicked a fragment of smooth stone. “Great. We found a planet that whispers to itself.”

Before Captain Devran could respond, the hum spiked. Every glyph flared brilliant white, and the ground trembled beneath us. I stumbled, caught myself, and—

Something touched my mind.

Lysa.

I froze. “Did anyone else hear that?”

“Hear what?” Maro asked, alarm rising in his eyes.

The whisper came again, clearer now. Lysa Ravel.

A cold wave rippled down my spine. “My name. It’s saying my name.”

Captain Devran’s hand drifted to her blaster. Not out of threat—out of instinct. “Everyone back to the ship. Now.”

But the ruins had other plans.

The stone beneath us cracked, splitting open like an eye. Light surged upward, swallowing our vision. I felt myself falling—not physically, but through layers of thought, memory, dreams that weren’t mine. And in that terrible, beautiful brightness, I saw:

A colossus of shadow with a heart of molten stars.

Worlds dissolving into spirals of particle ash.

Elders kneeling before the sky, faces carved with fear.

A sigil of three intersecting rings, pulsing.

A voice: The cycle turns. Raan Losti begins.

Then darkness.

—

I awoke aboard The Farstar’s medbay with Maro hovering over me, face ghost-pale.

“Welcome back,” he whispered. “You’ve been unconscious for almost nine hours.”

“What—what happened?” My voice felt coated in static.

“You collapsed in the ruins,” he said. “No physical injury. But your neural activity spiked off the charts. Like your mind was running a thousand simulations per second.”

“I heard something,” I murmured. “Something calling me.”

Fennik appeared in the doorway. “Hate to interrupt the spooky mind-meld discussion, but the planet’s doing… things.”

“What things?” Captain Devran demanded behind him.

“Gravity surges. Magnetic storms. And a signal. A continuous one.” His eyes flicked to me. “It’s repeating a pattern. The same three-ring symbol we saw on the ruins.”

My heartbeat faltered. “Show me.”

On the bridge, he pulled up the scan. Three luminous rings intersecting like a cosmic knot. Pulsing. Slow, then faster. Like a heartbeat.

“That symbol,” Devran said, “matches ancient records from the Elders’ libraries. Associated with Raan Losti.”

I shook my head. “Raan Losti is a myth. A cultural metaphor.”

“Maybe not,” the captain said softly. “Not anymore.”

The ship trembled violently, throwing us off balance. Warning sirens shrieked.

“Gravitational spike!” Fennik yelled. “Something’s rising from beneath the ruins!”

We ran to the viewport.

The ground split apart in a spiral, stone lifting like petals. And from the center of the ruin rose a structure—a monolith so tall it pierced the storm clouds. It shimmered with impossible geometry, shifting between shapes that shouldn’t exist in three-dimensional space.

And etched across its surface was the three-ring sigil.

“Please tell me that’s a hallucination,” Fennik breathed.

“It’s a beacon,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away. “A starcall. It’s awakening.”

“For what purpose?” Devran asked.

The whisper answered—not from outside, but inside my skull.

To find the Key. To open the Path. To end the cycle or break it.

“Lysa?” Maro asked, voice barely audible. “Are you all right?”

“No,” I whispered. “And yes. And I think… it’s talking to me.”

—

We attempted to leave Serephon. We couldn’t.

As soon as we tried to break orbit, a gravitational web snapped around us—gentle but inescapable. Like a hand holding us in place.

“Wonderful,” Fennik groaned. “The planet has decided we’re pets.”

“Or witnesses,” Devran corrected.

To what, we didn’t know.

Hours passed. The monolith continued humming, its pulses shifting in frequency until they matched my heartbeat exactly. Maro confirmed it with scans.

“Whatever that thing is,” he said nervously, “it’s keyed directly to Lysa.”

Captain Devran turned to me. “Why you?”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t know. But I think… I think I’m supposed to go back down there.”

The captain stared at me, jaw tight. “Absolutely not.”

But the whisper grew louder. More insistent. The Key must walk the Path.

“What if I am the Key?” I said quietly. “What if that’s why it spoke my name?”

Fennik threw up his hands. “Great. Our cartographer is the cosmic chosen one. Because that always ends well.”

But fear quivered at the edges of his sarcasm.

“Captain,” Maro whispered, “the gravitational field is tightening. Like it’s forcing our hand.”

Devran closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them, midnight resolve burned there.

“We go back.”

—

The monolith towered above us like a slumbering god. As we approached, the rings on its surface rotated, shifting into alignment. A doorway opened—an aperture of light.

And the voice within my mind softened.

Enter, Lysa Ravel.

I stepped forward.

Inside, the chamber was immense and weightless. Stars drifted around us like dust motes. The floor was a translucent plane showing worlds being born, dying, reborn. And at the far end, hovering above a pedestal, floated a crystalline sphere containing a swirling nebula.

I could feel its energy thrum through my bones.

“The Heart of Cycles,” I whispered without knowing how I knew the name.

Captain Devran approached cautiously. “What does it do?”

“It controls Raan Losti,” I murmured. “The reshaping cycle. Every few millennia, it chooses whether civilizations advance… or collapse.”

Fennik blanched. “So it’s a celestial… judge?”

“Not judge,” I said. “Catalyst.”

The sphere brightened, and the whisper enveloped me fully.

You are chosen because you question. Because you map the stars not with conquest in your heart, but wonder. Choose the cycle’s path.

“What choice?” I asked aloud.

The chamber shifted. Two visions unfolded before us:

One: worlds flourishing—empires rising in peace, new technologies awakening, unity spreading across systems.

The other: firestorms, collapsing galaxies, civilizations erased in sterile silence, making room for new life.

“The cycle demands reset,” I whispered. “It always has. But this time… it’s offering a choice instead of enforcing one.”

Captain Devran’s voice trembled. “Lysa… what will you choose?”

My heart pounded. Both paths carried danger. Both carried hope.

Choose, the voice urged.

I reached toward the sphere.

And in that instant, something else surged through the chamber—a new presence, cold and ancient. The shadows coalesced, forming the silhouette I had glimpsed earlier in my vision. A being of starfire and void.

“You’re—” Maro gasped.

“The Arbiter,” I whispered. “Guardian of the cycle.”

Its voice cracked reality. The cycle is necessary. Stagnation breeds extinction. Only destruction births renewal.

Captain Devran stepped between us, weapon raised. “Stay back!”

The Arbiter didn’t move. It didn’t need to. Its presence alone warped space.

“You want me to choose destruction,” I said.

I want what ensures survival of the greater cosmos.

“And what about the lives erased?” My voice grew stronger. “What about the civilizations who haven’t been given the chance to change?”

Cycles do not bend for individuals.

I squared my shoulders. “Maybe they should.”

I touched the sphere.

Light burst outward.

And everything changed.

—

I stood in the center of a storm of stars, the sphere dissolving into pure energy around my hands. The Arbiter lunged, but the monolith’s rings spun faster, trapping it in temporal stasis.

Time folded. Memories—mine, others, ancient ones—poured through me. I felt the weight of every cycle before. The pain. The beauty. The destruction. The rebirth.

I understood then: the cycle wasn’t meant to dictate fate. It was meant to offer guidance. But the Arbiter had twisted it, choosing destruction over possibility.

“I choose a third path,” I whispered. “No forced reset. No forced stagnation. Let civilizations grow, fail, rise, learn—on their own timeline.”

The sphere responded, reshaping itself through my will. A new symbol formed—three rings intersecting, but now open at their centers.

A path, not a cage.

The energy burst outward in a wave that swept across Serephon, the Kepler System, the stars beyond. A message, a rewriting.

The Arbiter’s scream dissolved into silence.

Then all fell still.

—

I collapsed. Maro caught me before I hit the ground, shaking with relief.

“Lysa… you’re glowing.”

Indeed, soft light pulsed beneath my skin. Residual energy from the Heart. A mark. A reminder.

Captain Devran knelt beside me. “What did you do?”

“I changed the cycle,” I murmured. “Raan Losti will no longer be destruction by default. It will be evolution—earned, not imposed.”

Fennik stared at me, half in awe, half in horror. “So… you just rewrote universal law?”

“Not rewrote,” I said softly. “Restored.”

The monolith dimmed. The doorway reopened. And for the first time since we’d arrived, the gravitational field released us.

We returned to The Farstar in silence.

As we ascended into orbit, Serephon—once dead—began to green. Not fully. Not instantly. But small patches of life bloomed across its surface like sparks of hope.

Maro whispered, “It’s changing.”

“Becoming what it was meant to be,” I murmured.

Captain Devran turned to me. “What now?”

I gazed at the planet’s rebirth, feeling the quiet hum of the new cycle woven through my bones.

“Now,” I said, “we go home. And we tell the Elders that the cycle continues—but on our terms.”

Fennik smirked weakly. “Think they’ll believe us?”

“Probably not,” I said. “But in time… they’ll feel it.”

Maro smiled faintly. “A time of great change.”

I nodded.

“Raan Losti,” I whispered. “Not an ending. A beginning.”

And as our ship slipped into the star-washed dark, I felt the cosmos breathe differently—lighter. Freer. Full of possibilities no longer bound by ancient inevitabilities.

Because the cycle had shifted.

Because choice had returned to the stars.

Because sometimes, change begins with a single voice that dares to say no—or yes—when the universe demands obedience.

Because I had chosen hope.

And the universe had listened.

—

Raan Losti was upon us: a time of great change, our Elders called it.