The Chimera did not come as wandering pioneers, nor as a singular being seeking final rest. They came in fleets, their colony ships burning through the sky, engines coughing their last breaths after a journey stretched beyond its intended limits. They came as survivors. As refugees.
Fleeing something they could not fight.
I saw the echoes of their past in the battered hulls of their ships, in the scars upon their bodies, in the haunted way their eyes scanned the land as if expecting it to rise and devour them. Their world had not been taken by war, nor by nature’s indifference, but by something far worse, an enemy without mind, without soul, only purpose.
A consuming plague. An invasive force with no other goal but propagation. A species that stripped their homeworld bare, turning everything into fuel for its endless hunger. The Chimera had fought, but there was no victory to be had against something that sought only to multiply and destroy anything that could threaten its expansion. They fled. And now they had come to me.
I spoke to them, and they recoiled, untrusting. But I did not need to explain myself. The world itself answered for me.
Their ships landed upon the land I had sculpted, vast, untamed, waiting. They had learned not to trust promises, but they understood proof. When the wind did not carry death, when the rivers ran clear, when the soil did not rot beneath their feet, they knew they were safe.
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They called me Sanctuary. They called me the End of Fear. And I gave them what they needed most—a home they would never have to flee again. A land crafted for them, tailored to their nature.
The Chimera were not one people, but four, each shaped by the conditions of their past. Their clans had formed across centuries of evolution, adapting to their environments. And so I gave them a world to match their instincts:
- The Seabreed, whose limbs moved like currents, swift and flowing, their bodies built for the waves. I carved for them sprawling coral jungles and great underwater cities beneath sapphire waters.
- The Skybreed, with their feathered arms and hollow bones, masters of the currents above. I sculpted high-floating cliffs and vast plateaus where the winds would never be still.
- The Cavebreed, those with dark-adapted sight and keen senses, whose voices carried through stone. I hollowed deep labyrinths within the mountains, where the echoes of their ancestors would guide them.
- The Landbreed, the strongest, the fastest, the ones who had built and rebuilt time and time again. I gave them forests as tall as their history, open fields wide enough to never feel caged again.
They did not kneel. They did not pray.
They simply began.
Their ships became their cities. Their past became their foundation. They had no time for reverence, for they had only ever known survival. Even here, even now, they built with urgency, not out of fear, but because they had finally been given the chance.
And I watched. I listened. I gave them what they needed. Not worship. Not laws. Only certainty.
The third of my children had come. And I whispered to them as I had the others.
“You will never have to run again.”