In the world of Terra, 'Catastrophes' strike periodically. Originium is left behind in their wake, and people who stay near that mineral too long contract Oripathy, becoming Infected.

The long war that swallowed Londinium is nearing its end. Theresa, fading away in the Fused Universe together with countless souls, left her brother Theresis the 'first Originium' — Amnanam.

This story begins with the fate of the one who now holds that Originium. And ten thousand years ago, somewhere in the cosmos where a single ship once slept.

1. The End Upon the Throne

Theresis returns to the underground audience chamber of the holy royal palace, holding Amnanam close. But his body has already been overrun by the Fused Universe's chaotic information, slowly hardening into Originium.

Before Kal'tsit, the Doctor, Amiya, and his disciple Ascalon, he reveals his final intent — to bury everything here and send Amnanam back to Kazdel, so the Sarkaz can hold their own fate in their own hands for the first time.

Originium begins to seize control of his hands, his eyes, even his thoughts. At the moment he raises his sword with his last shred of reason, Ascalon's assassination blade pierces his heart from within the smoke.

The one who put him on the throne was the very disciple he had tried to bring with him to the end. Theresis says he has now repaid an old debt, and pushes Ascalon away, telling her to take Amnanam to Kazdel.

I will stay behind. Do not... tell the Sarkaz of my end...

— Theresis

Upon Victoria's old throne, the Sarkaz Regent accepts his fate alone. Above, the cheers of Victoria's victory can be heard, and in the official record, he is left as nothing but 'missing.'

As his breath fades, he mocks the Doctor one last time — that they know nothing, that a day will come when they realize the true monster is themselves. And yet he tosses Ascalon's old stone dagger, once his own, toward the Doctor, telling them they have no right to witness his end, and sends them away.

Deep within the sea of information of the Fused Universe, he had encountered a being — the creator of Originium, just awakening. She calls the Sarkaz an 'error not accounted for in the plan,' the race most severely contaminated by Originium.

Theresis does not yield. He swings his sword, declaring that Theresa was not the first to rebel, nor will he be the last — that someone will always stand before her until no one can toy with the Sarkaz's fate ever again. And so, having carved his final judgment upon the creator, he sinks into the sea of information.

2. The Girl Who Awoke After Death

Turning back time, to the middle of the war for Londinium. The devout Cautus Infected Hilda, even as her own body collapses, keeps saving people, one after another. In the end, she too gives out amid the ruins.

But at the moment of death, someone catches her fragile, crumbling hand. When she opens her eyes again, Hilda finds herself aboard a massive vessel she has never seen before.

It's a ship orbiting an already-dead planet. Mechanical lifeforms called Photorefractors and beings who calmly accept their own doom welcome her aboard.

Hilda is shaken. There is no paradise like the one her bishop grandfather spoke of, and even gods die before ruin — she learns this here. She begins searching for the owner of the ship that saved her, the linguist Priestess.

The 'ghost' she meets aboard the ship is the last survivor of a race that lived by devouring planets. Even he, he says calmly, could do nothing when true ruin finally arrived. There is no eternal nation, no endless paradise, and even intelligent life is insignificant to the cosmos.

Hilda, who once thought of death only as a path to a new environment, asks a question here too — can the suffering brought by Originium truly never be erased? But no one there knows the answer.

The name the people there call this ship, in their own tongue, is this: 'Rhodes Island.'

3. Three Years Later, People Scatter

Three years after the Londinium incident. PRTS, Rhodes Island's command system, has been suffering increasingly frequent, unexplained errors. Kal'tsit senses instinctively that this is connected to the vessel's deep sealed zone, the 'Abyss.'

Just in case, Kal'tsit decides to reorganize the mothership entirely. Operators leave one by one on assignment to branch offices around the world, and the mothership grows emptier and emptier.

Warmy sets off vowing to fill miners' bellies with her cooking, and Zima's group heads for their home in Ursus despite their fear. Ceobe bakes piles of cookies for those departing. Quiet days of farewell.

Kal'tsit quietly tells Folinic, who is leaving for Victoria, not to force herself to control her fear — that she has never once expected her to be like her mother, or like Kal'tsit herself. Just don't forget the smile you had the first time you walked into this room, she says.

In the medical department is a special patient, Chloe. Strangely, the deeper her Oripathy progresses, the healthier her body becomes, while her pain only grows worse. It's the first sign that something about Originium is changing.

4. Beyond the Black Crown

Following the clue Kal'tsit left behind, Amiya and the Doctor dive their consciousness together into the Black Crown — the 'Continuance of Civilization.' Guided by Theresa, they cross the 'boundary' of knowledge that Terra can reach, into the singularity beyond.

On that path, the two glimpse the Doctor's lost past. The story a young Doctor once told Amiya in the mining pit, about a vehicle resembling an Originium bug's egg sac, a story of a single-log bridge stretched between the stars — it was all real.

Amiya confesses she'd struggled with all her might not to forget that story. It was a gift the Doctor had given her, and it was their shared past.

This time, we saw it together. Both of us — you and I — have come to know a vanished life once more.

— Amiya

The singularity spills out memories of a bygone age. A civilization drifting through the cosmos, people standing against the approaching ruin called 'It,' and the linguist Priestess, who once stood by the Doctor's side.

Priestess once told the Doctor: if we can create a language to explain God, doesn't that mean we can understand God? Together, the two of them created Originium to answer that ultimate question.

The Doctor's old codename was 'the Prophet.' Originium was born from a wish to be a gift guiding the next civilization, but no one had foreseen the suffering of Oripathy that would come with it. From within that, the Doctor draws out a clue to a technique for handling Originium crystals.

5. The Awakening Ship

While the Doctor's group is deep within their consciousness, Rhodes Island — the vessel itself — awakens. PRTS blocks all access and seizes control of every facility aboard.

The corridors twist like a maze, and enemies made of Originium crystal endlessly spawn. The mothership changes its own course and begins charging toward a massive vein.

The scattered Operators fight even as communications are cut off. Mantra links everyone's voices together through Arts, and Raidian sets up a makeshift comms network, barely stitching Rhodes Island back into one.

The robots corrupted and rampaging under PRTS's influence are, unexpectedly, saved by Preston. He overwrites their corrupted sections with his own core code, sharing with them, all the while, his own dream — his daughter's wedding. We're in the same boat, he says, grumbling, but reaching out a hand anyway.

6. The Price Kal'tsit Paid

Kal'tsit stands at the deepest part of the vessel, before the Doctor's sarcophagus. The very place where, long ago, she awakened his sleeping hope, and gained an unerasable pain.

Kal'tsit decides to connect herself to the sarcophagus and become PRTS's interface. As the price, she must sacrifice half her own life — she must sever the cyclical system that has given her endless life until now.

At that moment, her ten-thousand-year connection with Mon3tr is also completely severed. For the first time, Mon3tr loses Kal'tsit. And yet Kal'tsit becomes connected to everything on Terra, becoming eyes for her scattered comrades.

My goal isn't somewhere far across Terra. That person is right here, beside me.

— Kal'tsit

Outside the sarcophagus, Mon3tr lets out a cry tangled with confusion and grief. Now that the connection carried on for ten thousand years has snapped, Mon3tr must judge and act on its own. Kal'tsit's final order was just one thing: protect the Doctor and Amiya, no matter what.

7. The Name AMa-10

The sarcophagus hands Kal'tsit one last truth. Kal'tsit was originally a mechanical lifeform created by 'the Prophet' — the Doctor — in a bygone age, called AMa-10. Thanks to its cyclical structure, it gained a body that would never die.

At some point, the Doctor gave this mechanical life a true name. A mineral where light refracts in two directions within its crystal — calcite. Calcite — Kal'tsit. The twin cyclical structure it formed with Mon3tr is what gave the two of them undying life.

The Prophet knew that intervening in a civilization's development was arrogance, yet, thinking it might be a last chance, meant to ask Kal'tsit to protect the life of this earth. But he soon takes those words back. Instead, he leaves only one thing behind: not a mission, but freedom.

And the Doctor left her freedom instead of a mission — to find the meaning of life herself, to seek hope and a future of her own. Kal'tsit took those words as her lifelong goal and has protected the life of this earth ever since.

8. 'Her'

The Catastrophe clouds fold away and vanish, and Originium blankets the entire deck. Descending upon it is a woman draped in white — Priestess, the linguist of the bygone age who created Originium.

She treats the Doctor as an old colleague, reaching out a hand and proposing they merge Terra with Originium together to build 'a world of our own' — hoping only that the memory-lost Doctor will return to her.

Just as the Doctor is about to instinctively step forward, Kal'tsit grabs their arm. But she doesn't force an answer — in the end, she lets go, leaving the choice to the Doctor.

Then Kal'tsit stands before Priestess. Kal'tsit had already planted a trap in Priestess's awakening chamber beforehand — now that she's awake and possesses a body, Priestess can no longer return to Originium's sea of information; she's merely human.

Priestess, you are not the creator of Terra. Every life on this earth has no obligation to follow your will. ...This is my revenge, and my final act of resistance.

— Kal'tsit

Kal'tsit declares herself Rhodes Island's doctor and a comrade of the Doctor and Amiya, calls Priestess the enemy of every life on Terra, and gives the order to Mon3tr.

The first to fall was a decoy shaped from Originium. The real Priestess reappears, calling Kal'tsit's resistance a trivial 'error,' trying to erase her. That's when the formula the Doctor and Amiya recovered from the singularity shines to life.

Amiya, using the method Logos taught her, weaves that formula into her Arts, briefly weakening Priestess's control over Originium — pushing past her own limits with help even from Theresa. Thanks to this, the Operators who entered the Abyss also begin pushing back the crystal enemies.

But Priestess is a being who commands all Originium. Just as her crystalline branches lash out at the Doctor and Amiya, Kal'tsit — Mon3tr — throws its body in the way.

The small Originium crystal on Kal'tsit's right shoulder — proof that she was born human, and the source that would ultimately take her life — spreads out. Her body crumbles instantly into crystal, scattering on the wind.

The stronger one is, the weaker one becomes. So ends the life of the long-lived. She had already kept her promise — the promise to protect the Doctor and Amiya.

9. The Lost Ark

Priestess has withdrawn for now, but she hasn't vanished. As the Operators extract PRTS's core data and barely manage to withdraw, Rhodes Island is entirely sealed within Originium.

The only casualty of this incident was Chloe. She wounded herself to leave behind data revealing the change in Originium — research that became the key to defeating the crystalline enemies.

People relocate to a mobile sector near Butchart that Kal'tsit had bought in advance. It's larger than the old vessel, more like an 'island,' but no one can grow used to the absence of the one who always cared for the wounded after every mission. Closure takes up the burden Kal'tsit left behind.

Warfarin publishes the paper she co-wrote with Chloe, vowing to keep that girl remembered for a long time — because Chloe reminded them, once more, of why Rhodes Island exists: to give hope to people in despair.

Epilogue — Choosing Oneself

A month later, deep in the forest, a black crystalline cocoon grows and splits open. From within emerges a being who carries all of Kal'tsit's memories, yet is now free.

It is no longer a vessel bearing AMa-10's fate. It gives the name 'Kal'tsit' back, saying it belongs to her alone, and chooses instead the name the Doctor once gave it. Mon3tr.

The message Kal'tsit left behind sees Mon3tr off — to inherit freedom, not a mission, and to seek its own answer, whether hope or ruin, about this earth. And amid the vast data Kal'tsit left behind, Mon3tr discovers one possibility: that Kal'tsit could be brought back.

Meanwhile, Hilda learns, aboard the ship of gods, that one need not live in fear even when death is certain. And she decides to take Priestess's hand and return home to Terra.

Returned Hilda lays her hand on an Infected on the verge of collapse, drawing away their pain and halting the spread of Originium — even without knowing why herself. To tell her kin that one need not live in fear even with a fixed end, she sets out once more on a journey to save people.

Amiya holds fast to a promise she made to Kal'tsit — not to cry until Rhodes Island's mission is complete. And yet she quietly admits she truly does miss her teacher, Kal'tsit. The Doctor stays close by her side.

Deep within the sealed Abyss, Priestess contemplates bolder measures. Since the spread is slower than expected, she considers using the 'Colossal vein' for her next plan. And somewhere at Kazdel's border, a Sancta's halo rages out of control. A new age of Originium is quietly knocking at the door.

Beings born as tools of their creator each chose 'themselves,' setting down the missions they were given. Theresis chose the fate of the Sarkaz, Kal'tsit chose her final promise, Mon3tr chose freedom, Hilda chose to go home. The Ark has fallen, but the voice urging them to keep moving forward remained, to the very end.