We don't belong here 

After Magnus, Terra was like stepping into another universe. Gone were the scrapyards and scarred hulls, the constant sense of survival hanging in the air. Terra was clean, bright, almost too polished — every surface shining, every street filled with people who didn’t seem to know what war looked like up close.

For someone who’d lived through battles on Charon, Tiber, and Vega, the contrast was surreal. Veterans were rare here. The people I passed in the plazas carried themselves differently — light steps, easy laughs, no weight in their eyes. It was a world untouched by the scars that followed me everywhere.

I walked skybridges that gleamed like crystal, looked out across towers that stretched toward blue skies, and for a moment I tried to imagine what life might have been like if I’d been born here instead of drafted into endless conflict. The thought didn’t sit right. Comfort felt alien.

Even among all the polish, I found myself lingering at the docking bays, watching the traffic of freighters and merchants move in and out. Those were the people I understood — the ones who still worked with their hands, hauled cargo, took jobs that came with danger attached.

It was only a stopover, nothing more, but Terra left me unsettled. As if I’d seen a glimpse of a future I could never belong to.

When our ship lifted from the pad, I stayed at the viewport, this time watching until the blue skies faded into stars. Days later, the jump flared open and we slipped through. On the other side waited Stanton — Port Olisar — and whatever came next.