Elina took her place near the front, her stylus ready.
Instructor Halver Wynne stood at the platform, this time with a small sphere hovering beside him. It pulsed gently.
"Welcome," Halver began, his tone more contemplative than before. "Yesterday, we spoke of the universe. Its vastness. Its origins. Its mysteries. Today, we speak of structure. Not just stars and galaxies—but the bones of reality. The skeleton of existence."
He made a subtle motion, and the sphere beside him split apart. Layers unfolded, revealing a glowing lattice of light. A model of their planet, Elina realized—but it was transparent, crisscrossed with lines.
"We begin with your world," Halver said. "Beneath your feet lies not a flat plane as once believed, but a spheroid—an oblate one, bulging slightly at the equator due to rotational force."
Gasps. Whispers. Some students blinked as if he'd just told them the moon was made of fire.
"Rotation?" asked a boy with soot-stained fingers.
Halver nodded. "Yes. Your world spins. Once every twenty-four of your hours. This creates day and night. You feel as though you are still, but in truth, you move at hundreds of leagues per hour across the surface."
"Then why don't we fly off?" another student challenged.
"Gravity," Halver said. "One of the four fundamental forces. Gravity pulls everything with mass toward everything else. It is the glue that binds planets together. That keeps moons in orbit. That causes apples to fall from trees. It is also why, despite the Earth's spin, you remain grounded."
He paused.
"But gravity is only the beginning. There are three other fundamental forces: electromagnetism, which governs light, electricity, and magnetism; the strong nuclear force, which binds atomic nuclei; and the weak nuclear force, which governs certain types of radioactive decay. All matter, all energy, all reality, is built on these four forces."
The braided girl from yesterday—her name, Elina had learned, was Mirell—raised her hand.
"But how does matter form? From fire? From air?"
Halver smiled. "Not quite. The ancients of your world believed in four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. But in our understanding, matter is composed of atoms—tiny, invisible units, like bricks. Each atom contains a nucleus of protons and neutrons, orbited by electrons."
He waved a hand, and a model of a hydrogen atom spun above them. A single proton at the center, one electron orbiting.
"There are over one hundred known elements, each with a unique number of protons. Combine them in different ways, and you form everything: wood, stone, blood, even stars."
A red-haired girl narrowed her eyes. "Stars are made of the same things as… people?"
"Yes," Halver said softly. "As the philosopher Sagan once said: We are made of star-stuff. All the carbon in your bones, the iron in your blood, the oxygen in your lungs—was forged in the heart of dying stars. When a star collapses and explodes—a supernova—it scatters these elements into space. Over billions of years, they form new stars, new worlds. Eventually, life."
There was a long silence.
Elina felt something inside her shift. The old priests had always said the gods shaped man from clay. But what if the universe itself had done the shaping—not through intention, but through fire and time?
Halver continued. "This world formed about 3.6 billion years ago. A disk of gas and dust orbited the young sun. Particles collided, fused. Gravity pulled them into larger and larger bodies. Planets. Moons. Asteroids."
"And life?" Elina asked.
Halver gave her a long, thoughtful look. "Life likely began in water. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, formed in primordial seas. They assembled into chains, developed the ability to replicate. Over eons—natural selection, mutation, and adaptation created the diversity you now see."
He gestured, and images flickered—deep-sea vents, microbes, fish with translucent skin, ancient forests, towering reptiles, early primates.
"You are not the first intelligence on this world. Nor the only form life could take. Evolution is not a ladder, but a branching tree. You, humanity, are one branch among countless others."
A knight-turned-student muttered under his breath, "Then the gods didn't create us?"
"Perhaps they didn't need to," Halver said. "Is it less miraculous that life emerged from chemistry than from divine fiat? As the poet Alta Viere wrote, 'What greater god than a billion years of patient chaos?'"
He turned to the next diagram: the solar system.
"Your world orbits a star, along with others: small rocky planets close in, and larger gas giants farther out. This arrangement is not unique. We have discovered thousands of such systems. Planets like yours—some possibly with life."
Mirell looked dazed. "If there are others… why haven't they visited us?"
Halver nodded, as if expecting the question.
"This is known as the Fermi Paradox. If the universe is so vast and old, where is everyone? There are many possible answers. Perhaps intelligent life is rare. Perhaps civilizations destroy themselves before they can reach the stars. Or perhaps… they are already watching, and choose not to interfere."
"Like gods," someone whispered.
"Perhaps," Halver allowed. "But they would be gods of steel and silence."
He closed the projection. The lights dimmed.
"I do not bring you these truths to unmake your beliefs, but to offer you a foundation. You live in a universe governed by laws—knowable, consistent, magnificent. The more you understand them, the more you understand yourselves."
He turned to Elina.
"You gave up a throne for knowledge. What you find may not always comfort you. But it will make you free."
Elina stood slowly.
"What you've told us… it's terrifying. Beautiful. Humbling."
"Yes," Halver said. "As it should be."
He gestured once more to the dome above. The ceiling turned translucent, revealing the sky in mid-morning clarity.
"Look up," he said. "You see the blue. The clouds. The sun. But beyond that, stars burn. Nebulae churn. Black holes twist light into silence. And yet you are here. Alive. A product of chaos and gravity and time."
He smiled faintly. S~eaʀᴄh the nôvelFire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
"You are not small. You are rare."
The students sat in silence long after the lecture ended. Some cried quietly. Others sat with their heads bowed, not in prayer, but in thought.
The universe was vast.