Now take into account there are no stars. Look around you. You see them, but they aren''t there. They died long ago, but we keep seeing their light anyways. We will sooner drive each other to extinction than watch these lights dim.


    It is strange, really. We are constantly surrounded by ghosts. There is nothing alive in this universe. All the stars have become black holes, and all the stars that hadn’t, eventually became part of one anyways. All the planets eaten and spat out into useless radiation and gamma bursts, ending even more life. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    All except for this planet. It continues to baffle us. It cannot be mapped, conquered, or tamed. It is even tougher than aquatic planets. Because at least we know that water holds life as much as death. But gas giants hold no life, they hold nothing that can hold life, and they hold no love for you or for itself. Parvum was quite literally a ghost. Made up of only gas, and maybe at the very center, some solid.


    And for the longest time, we looked at Parvum with fear and respect. We could travel anywhere, do anything. But our biggest enemies were ourselves. Now this simple planet laughed at us. It hated us with every fiber of its being. It humiliated us every day to look at it. But these ghosts helped us fuel our civilizations, and soon, Parvum would too.


    We would grow to hate the hand that fed us, for it was the same hand that beat us.