It began with a storm.

Not the kind that tears down buildings, but the kind that takes quietly—the roof tile, the pantry jar, the saved, the salvaged.

Karbos was a child then. He stood at the edge of the landfill and watched his mother gather what others left behind. Her hands were gentle, precise. She made broken things useful again.

And then the flood came.

The water took it all.

Everything they had saved, everything she had mended.

Above them, dry towers gleamed—unbothered, unbroken.

“This shouldn’t be how the world works,” she said. “Nothing should go to waste.”

He never forgot.

Years later, MIDAS began with the promise that nothing would.

The last tree died in silence.

Aster knelt beside it. The soil was gray. The bark was ash. The acorn in his pocket, once full of hope, crumbled when he touched it.

His father cried once—then said nothing again.

Aster had believed the oak would outlast the world. When it didn’t, he decided to build something that would.

So GAIA bloomed—life without death, growth without end.

And in doing so, he made something that never knew how to stop.

Some houses are loud in their silence.

Nikolai grew up inside one. The kind where footsteps meant something. Where the quiet between words could cut sharper than speech.

His sibling once called from the far side of a closing door, “Maybe you’ll help people talk someday.”