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**Chapter 15: A World Inchoate**
Aethel was beginning to take shape.
Continents sprawled across its surface, oceans filled its basins, and a breathable atmosphere swirled in elegant patterns above. Aris felt a swelling sense of pride—cosmic satisfaction in the work of his (still entirely non-existent) hands. The blank canvas was now a living world, a masterpiece in progress.
But the universe, as Aris was rapidly learning, had a habit of throwing curveballs. Even at planets.
He was sculpting an intricate archipelago—dozens of islands cascading like beads across a turquoise sea—when a blaring alarm shattered his focus. Not a gentle nudge from the Genesis System this time, but a klaxon of cosmic proportions.
**INCOMING OBJECT DETECTED. HIGH VELOCITY. POTENTIAL PLANETARY IMPACT.**
"Incoming! Incoming!" Aris resonated, his planetary awareness flaring in alarm. "Abort! Abort! This is not a drill! I repeat—this is not a drill!"
A massive asteroid—likely a wandering relic from the early solar system—was barreling toward Aethel on a collision course. A single impact could shatter his carefully balanced creation. Panic surged through him, primal and overwhelming.
"Okay, think, Aris, think!" he told himself, struggling to focus. "What do I do? I'm a planet, not a... a giant space laser!"
Then it struck him—the System. Of course!
He dove into the Genesis System interface with desperate urgency, scouring its options for planetary defense. He vaguely recalled some mention of shielding protocols—protective energy fields designed exactly for this kind of scenario.
"System! Shields! Shields up!" Aris cried. "Now would be a *really* good time for that 'protect planet from giant space rock' feature!"
To his immense relief, the System responded. A brilliant, shimmering energy field bloomed into existence, cocooning Aethel like an ethereal bubble. It pulsed with power, a protective veil against cosmic catastrophe.
Aris watched with held breath—metaphorically, anyway—as the asteroid streaked through space.
The impact was still catastrophic.
Even with the shields, the asteroid slammed into Aethel's surface with unimaginable force. Shockwaves thundered through the crust. Mountains cracked and buckled. Tsunamis surged across coastlines. The atmosphere churned with boiling clouds of dust and debris.
"Whoa…" Aris resonated, awestruck by the sheer violence of it. He could feel the reverberations echoing through his core. "That was… close. Way too close. Remind me to invest in some extra-strength cosmic bubble wrap."
But the shields held.
Aethel, battered and bruised, had survived.
A wave of relief crashed over Aris, quickly followed by exhilaration.
"We did it!" he roared across the mountains and seas. "We *actually* did it! Thank you, Kalas, for this amazing System! You guys are the best cosmic engineers ever!"
The aftermath of the impact was dramatic. A massive crater marred the surface—a wound in the planet's new skin. The climate wavered, thrown into chaos by the sudden injection of dust and energy. But Aris didn't see ruin. He saw opportunity.
"Okay, new plan," he mused, surveying the damage. "We'll turn this crater into a giant lake. A pristine, life-giving reservoir. And all this debris in the sky? Perfect setup for some *spectacular* sunsets. Every cloud—or, in this case, every apocalyptic debris field—has a silver lining."
He got to work immediately, stabilizing tectonic fault lines, nudging atmospheric systems back into balance, and soothing the wounded crust with gentle energy flows. Aethel's recovery had already begun.
It was a setback. But it was also a story.
A test.
And both Aris and Aethel had passed it.
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