Prompt:
The atmosphere on Veridia is a perpetual drizzle, a dense, humid blanket that clings to every surface. My instruments read a planetary density nearly twice that of Earth, and a gravity well to match. It's a world born of water and iron, a place where liquid seeps into every crevice and time has turned a once-thriving metropolis into a submerged monument to an unknown race. We call it "The Sunken Citadel."
Our shuttle's descent was a nightmare of atmospheric turbulence. The onboard diagnostic system failed to recognize the dense, mineral-rich cloud layers, and for a terrifying twenty minutes, we were flying blind, a metal coffin falling through an endless gray haze. We finally broke through to this eerie landscape of half-submerged skyscrapers and walkways. It's a city of giants, built by a people who must have been masters of metallurgy. The metal is incredibly resilient, a strange alloy that resists most of our cutting tools, yet millennia of exposure to this damp, corrosive air have painted the structures in a beautiful, somber palette of rust and decay.
The silence here is total, save for the rhythmic dripping of water and the quiet hum of my suit's life support. The water is dark and opaque, reflecting the skeletal remains of the city. What lies beneath? A network of submerged avenues, grand halls, and forgotten histories. My scans pick up nothing but a complex labyrinth of dead tech. The city's power core is cold; its data banks are silent. They left no trace, no message. They simply built this and then… vanished. It's a sobering thought, a stark reminder that even the most advanced civilizations can be swallowed by time.
I remember a line from a philosopher back on Earth, Thales of Miletus: "The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself." I find it's even more difficult to know a world like this. To understand what they were thinking, what they valued, why they built such a colossal, intricate structure only for it to sink into the deep. This city feels less like a ruin and more like a great, quiet thought, a lingering echo of a lost purpose. It's a place of profound and lonely beauty, a silent testament to a grandeur I can only begin to comprehend.
I spend my days mapping the exposed structures, hoping to find a hint, a single clue to their fate. But so far, nothing. Only the immense, beautiful, and heartbreaking solitude of a civilization that simply… ended.
Artist
