Story Archive
Voidbreaker
A thousand lives. One heartbeat left behind.
Uplift Era · 5334 AD"I miss you. I know you know that already, I know you miss me back, but…it didn't feel so real until now, you know? That we're never going to see each other again."
— Delia Mitchell, final transmission
The Essential
The Voidbreaker Karis was supposed to be humanity's salvation. One thousand colonists—families, scientists, engineers—launched toward Mars carrying the weight of an entire species' hope. For thirteen-year-old Cami Mitchell, the ship carried something more personal: her parents, her twin sister, and the life she was supposed to live.
A heart murmur kept her grounded. A minor defect. Totally fixable—just not in time.
So while a thousand souls committed themselves to the void, Cami was sent to live with grandparents who worked alongside Canines—the very Uplifted species her "Human First" family considered the enemy. In a rural town at the edge of civilization, she found an unlikely friend in Dawnsky, a young Canine pup who could smell her loneliness across a cornfield.
Six weeks of hoping. Thirty seconds of horror. A lifetime of asking: what if she had been on that ship?
Then came the docking. The meteorite strike no one saw coming. The pressure seals that failed in cascade. The transmission that cut mid-sentence. In the ruins of everything her family believed in, Cami discovers that the people she was taught to hate might be the only ones who understand how to grieve.
Content Advisory: This story contains themes of family loss, grief, and disaster. Suitable for readers 13+.
Story Data
Historical Context
Voidbreaker depicts the final chapter of The Great Push—humanity's desperate 34-year campaign to establish Mars colonies separate from Earth's Uplift-dominated society. By 5334 AD, Uplifted species outnumbered humans 9:1 on Earth. The Human Continuity Council saw Mars as humanity's last hope for species sovereignty. Seventeen attempts failed. The Voidbreaker Karis was the eighteenth—and the last.
The story grounds cosmic tragedy in intimate loss, showing how ideology fractures when grief demands comfort. Cami's friendship with Dawnsky foreshadows the Human-Canine cooperation that would eventually succeed where Human First isolationism failed—666 years later, when Helfspir became Mars' first permanent settlement.
Read the Story
Full illustrated PDF • 15 pages • 3 original illustrations