Nobody knows when, or even why, the war started. All they knew was that it had been going on for generations. For as long as their histories stretched, the Varakai and the Xel’Tharim had been fighting one another. Their war spanned countless millennia, consuming stars, worlds, numerous civilizations, entire solar systems. It was not a war for resources, nor ideology. It wasn’t even a war for the expansion of the respective empires. It was simply war, forged into the very fabric of each species’ existence, passed down like an inheritance of blood.

The Varakai, an insectoid species with chitinous armor and bioengineered weaponry, viewed the war as sacred. Their ancient scriptures, passed down through generations of warrior priests and scribes, spoke of an eternal conflict decreed by the long-extinct Elder Queens, the original rulers of their planet and species. To fight was to fulfill the will of their ancestors, to prove their worthiness in the eyes of destiny.

The Xel’Tharim, a race of towering cephalopod-Like beings with luminous, shifting skin and minds capable of bending reality, saw the war as something else entirely. To them, it was a cycle, a fundamental law of existence. Their prophets spoke of the Great Pattern, an ever-turning wheel of creation and destruction. Peace was nothing more than an illusion. The only true constant in the universe was war and conflict.

And so, the fighting never ceased. Star systems burned in battles that lasted centuries. Some planets had been fought over so many times that their surfaces were unrecognizable, reshaped by weapons that had cracked their land masses. Entire civilizations and species, neither Varakai or Xel’Tharim, had been annihilated for their allegiances or, in some instances, just existing in the great war’s path.

There were no negotiations, no ceasefires, no treaties, no attempts at peace. If either side had ever sought to understand the other, that knowledge had long since been buried under eons of rumble and generations of bloodshed.

On the war ravaged world of Kel-Varesh, another battle had just ended. The once-thriving colony was now nothing more than a graveyard, its atmosphere thick with smoke, the land scorched by countless bombardments from orbital weaponry. Varakai and Xel-Tharim forces had clashed here for weeks, neither willing to relinquish an inch of ground to the other. But in the end, both fleets had been destroyed, leaving only two surviving fighter pilots that had crashed on the planet’s surface.

Commander Sharkar Var’Zuun of the Varakai pulled himself from the wreckage of his crashed fighter, his rugged battle exoskeleton cracked, his secondary arms broken and mangled at his sides. He smelled the burning remains of his weapons officer, his body reduced to a smoldering husk. His pulse quickened with rage. His only instinct, his sole reason for existing was to fight, to kill, to fulfill the purpose ingrained into his very being since he was birthed. That’s when he saw her.

Captain Althira Nex of the Xel-Tharim stood among the ruins, her elongated form shifting with subtle bioluminescent pulses. Her tendrils curled around her in a defensive posture, her telepathic abilities probing the ruins for any sign of remaining threats. Like him, she was alone on this now-barren planet.

For a long moment, neither moved. Millennia of war dictated that they should strike each other down without hesitation. Yet, exhaustion had settled in on both of them. Their armies had been obliterated. Their weapons had been spent. Their ships reduced to nothing more than burning debris raining down from the heavens. For the first in ages, a Varakai and a Xel-Tharim faced each other, not as soldiers engaged in battle, but as survivors stranded on the same deserted, ruined world.

Days passed. The first was spent in absolute silence, each keeping their distance, watching the other for any sign of an impending attack. The second, testing the opposition for any weakness that could be used to end this standoff. By the third, they both acknowledged their unspoken truce. They needed to survive, and that could happen if they helped each other. Or at the very least, weren’t consumed with the other’s destruction. Food was scarce, the planet’s ecosystem poisoned by centuries of war. They scavenged what little they could from the wreckage of the war machines around them, their survival instincts momentarily stronger than their inherited hatred for the other. On the tenth day, they found The Archive.

Buried beneath the ruins of a once-great city, it was a vault of ancient data, so old that neither of their species should have been able to understand it. And yet, the symbols were eerily familiar to both of them. On a podium in front of them, there were two touch pads, one in the shape of each of their hands. They exchanged an unsure glance as the reached out towards the panel. Together, they activated the massive machine in front of them. A holographic figure flickered to life, its form neither Varakai nor Xel’Tharim. Instead, it belonged to a species neither of them instantly recognized, a long-thought extinct race that had vanished an untold number of eons ago. Then it spoke. The language was from neither of their empires, yet they both understood it perfectly.

“To those that remain, we leave this recording as testimony. We were the Vorni, the architects of an empire that spanned the known universe. We created the Varakai and the Xel’Tharim, brought them together to be allies, bound to each other by unity and servitude. But as we basked in the glow of our creation, we grew arrogant. We sought to control them, shape the course of their futures. And in doing so, we did the unspeakable. We turned them against each other for our own selfish and small-minded reasons.”

The two beleaguered warriors looked at each other then back at the hologram in bewilderment.

“We erased their histories,” the hologram continued, “sowed false memories of betrayal, and set them on a path of endless war and destruction. Why you may ask? For our own entertainment. Two species, pitted against one another for the viewing pleasure of our populace. Because it was easier to rule them as enemies than as allies. But in our arrogance, we did not foresee the destruction of our own world, the annihilation of our species.”

Neither Althira Nex nor Sharkar Var’Zuun could believe what they were hearing. Yet somehow, they knew the words were true.

“Now, we are gone. And yet, the war continues. If you are seeing this, then know the truth: the was never yours. It was never meant to last. You fight each other for a ghost’s deception.”

And just as quickly as it had the started, the message ended and the hologram disappeared. Silence fell on the chamber around Sahara and Althira like a bomb, a silence heavier than the weight of the ruined planet they found themselves marooned on. Everything they had known, been taught their whole lives, every battle, every death, every sacrifice had been built on a lie. They stood together, unable to muster the words to describe what they had just learned. Then they turned to face each other, a lifetime of taught hate bubbling over like a cauldron on an open fire. But instead of attacking, a Varakai and a Xel’Tharim embraced for the first time in either’s known history.

For them, standing in that chamber, the war was over. There was no need to fight. But the war was bigger than them. It had consumed the lives of their species for generations. Brought about the destruction of entire civilizations. They both knew they had a sacred duty to deliver this information to their people. But would their people believe them? Would they want to believe? As the ruins of Kel-Varesh burned around them, they knew that knowledge alone was not enough. The war was all either planet had ever known. Could the truth end it? Or had the hatred created by a long dead race of beings become so real, so forged into the souls of their species that it could never be undone?