1. Prolugue

After several mistakes, humans reached their peak, their maximum point as a species, technologically, philosophically and even spiritually.

But as there is always at least one bad apple in a great harvest, it was no different with humans. What was different was how much this apple ruined such a perfect batch, causing all humans to fall to such a low and depressing point as this, in view of what they had managed to achieve.

After all, thanks to this individual, nuclear weapons that had been discarded eons ago were reactivated. According to what was discovered, this person wanted to use them to exterminate a specific alien species, as he believed that they were not worthy of associating with the race that dominated the cosmos. Obviously, almost everyone (except a tiny group of people compared to the entire population) considers him a hopeless madman, but even a madman has his conviction and did exactly what he said he was going to do, wiping out practically an entire race.

This barbaric, unnecessary and essentially insane act made other humans rediscover a feeling and desire that they had long ago abandoned, the desire for revenge.

And so it happened, when they discovered where this individual was hiding, the rest of humanity did the same as him and used nuclear weapons to discourage them, but as an old earthly saying said, "a bad vessel doesn't break", and even though he was extremely injured, the responsible for the extermination of an entire race still managed to survive together with a small contingent of his group. And this group became the nightmare of all humans and several alien races.

Humans at this point in their history had managed to leave much of their destructive instinct behind after several catastrophes of their own making, and finally learning from their mistakes they let many of the components that made them so prone to destruction disappear from their being and from your society. Thanks to this, humans were able to reach the stars and form relationships with various non-human species, but they did not completely get rid of their most... violent part, they just suppressed it at a genetic level.

And this group that had caused that barbaric act was one of the groups where this violent part was not completely suppressed. And after his idiotic act, he made the once peaceful humans turn back into a violent species.

The "positive" side is that this violence was aimed only at a group that was openly hostile to both a group of non-humans and most of humanity now, and that knew how to use the rediscovered hostility of humans to its advantage and increasing your numbers. Thereupon one of the greatest wars, and the only human civil star war began. In each conflict, more suffering was caused to innocent people, causing previously peaceful humans to become more angry and hateful, to the point where they just want to take out more anger on each other, releasing all the violence and savagery that had been suppressed for eons all at once. .

This was a war lasting thousands of years, it was brutal, not even the cradle of humanity, Earth was spared. What was once just a small group, had grown and become an army, to the point of becoming a small empire. This empire was made of letters glued together, but still letters, and eventually fell to the ground. After this war, humans had been greatly weakened, losing several worlds for nothing.

All because of one bad apple that quickly contaminated the others.

Although it was not entirely his fault (only 89%), the other part of the horrible fall suffered by humanity happened through nothing less than a work of pure cosmic chance. Where an event, which became known simply as "The Event", on a universal scale, which no matter how hard scientists tried they never managed, and probably will never be able to understand, happened.

This event was the final factor that decreed the end of humanity as the dominant race of the known cosmos and practically its end as a species.

After this bad apple helped to condemn humanity, forcing it to abandon several of its terraformed worlds because they were extremely damaged or completely destroyed, the various aliens with which humans had contact formed a federation to block the influence of humans, after all. They did not emerge from this conflict unscathed. These requested the remaining humans not to leave their regional galactic space (solar system) for an indefinite period of time, a request that was understood and accepted by the remaining humans, as they also believed it was necessary to recover from this war that had reminded them of how brutal they could be themselves.

But don't think that these alien races weren't as well or that they were ungrateful, they had received a lot of help from humans until that bad apple came along, and even though the humans were technically "exiled" they continued to keep in touch and never tried to come into conflict. with them (even more so because if they tried they would be annihilated, since even though humanity was weakened it was still essentially the strongest species). And slowly humans rose again just as they had done thousands of times before, strained relations were healing and soon it seemed that everything would return to normal, with humans exploring new worlds, meeting and helping new life forms and helping in the expansion of knowledge and culture of all the cosmos.

All of the human-inhabited worlds in the solar system that had also been affected by the war had considerable remnants of radiation and toxins from biological weapons, even though their cleansing was progressing rapidly with only 3,000 years having passed since the war, meaning that the remnants no longer existed. were considered lethal even at a high rate.

Until the phenomenon that only became known "The Event" happened, throwing humanity back down, which had only begun to recover, no one knows exactly what triggered it, there are only theories, but it is known that it generated a new type of radiation, more powerful and with the capacity to alter even minerals in ways that were previously impossible.

Thanks to the help of their technology and the "help" of several alien races, humans managed to remain "firm" even when extremely weakened and slowly recover, but after "The Event" things simply could not be repaired.

The aliens had to leave the humans to their own fate, as they were also greatly affected by the "Event" perhaps even more than the humans, and they isolated every arm of the Milky Way inhabited by humans and designated it as a forbidden zone.

With everything that has been said so far, about how strong humanity was and even how they were rising despite being weakened and forced to live on worlds contaminated with radiation and toxins, perhaps it was to be expected that humans would have had some plan to deal with or even resolve the results of the event. But no, humanity as a whole didn't have it, all they could do was try their best to survive the new mutations that this new radiation had brought, mutations that reduced what little of humanity remained to a mere handful. And it is this handful that will matter from now on.

Because this handful of survivors of mutations, radiation, even having remnants who had fought in the last battle that had practically ended humanity, were responsible for managing to save their last, and first, world from this radiation. No, they did not eliminate it per se, but they discovered a way to improve the world itself to support it, and in doing so the cycle of life can once again begin as before. But with some very striking differences.