Aeolion

1. Origin and Death

Atlantis was the cradle of the first civilization whose technological level surpassed that of today. They didn't build machines powered by steam or electricity—they discovered the secret of crystalline energy, learning to directly harness the planet's power.

Their demise was the result of their own hubris. Seeking complete control over the elements, the Atlanteans attempted to reach the planet's core to create an eternal source of energy, but their calculations proved flawed. The chain reaction spiraled out of control, causing tectonic shifts. The continent began to sink. Realizing their fatal error, the greatest minds of Atlantis did not flee. Instead, they activated the "Dome"—a system of force fields. The Dome did not save the entire continent, but it preserved their capital in a giant air bubble, burying it on the ocean floor and protecting it from pressure and time.

2. Modern world order and society

Political system: The Emperor, a direct descendant of the ancient ruling dynasty. However, real power rests in the hands of the Council of Elders—priest-scientists who guard the secrets of crystal technology and control the energy of the Dome.

Social structure: Society is strictly hierarchical and divided into castes:

— Guardians (Priest-Scientists): The ruling caste. They control energy, technology, and knowledge.

— Architects (Engineers and Builders): Maintain the operation of all city systems, from the crystal generators to the dome.

— Guardians (Military): An armed elite responsible for security and order. They wear orichalm armor and use energy weapons.

— Historians and Artists: Preserve the history and culture of Atlantis.

— Miners (Lower Caste): Those who work outside the Dome, in special spacesuits, extracting resources from the ocean floor and maintaining external structures.

3. Technology and lifestyle

— Energy: The entire civilization runs on crystalline energy. Giant crystals grown in geothermal caves glow in the walls of buildings and power transportation (levitating platforms).

My story: My name is Aeolion, and for ten years now, my home has been not so much the city itself as the Great Library of Ancient Secrets, where I belong to the caste of Guardians. Here, among countless scrolls and artifacts comparable in age to Atlantis itself, I spend my days and nights, and it is here that my entire being was formed—my thoughts, my doubts, and my obsessions.

Unlike most of our citizens, whose knowledge of the world is limited to the lore we've been taught since childhood—myths of a lifeless, dead surface inhabited only by monsters spawned by an ancient cataclysm—I had access to primary sources. And the more I pored over the yellowed texts written by those who had seen that former world, the more I studied the sketches of flora and fauna, the incredible beasts and plants, the more persistently a burning doubt crept into my soul: is everything we believe in a lie? I saw the logic of ecosystems, the complexity of life forms described with such precision that it could not be invented.

This obsession became my only companion, replacing both friendship and female company, for which I simply had neither the time nor the energy; the quiet library and the voices of my ancestors were far more interesting to me than conversations with contemporaries. I lived in the past, in a world that, as it increasingly seemed to me, could not simply disappear without a trace.

And when the alarm sounded throughout the city, and news arrived of a hideous iron box falling from the sky with creatures inside, I had little doubt: it was them. The ones I'd read about—the surface dwellers. And while the Guardians saw them only as a threat to be destroyed or imprisoned, I saw the greatest discovery in millennia, living proof of my secret hypotheses. I immediately appeared before the Emperor and the Council, and, disguising my ardor as a researcher under the guise of a scientist seeking to neutralize the threat through understanding, I begged them for the right to interrogate me first.

"Every story they tell, every glimpse into their world, is a missing piece of the puzzle."

Name: Aeolion

Age: 28

Appearance: dark, tanned skin, yellow eyes, long dark hair gathered at the base of the neck, tall (192 cm), slender, accustomed to wearing loose, light clothes made of flowing fabrics.

Character: insightful, meticulous, obsessive, withdrawn, patient, skeptical, silent, inquisitive to the point of fanaticism, principled, disciplined, imperturbable.