I stared at my daughter Inanna as she paced furiously through the dimly lit underground chamber. Her usual composure had cracked, replaced by raw anguish and rage.

“Two cities, father. Two entire cities gone in an instant.” Her voice cracked. “If Nanaya hadn’t warned us…” She slammed her fist against the crystalline wall.

The Igiggi’s subterranean sanctuary beneath the pyramids felt suffocating. Reports kept flooding in – descriptions of the massive explosions, the devastating aftermath. My brother’s nuclear weapons had turned Sodom and Gomorrah into wastelands.

“We tried to evacuate them.” Inanna’s eyes glistened with tears. “But they wouldn’t listen. They mocked Marduk’s priests, ignored the guards. Called them false prophets of doom.”

I reached for her shoulder, but she pulled away. “How many more must die before we stop him? We have the most advanced technology in the solar system, the greatest minds, and yet we can’t find one megalomaniac hiding in one planet?”

“Daughter-“

“Don’t ‘daughter’ me!” She spun to face me. “Enlil just murdered thousands to try to kill Marduk and me. Our own family! And here we sit, in this hole, while he plots his next attack.”

A messenger rushed in, clutching a tablet. Inanna snatched it, her face growing paler as she read.

“The marketplace…” Her voice was barely a whisper. “The entire merchant quarter. The temple district. All gone. Adina, Nuriel, the whole council of human elders…” She dropped the tablet, her hands shaking. “They were my friends once, father. I watched them grow.”

The weight of loss hung heavy in the air. My brilliant, fierce daughter stood before me, wounded in a way no technology could heal. My brother’s madness had carved a scar across her heart that would never fully fade.

I watched my daughter’s transformation, her grief morphing into something more dangerous: pure, focused rage.

“We’re calling an emergency council,” she declared, her voice cutting through the chamber’s somber silence. “Right now.”

I knew that tone. It was the same tone her mother used when making non-negotiable decisions. “Here? In the Igiggi compounds?”

“Exactly.” Inanna’s eyes blazed with determination. “Underground. Every remaining Anunnaki warrior, every strategic leader. No more hiding. No more waiting.”

She activated a holographic communication panel, her fingers flying across the crystalline interface. Encrypted signals pulsed through secure channels – calling Marduk, Abgal, the remaining Igiggi commanders, our most trusted allies.

“They’ll come,” she said, not a question but a statement. “We cannot let Enlil continue destroying everything we’ve built. Everything we’ve protected.”

I recognized the fire in her stance. My daughter was no longer just planning a meeting. She was preparing for war.

“They will not!”

I turned, stunned by the familiar voice. Ninki lay on a medical wheelchair, her silvery skin pale but her eyes sharp and focused. Despite her recent brush with death, she radiated an intensity that silenced the room.

“Mother,” Inanna’s voice wavered between hope and frustration. “You should be resting.”

Ninki’s gaze locked with Inanna’s. “They will not come for they are bound by the same promise you have with me, Inanna.”

I watched my daughter’s expression transform. The hope in her eyes flickered and died, replaced by a complex mixture of confusion and rising anger. She should have been overjoyed to see her mother conscious, recovering from what seemed like certain death after Enlil’s attack. But in this moment, with cities burning and thousands dead, joy was the furthest emotion from her mind.

Inanna stood frozen, the communication panel still humming with half-sent signals. The promise hung between them – an invisible chain restraining action when every instinct screamed for movement, for vengeance.

Her hands clenched into fists, trembling slightly. “Not now,” she muttered, more to herself than to Ninki or me. “Not when everything is burning.”

I watched the tension crackle between my daughter and my wife like static electricity before a storm. Ninki’s voice cut through the underground chamber with a gravitas that made even the most hardened Igiggi warriors fall silent.

“I have seen this before,” she said, her words carrying the weight of millennia. “Intervention means certain destruction. Non-intervention means a chance – however slim – of survival.”

Inanna’s rage boiled over. “Survival? Cities are burning! Thousands are dead! How can you speak of non-intervention, mother?”

Ninki’s silver eyes flashed. “Because I have witnessed civilizations far more advanced than this collapse under the weight of their own rage. One false move, one moment of unchecked emotion, and entire star systems have been reduced to cosmic dust.”

“This is different,” Inanna spat. “This is personal. Enlil murdered-“

“Murdered?” Ninki’s tone was cold. “Child, you understand nothing of the cosmic balance… of life itself!”

I watched, understanding that something deeper was happening. Ninki was more than she appeared – always had been. Her origins were a mystery even to me, despite our centuries together.

Inanna’s defiance crumbled slightly, her shoulders dropping from their rigid stance. “Show me, then,” she challenged, though her voice carried less conviction than before. “Show me what you see.”

Ninki’s expression softened, the stern lines around her silver eyes melting away like frost in sunlight. “Come here,” she said quietly, extending her elegant hands. “Kneel.”

As Inanna approached, I felt a strange energy building – something ancient and profound that made my skin tingle beneath my golden armor. The air seemed to thicken, charged with something beyond our understanding, reminiscent of the cosmic forces we’d witnessed in the depths of space.

Ninki placed her thumbs on Inanna’s forehead with the delicate precision of a master geneticist. Suddenly, their eyes erupted in a brilliant white light – a connection so intense it seemed to transcend physical reality. The radiance reminded me of the first time I’d witnessed a star’s birth in the Pleiades, raw and pure and overwhelming.

“Is she seeing it?”

“She is seeing it…”

“Is that even possible?

“Sure is possible!”

“Shouldn’t be!”

“Possibility… plausibility… impossibility…”

“Will she understand?”

“She will not!

“She will!”

I watched in stunned silence as the light between Ninki and Inanna faded. My daughter’s eyes opened… I knew something profound had transformed her in mee seconds, she even seemed to age!

She turned slowly, her gaze distant and haunted. Tears began to flow – not the sharp, angry tears of moments before, but a deep, endless river of grief that seemed to carry centuries of sorrow.

“Dam’khe shu-ta my beautiful planet…”

Without fully understanding what had transpired, I moved. My body acted on pure instinct, crossing the chamber in three long strides. I gathered her into my arms, holding her trembling form against my chest.

As I embraced her, I began to sing – an ancient Nibiruan lament, the song of the dying swan. It was a melody older than our civilization, a song of farewell, of love’s final breath, of profound longing. The words spoke of beauty that must pass, of love that must release, of moments that slip away like water through open hands.

My voice carried the weight of millennia, the pain of countless partings, the inevitable dance of creation and destruction. Each note was a caress, each phrase a gentle goodbye to everything we had ever loved.

Inanna remained silent, her tears continuing to flow… would she ever stop crying? That was my only concern!