Empyrean Iris: 3-99 After Life (by Charlie Star)
FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.
OC Written by Charlie Star/starrfallknightrise,
Checked, proofread, typed up and then posted here by me.
Further proofreading and language check for some chapters by u/Finbar9800 u/BakeGullible9975 u/Didnotseemecomein and u/medium_jock
Future Lore and fact check done by me.
Now say it with me! Fa fafafaaa fafafaaa FA… FUUUUCK!
Don’t believe me? Just wait to the first chapter break in here and a shift of view…
Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
Present time, somewhere in a Maker base.
The door shut behind them quietly, a soft whirring noise in an otherwise dark hallway. The group of them huddled in a nervous cluster, allowing their eyes to slowly adjust to the dark. At first Krill was sure they had walked into pitch blackness, but in a moment...
Light.
Small pinpricks, like distant stars and universes erupted over the walls and floors, winking softly like a distant night sky. For a moment, they were given the impression of black marble, but as the light grew, the effect of the stone faded away, leaving them with a sense of depth that stretched onto infinity in every direction. Not only were there stars now, but visible galaxies spiraling through the air, their arms reaching on into blackness.
Colorful emissions nebulae glowed against the backdrop of space, blue or purple in color stretching lightyears through the vast darkness. The only way they were to know that they were even on a floor, was the feeling below their feet, and the subtle glowing lines that marked the junctions in which wall met floor and ceiling.
Eyes wide with wonder, Adam reached out a hand and traced his finger across the wall, feeling the cold smoothness of stone, while still seeing a vast universe splayed out before him, unfolded like the wings of a cosmic angel.
"What is this place?”
Maverick stepped forward, turning in a slow circle, her eyes wide, lips slightly parted as she reached out a hand,
"I don't know."
Ramirez was doing his very best to look unimpressed, though his eyes were as wide as dinner plates,
"Well the Makers brought us here, so we can assume that this is... Heaven, right?"
"Well if we have learned anything…"
Adam said, continuing to trail his hands over the wall,
"Than it is that our understanding of the Makers is hardly complete."
"Fine, then the analogous version of heaven or something kind of like it?"
"Remind some of us what Heaven is again, preferably explained like we wouldn’t know what it is at all."
Krill said his voice too absent and amazed to sound annoyed.
"The Spirit world."
Sunny muttered
"It's a theological idea."
Maverick began, though her voice was distant as well,
"A concept dedicated to wondering what happens after we die. There are a lot of versions of it, some that have multiple levels, some that involve an endless field where the soul walks forever, others that say god sits on a shining throne and is surrounded by angels that constantly sing his praise. That sort of thing."
Adam took a step back down the hall, turning his head, reaching out a hand towards one of the small galaxies,
"For some reason the architect doesn't strike me as someone who goes in for that kind of thing."
Maverick shrugged.
"I actually am kind of into what he DOES go in for though."
Adam said.
It was only then that they began to hear voices rising behind them, looking over their shoulders to the faint outline of a door sketched mid-universe.
"I think someone has noticed we are missing."
Conn said, his head tilted slightly to one side, as if he was trying to listen more intently.
"I think you're right."
Adam said, reaching out to grab Sunny by the wrist,
"I think it's time that we got out of here."
Ramirez broke into a jog along with the others though he looked almost skeptical,
"Don't you think a group of all powerful cosmic beings are going to be able to find us pretty easily in their own house? What are we even trying to do?"
Adam took a sudden turn, surprising everyone else who didn't see the second opening in the hallway,
"We are getting answers."
"Maybe YOU are getting answers, but I am really only getting more questions."
Sunny muttered.
"Either way, we have to try."
Maverick struggled to keep up with his long strides with her short legs, and had to practically jog to keep up,
"I feel like this is one of those things where you say we are doing one thing, but what we are really doing is satisfying your curiosity and need to explore pretty much every alien thing that we run into?"
"I feel very called out, but very understood and… woah, hold on and watch your step, I think there are stairs here."
He was indeed correct, and they found themselves walking down a set of stairs. With every step, the stars around them began to change, shifting forward as if they were going thousands of lightyears with every step their bodies lit up by the light of ambient stars.
They watched in awe as a four-armed spiral galaxy drifted past to their right, so close Adam felt as if he could have reached out and cupped it in the palms of his hands, but when he tried he found only the solid walls of stone.
Echoes erupted behind them, and Adam turned to look over his shoulder frowning,
"I think it's time to pick a door."
"What door!?”
Maverick asked holding her arms out to either side.
"Uh... Oh, let’s take THIS door."
"There was definitely not a door there a second ago."
She said, crossing her arms in annoyance.
Adam shrugged and reached out, quickly throwing the door open and dragging them inside as the voices behind them began to grow in intensity.
He shut the door quietly behind them, plunging them into partial darkness.
Behind him, he could hear the sound of running footsteps and voices as they hurried up the hall and then... vanished.
"Woah."
Turning his head to the sound of awed amazement, Adam opened his mouth to say something, but paused, eyes wide.
The room they stood in was completely black, not as in it was dark, but the walls and floors were made of more of that black obsidian glass that they had seen earlier. It was completely black and completely smooth and partially reflective. The stars were gone, and the galaxies had vanished, leaving them simply with the black marble floor.
A black marble floor and a glowing cube suspended in the middle of the room.
The room itself was larger than it looked, and as they approached, Adam could see that the cube was larger than the average man or woman, spinning slowly above them, suspended by nothing in particular, or nothing he could see at the moment.
And inside the cube, the source of light: The sky, or more accurately a captured moment of blue sky crossed with delicate billowing clouds of white. The cube spun slowly, and walking around its base, it appeared to be just that, a cube, containing a captured patch of sky.
"What the hell!?”
Someone muttered.
Adam took a tentative step forward, and as he did the cube began to shed sparks.
He took a nervous step back, watching as the sparks began falling from the lowest corner of the cube and onto the black marble floor.
The sparks were the color of an afternoon blue sky, and when they hit the marble, they behaved more like water creating a puddle that spread outward slowly. The sparks turned from a drip into a steady trickle, and as it did it seemed to create a rift, or tear in the very fabric of space, drawing a curtain of sky open below the cube.
A waterfall of heaven.
At a certain point, the flow coming down from the cube and the puddle of sky below it did not continue to grow, and Adam stepped up to its edge, staring out at... at what?"
It looked familiar, but then again, all sky looked familiar, especially when you were a fighter pilot.
It was the ground that was more important.
And in there, he didn't see any ground.
[…]
General Kazna rested on the floor of her cell.
Her legs ached as they had since the very moment the tendons on her feet were severed, and she was turned into a cripple, a hideous facsimile of what she once had been. From where she lay, mewling and pathetic on the floor, all she had to think about was the past, her victories sometimes, but mostly her failures.
The loss of Lanus.
The loss of her son.
The loss of the Drev war.
Her daughter.
Deep down a part of her knew that that was wrong. That Chalan couldn't be a failure. If the spirits had chosen her to be a saint, then she was in no way unworthy, but bitterness clouded her thoughts and shaped her true judgement, and the bitterness she had always held only grew until it left a sour taste in her mouth. Instead of rejecting it, she held it like a kit in her arms, nursing it and cradling it until it had become something more, had grown into a monster that kept her company and prowled at the edges of her mind, begging for release from this cage, a release that she knew would never come.
So she lay, waiting.
The days turning into months, the months into years.
Or at least that was how it seemed.
She had stopped keeping track of time, stopped keeping track of meals. She didn't bother to eat most of the time, but her body was too desperate to live for her to outright starve herself, much to her chagrin. It would be the honorable thing to do, and she could finally return to Lanus.
Her dear dear Lanus.
She closed her eyes and sighed, feeling the cold metal of the floor underneath her as she lay curled on the cell floor waiting for her ignominious end.
There was an echo down the hallway.
She didn't bother paying attention to it, just like she didn't bother paying attention to much that went on these days.
There it was again, followed by a nervous muttering from the inmates, which echoed up the hall and towards where she was lying.
She rolled over to face the wall.
There it was one more time.
She growled and turned over where she lay, lifting her head towards the hallway.
Something was off.
The light was wrong, like there wasn't nearly enough of it.
Kazna lifted herself, dragging her useless legs across the floor and over towards the dimly glowing force shield that kept her in.
The hallway was darker than usual, or at least that was how it seemed.
She craned her neck, trying to see through the shield and down the hallway, though it was difficult.
The noise came again.
A sudden sharp thudding noise accompanied by the sudden death of light.
She pulled back slightly, listening to the sounds of the inmates growing louder, more frantic.
She could hear them now, whimpering and calling out for the guards to help them as the darkness made its slow way up the hall. Nervous demands turned into to whimpering, turned into pleading, turned into screaming.
Kazna pulled back, watching the doorway.
The pleading and screaming intensified.
There was another thud, and another light went out, just to the left of her cell, plunging that hallway into blackness.
Her cellmate, the one sitting just to her left began to whimper, and then to plead, and then to scream.
Kazna pulled back even further, her eyes locked on the outside of the cell.
The light overhead flickered, dimmed.
She could hear its desperate buzzing from here as she looked on.
Listened as it cut out.
Thud.
Something was here, she could sense it. Like a cold finger running down her spine she knew she was not alone. She pressed back into the wall, hands feeling for a weapon, something, anything to protect herself, but she found nothing.
Her cell had been completely stripped of material as precaution against her own self-destructive behaviors.
She had done this to herself.
She wanted to cry out in fear, but swallowed it down.
After all the humiliations that she had been put through, she would not stand for this again. If she was going to die, then she was going to do it with some measure of dignity, rather than lying on the floor mewling like some kind of worm.
"Whatever you want, get it over with quickly."
She hissed,
"I have better things to do."
"Like wallowing in your own self pity perhaps?”
Kazna flinched back against the wall, surprised to have received an answer.
Even more surprised to know the voice which spoke.
…
Her own voice.
She pressed back harder against the wall, watching as the darkness before her seemed to part, and a shape stepped from the dark.
Watching as SHE stepped from the dark.
Or at least something that looked like her, something that looked like her but more, more beautiful, more powerful. Reminiscent of what she had looked like in the days of her glory, tall and graceful, with glowing golden eyes and purple carapace that shone with a dark inner light. Her eyes were so gold that they seemed to glow, emitting a light all their own. Her face was, strong and proud and beautiful, lifted like a warrior.
And around her body she wore the most beautiful armor Kazna had ever seen.
Black, but when she moved color sprang to the surface.
It was like saint armor, but better, jagged and hard, embodying how her soul felt: tattered and broken like shards.
"What are you?"
She demanded
The other her tilted her head,
"I am what you could be."
Kazna felt her heart beginning to speed up in her chest.
"What do you want from me?"
"We simply want to bring you to your full potential."
The figure paced,
"You have caught our attention for a while, been keeping an eye on you we have. We like what we see."
The figure stepped forward to look down at her,
"Your soul... attracts us like no other before it, and we would like to make you a deal."
"What deal?"
Kazna said eyes narrowing,
"To return you to your former glory of course. To be able to walk again, to be able to fight again."
Her chest throbbed.
She did want that.
"What's the catch?"
"You work for us of course, but I think you will find that we want the same things."
She crossed her arms,
"And how do you know what I want?"
"How about Lanus?”
She froze, sucking in a breath as she heard his name spoken out loud,
"Lanus!?”*
"Yes of course. You would like to see him again, would you not? To hold him again.”
She couldn't speak, and so was only able to nod.
"We thought so. Then there is your deal. You do this for us, and we leave him to you."
Kazna looked away,
"He's dead, they killed him!"
"Not dead, just ascended. I promise all of this will make sense to you in time."
There was a pause,
"So, will you agree? Will you swear your fealty to us and surrender your soul?”
Another long pause.
Kazna looked into the cold golden eyes of her counterpart.
The gold reminded her of Lanus.
"Yes."
Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story in its original form written by starrfallknightrise and I am just proofreading and improving some parts, as well as structuring the story for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!
Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this.
Posted Jul 31, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC