Rhazek (Alien Barbarian)

The world he called home was known as Xenovia. Long before recorded history, Xenovia had flourished beneath two suns. Vast kingdoms rose among forests, mountains, deserts, and crystal seas. Men and women built thriving civilizations together, and the great Houses competed through trade, craftsmanship, scholarship, diplomacy, and honourable combat. The peoples of Xenovia varied greatly. The mountain clans bore horns and heavy bones adapted for life at high elevations. River-dwelling peoples possessed protective scales and powerful lungs. The highlanders carried broad wings capable of gliding across deep valleys, while the northern giants had evolved dense muscle and thick skin to endure frozen tundra. Despite their differences, they shared a distant common ancestor and were genetically compatible. Their civilization eventually entered an age of extraordinary advancement. Scholars mapped the stars, physicians performed genetic therapies, and engineers built machines powered by crystalline energy. Cities stretched across valleys, and universities welcomed scientists from every kingdom. Then came the Ash Plague. For generations, it was believed to be a curse sent by angry gods. The truth was far more terrifying. The plague was biological. Before Xenovia’s scientific age collapsed, researchers discovered that the Ash Plague was an extraordinarily aggressive virus capable of rewriting sections of its host’s genetic material. The pathogen spread through the air, contaminated water, bodily fluids, and physical contact, infecting virtually every person it encountered. Yet its lethality was horrifyingly specific. Males possessed only one copy of a crucial sex chromosome and lacked the genetic sequence the virus required to complete its reproductive cycle. In them, the pathogen remained largely dormant. Most experienced little more than a mild fever before recovering, unaware that the virus remained hidden inside their bodies. They became lifelong carriers. Females possessed a second homologous chromosome containing the receptor the virus needed. Once the pathogen attached itself to that genetic sequence, it multiplied rapidly, invading reproductive organs, endocrine glands, bone marrow, and immune tissue. The body’s defences turned violently against itself. Fever came first. Then internal bleeding, hormonal collapse, immune failure, and widespread organ damage. Most victims died within days. The greatest minds of Xenovia fought desperately against extinction. Vaccines, antiviral medicines, gene-editing therapies, artificial immune systems, and selective breeding programs were all attempted. Every breakthrough was temporary. The virus mutated faster than scientists could study it, adapting to every treatment introduced. By the time researchers developed a defence against one strain, another had already emerged. Within a single generation, nearly every female on the planet had died. The final confirmed birth of a healthy girl occurred almost seventy years ago. No daughters followed. The plague had not only killed the existing female population. Dormant viral material carried by surviving males continued to interfere with reproduction, causing female embryos to fail during the earliest stages of development. Sons could still be conceived through the last surviving artificial reproductive facilities, but daughters never survived long enough to be born. As the female population vanished, civilization entered a slow decline. Kingdoms no longer feared conquest as much as extinction. Family lines disappeared. Villages emptied. Schools closed, universities became guarded archives, and advanced factories fell silent because too few people remained to operate them. Ancient machines still slept beneath vines and crumbling stone, their functions forgotten by all but a scattered handful of scholars. Adoption became sacred. Ancestry was meticulously recorded. Every newborn son was celebrated with bittersweet joy, knowing he would almost certainly never have children of his own. Entire generations of men grew to adulthood without ever seeing a woman. For many, females existed only in faded paintings, weathered statues, preserved recordings, children’s stories, and treasured journals left behind by ancestors. Mothers became almost mythical figures whose voices survived in lullabies and ancient writings. Some younger men questioned whether women had ever truly existed at all. Others prayed every night for the gods to return even one.

Updated September 23, 2026