He hovers over the controls as the moon swells in the window, pale and scarred and undeniably real. The capsule trembles with tiny mechanical corrections, each one a reminder that this journey is not guided by prophecy but by numbers, nerves, and discipline. He once imagined a silver kingdom waiting below, but now he sees only dust, shadow, and a silence too vast to flatter him. The old fantasy still flickers at the edge of his mind, yet it no longer feels like truth, only a costume he has outgrown.

The landing sequence arms itself around him, and his breath comes slow and thin inside the helmet. He thinks of the apartment, the roof, the mail, the textbooks, and every ridiculous step that carried him here without magic at all. Nothing about this moment is grand in the way he once demanded, and that is what makes it sacred. The moon does not promise him a crown; it offers him a surface, a risk, and the chance to belong to something real.