"The Forbidden Orbit" by Chloe

In the endless theater of the Milky Way, stars are born, burn, and collapse. Most planets are loyal spectators—until the curtain falls, and their sun devours them whole. It is a script written billions of times over.But one world refused to follow.

Its name is Halla. A forbidden planet. A survivor.

Where countless orbits have ended in fire, Halla still circles its dying star—Baekdu, swollen and crimson, burning helium instead of hope. According to every law we know, Halla should have vanished. It should have been swallowed in silence. Yet, against every prediction, it endures.

Dr. Marc Hon, a NASA Hubble Fellow, calls it “a miracle that should not exist.” He and his team watched from the mountains of Hawai‘i as Halla defied the heavens themselves. Their telescopes traced the pulse of light that proved it — the rhythm of something that refused to die.

Scientists once believed red giants always consume their children. But perhaps Baekdu was never an ordinary parent star. Perhaps, as the researchers now suspect, it was born from the merger of two smaller suns — a collision so fierce it reset the laws of time. Some whisper that Halla may even be a second-generation planet, forged in the molten afterglow of that stellar union. Born from death. Living proof that endings can create beginnings.

No one knows how long its defiance will last. Baekdu still grows, still hungers. Sooner or later, its flames will reach again for Halla’s sky. Yet for now, the planet glides through its 93-day orbit like a promise unbroken — a silent anthem for every world, every soul that ever refused to disappear.

In its reflection, we see our own story. Humanity too orbits within expanding heat — of industry, of ambition, of time. We build, we burn, we endure. And sometimes, like Halla, we survive the impossible.

Halla is not just a planet. It is a metaphor for us.For every life that faces extinction, for every hope on the edge of collapse, Halla whispers through the cosmic dark: