High above the jagged mountain ridges, where the air grew thin and the clouds were like torn silk, a four-winged raven soared.
Its sleek black feathers shimmered like oil beneath a sunless sky. Each beat of its wings carved through the wind with terrifying grace. The bird wasn't just flying. It was hunting.
A kite bird darted ahead, wings wide, gliding gracefully through pockets of wind. The raven followed silently, its four wings adjusting with eerie precision. It wasn't merely hunger. It was instinct, purpose.
The kite veered higher and higher, leading the chase above cliffs, through broken trees, beyond the peaks where even snow refused to cling.
Then the world shifted.
Above even the tallest mountain, hidden by clouds that curled like sleeping dragons, an island revealed itself — a floating paradise, green and radiant, with lush grasslands, tall trees, and rivers that shimmered like silver threads. Flowers bloomed in impossible colors. Birds unlike any other sang songs never heard before.
The raven barely hesitated. It veered toward the floating land, wings tightening.
It pierced the veil of mist and entered.
And then—
Its wings unflew themselves.
Muscle memory dissolved.
Feathers forgot they were feathers.
The bird didn't die.
It became irrelevant.
It landed in the tall grass of paradise. The island's blossoms turned toward it, not in hunger—
but like stones noticing rain.
---
Far away, in a quiet stone temple nestled in a lonely valley, a boy knelt in prayer.
The room around him was small and humble. A mat of woven reeds covered the floor, and threads of incense drifted lazily through wooden rafters. Morning light filtered through a circular window, bathing the stone walls in gold.
The boy's eyes were closed, hands clasped.
He prayed the same five words he'd prayed since childhood,
no more meaningful now than breathing.
Then a soft bell rang deeper in the temple.
The call for chores, not revelation.
Outside, monks walked the gravel paths. Their robes brushed against the stone, their sandals making no noise.
One of them peered into the room as he passed, pausing briefly, then moving on.
As he rose, a dead raven hit the garden outside.
He brushed its feathers off the radishes,
as routine as removing aphids.
Even as a faint shift moved through the air, like something unseen had changed.
Even as, far above, something with four wings fell silently to earth.
---
Elsewhere, in a place untouched by time or reason, two figures hovered.
The space around them was blank — an endless stretch of white. There was no sky, no ground, only pressure and presence.
One of the figures sat cross-legged in midair. Its body rippled with black and red shadows, a shape undefined. It did not breathe. It did not blink.
Beside him, a flower bloomed on the empty surface, its petals unfolding slowly. It shimmered in shades of red and violet, impossibly vivid in the colorless void.
Then, from the heart of the flower, a small mouth opened.
It did not scream.
But it should have.
The second figure approached slowly, his own form cloaked in the same twisting shadows. He said nothing at first.
The seated figure, eyes fixed on the grotesque bloom, finally spoke.
"You messed up again," the seated shadow said.
"Subject crossed the exclusion threshold."
The standing shadow's form flickered.
Not with guilt—with system recalibration.
The flower's silent scream twisted.
A data point. Not a tragedy.
"Reset the parameters," the first shadow commanded.
"And incinerate the valley below.
Its noise attracts trespassers."
They both stared at it, watching the petals curl, the lips twitch, the scream that never came.
No explanation was needed.
The island had accepted its first offering.
And the gods had turned their eyes.
---
Back at the temple, the boy finally rose, brushing dust from his knees. He moved to the stone basin and washed his hands. Outside, sparrows chirped. A breeze stirred the incense.
He didn't look at the sky.
Didn't notice the faint shimmer far, far above.
Didn't feel the new silence settling over the valley.
His day began like any other.
But high in the heavens, parameters had shifted.
The paradise had processed an anomaly.
The valley beneath it would burn a
t dusk.
And the boy who swept its steps?
He noticed only that the radishes needed watering.
[End of Chapter 4]