Chapter 24 – The Fractured World
Previously, in Chapter 24:
Enver headed to the old gate Elhara had shown him. There, he began to see that the ones he called his parents were not his blood. Morren and Wirly—names strange yet somehow familiar within his chest. Meanwhile, the world began to tremble softly. Something long restrained… had begun to leak.
---
The sky did not cry.
It merely stayed silent, yet faint cracks appeared across its surface—like glass about to shatter, but lacking the courage to break entirely.
Enver drove home in silence. His hands stayed steady on the wheel, yet his eyes kept catching faint shadows in the rearview mirror—shadows of a world that should not exist in the human realm. The city lights seemed dimmer, as if red itself was being scraped away by grey.
As he passed an intersection, a bird fell in front of his car.
It wasn't dead… but its eyes—were human.
No blood, yet Enver's breath halted for a moment.
"Are you trying to slip through the boundary?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
His car turned, heading toward a place no one but he had ever visited: the chamber of soul storage. A vault where his cards were kept—each one containing the soul of a human or astral being he had purified. Some had left after aiding him. Some stayed willingly.
But tonight, the chamber felt different.
Its darkness was no longer the usual calm—it was void.
Enver opened the door. The crystal lamps on the ceiling flickered to life, yet some blinked erratically.
The cards within their crystal capsules stood upright as always—yet three of them were trembling. Enver approached, eyes narrowing toward one shelf in the corner.
Empty.
One card… missing.
He touched the space where it had been. There was still a lingering aura: a heavy pressure, but not entirely Maxcen's. There was something human within that energy. Hot, yet shadowed. Neither demon, nor angel. Something that should never have been able to enter this place.
Enver's brow furrowed. No signs of forced entry. This was not brute force—it was subtle power, seeping in without breaking the walls. Like a spirit that knew the way into a home it had built itself.
He murmured,
"This isn't the first time the world has tried to copy me…"
---
Outside, the city began to falter.
Children cried at midnight for no reason. Priests began to see shadows appearing during prayer. And in one hospital, a comatose patient suddenly woke and said:
> "The sky has broken… you can't fix it anymore…"
They called it delusion. But Enver knew—it was a symptom.
The barrier between the human and astral worlds was starting to leak. Not in an explosion, but in a slow seep—like water from a cracked wall whose fissure could not be seen.
---
That night, Enver stood atop a tall building.
Above him, the sky looked like black glass. And at one point… he saw a thin crack. Symmetrical. Circular. Almost like an eye.
From his coat pocket, he pulled out a card—one of the Ten of Hearts. It glowed dimly. But not in its usual color.
Red and black. The color of wounds and char.
The card trembled. And on its surface… it did not reflect him. But another silhouette, standing in mist.
"Who do you reflect?" Enver whispered.
No answer. Only the faint trembling of the card. He knew… this was no ordinary card. This one contained something not yet tamed.
---
The next morning, Enver returned to the card chamber.
He inspected every astral protection system. None were broken.
Yet… nothing could explain how one card had vanished without a trace.
He wrote a single sentence on the wall, in the language of spirits:
> "The one who enters without permission… may have once lived here."
---
Elsewhere—not far from the fracture in the sky—a small child sat by the roadside. Crying, but without a sound. Beneath him, tears flowed—not water, but black ink.
People passed by, seeing nothing. But the sky was watching.
And in that sky, a voice without form whispered softly:
> "The gate has cracked. The barrier's days are numbered. A new world wants to be born… but the child does not yet know who its father is."
---
That night, Enver sat in the back seat of an empty car.
He held a card—not to use, but to test. He summoned its energy. But the spirit within… was silent.
Normally, they would respond. Greet him. Tremble.
But this time, the spirit in the card seemed to be staring back with eyes unfamiliar.
And when Enver closed his own… he heard a whisper:
> "We don't want to be kept… we want to live again."
---
The sky was overcast.
But not with clouds.
With a world beginning to lose its shape—because the boundaries that gave it form… were starting to dissolve.
And Enver understood:
> "If I'm not the one to seal this rift… then the world will become a prison for spirits that never found peace."