The wind whispered through the broken beams of what once was a home filled with laughter, warmth, and promise. Now, it was only ashes and cinders. Astraeus sat with his back against the cold wall, the very foundation of his childhood crumbling beneath him. His armor, charred and cracked, hung loosely on his battered frame. Smoke still curled from the ruins, but it wasn't the fire that hurt the most—it was the silence.
Astraeus knelt at the edge of the ruins, ash clinging to his burnt robe. His hand trembled as he picked up a glowing ember — the trace of his father's fire.
"You're gone," he whispered. "And I couldn't save you."
The world around him felt cracked. The sky was the of dead steel, thunderclouds rolling like waves above. Somewhere behind him, the soldiers of the Crystal Empire shouted for him to surrender. But Astraeus didn't move. His mind was a hurricane of flame and guilt.
Then it happened.
The ground beneath them quaked, as if something ancient had been disturbed. A low hum filled the air, followed by a searing light that pulsed from beneath the scorched earth. The ember in his palm began to glow brighter— violently brighter — until it shattered in a burst of heat.
A symbol carved itself across his chest in burning lines — a glowing sigil shaped like a wormpool of flame and crystal. He screamed as his body lifted off the ground.
And then… the earth collapsed.
Not fell collapsed.
Like a sinkhole into another world.
—Landara:
He fell through fire, through darkness, through something colder than ice. It wasn't death. It was transit. Like the world itself was remapping his location.
He tried to scream, but all he could hear was rushing water. Not above him. Not around him. Inside him. His blood churned. His skin cracked and mended. His fire no longer burned upward — it spiraled, flowed, twisted.
When Astraeus hit the bottom, it wasn't solid.
It was liquid glass.
His eyes opened underwater.
But he could breathe.
He panicked — thrashing — until he realized his lungs were pulling in oxygen from a
glowing blue orb hovering just in front of his mouth. The orb hummed gently, like it was alive.
He rose slowly from the sand, surrounded by a vast underwater expanse. Coral towers stretched into the darkness above. Creatures he couldn't name swam through spiraling currents that glowed with bio-luminescent energy. Strange manta-like beings drifted past with translucent wings.
He wasn't on Earth. He wasn't even in the same realm.
Astraeus had fallen into a different world — a world beneath the world. A realm called…
Landara.
—Merchant:
"You'r lucky you landed in the shallows," said a voice behind him.
Astraeus spun around. A man stood there, arms crossed, floating just above the seabed. He wore a dark purple cloak made of what looked like jellyfish silk, and his long hair floated like ink in the water.
He had gills.
"You would've been crushed by the depths otherwise," the man said. "But then again…
People like you don't fall into Landara by accident. You're marked."
"Who… are you?" Astraeus gasped, his voice somehow audible in the water.
The man smirked and bowed. "Name's Joga.
Merchant, liar, occasional hero. But today… just your Guide. And you, my fiery friend, are about to start a war you can't see yet."
Astraeus blinked. "I don't want to start anything. I just want to go home."
Joga's expression turned grim. "There's no way home. Not until you do what The ocean brought you here to do."
Astraeus clenched his fists, his flame flaring in the water like ribbons of magma.
"I didn't ask for this."
"No one ever does," Joga said. "But the Ocean King is waking. And something's coming. Something older than flame, and darker than The deepest trench. Landara chose you."
Astraeus looked upward. He couldn't even see the surface anymore. Just water,
Shimmering, endless.
He didn't know it yet, but this was the first current in a tide would change every realm forever.
To be continued…