My grandmother used to tell me that history bleeds through the cracks of the present, and every time I pass the Monument of Seals in the heart of Neo-Valdris, I feel that blood on my fingertips.
Four thousand years ago—though the exact date shifts depending on which historian's databank you access—our world nearly drowned in shadow. The portal between realms didn't just break; it screamed as it died, a sound that supposedly echoed across dimensions and left every recording device of that era shattered beyond repair. What followed was the Age of Darkness, five centuries where humanity forgot what the sun looked like and children were born with eyes that had never seen natural light.
I've walked through the ruins of that time. Beneath our gleaming cities lie the bones of civilizations that withered in eternal twilight, their quantum reactors cold, their neural networks severed by demonic interference that turned our own technology against us. You can still find the scorch marks where energy weapons failed against creatures that fed on electromagnetic radiation, where our ancestors learned that sometimes the old ways—steel and flame and desperate courage—matter more than all our clever innovations.
Then came Zkyra. Not born in some pristine medical facility, but in the skeletal remains of what we now call the Dead Sectors. The archivists say that when he drew his first breath, every functioning satellite in orbit suddenly realigned toward his location. Coincidence, they claim, but I've seen the astronomical data. Stars don't lie, even when men do.
He wasn't alone in the end. Twelve others stood with him—warriors whose names are etched in both stone monuments and quantum storage drives. Among them walked Vex'thara, a demon whose betrayal of her own kind proves that evolution affects the soul as much as the flesh. Together, they forged thirteen seals that exist in dimensions our current physics barely acknowledge, barriers that hold even as our understanding of reality expands.
For his sacrifice, for binding his very essence into that first and strongest seal, Zkyra earned a title that transcends death: Sealbearer. Not just a name, but a responsibility passed down through the centuries via the Trials of Ascension.
Every four years, I watch the trials broadcast across every screen in the city. Every four years, warriors who've enhanced themselves with cybernetic implants and genetic modifications still kneel before ancient altars and swear oaths in languages that predate our current alphabet. The fusion of old and new, mythic and technological, never fails to send chills down my spine.
For the last twenty years, one name has dominated those trials: Iqbal. Five consecutive victories. The youngest champion in recorded history, winning his first title at fourteen with nothing but a neural-linked blade and reflexes that registered off every known scale. Now, at thirty-four, he moves like liquid lightning wrapped in flesh, his victories so assured that betting pools have started wagering not on if he'll win, but by how much.
The next trials are only months away. I can feel the anticipation thrumming through the city's data streams, pulsing in the neural networks that connect us all. But there's something else in that digital whisper, something the algorithms can't quite categorize.
Fear, maybe. Or hope. Sometimes they feel identical.
Because rumor has it that the seals have been... fluctuating. And in a world where mythology and technology dance together in ways our ancestors couldn't imagine, fluctuating seals mean only one thing.
The old darkness is stirring, and it's learned to speak in our modern tongues.
"No way, they're going completely nuts. Do they want me to pretend that the seals laid down by the Twelve Pillars are going to fluctuate that easily? Nonsense." Uncle Harish shook his head as he handed me my groceries, the holographic news feed still flickering above his counter. "What do you think, Hector?"
"It's just one of those TRP-fetching stories," replied Big Bro Hector, adjusting the guardian trainee insignia on his jacket. His cybernetic arm gleamed under the store's artificial lighting as he reached for his protein supplements. "The media loves stirring panic about the seals every few months."
I stayed quiet, clutching my bag tighter. The conversation felt like watching a play where I knew all the lines but couldn't participate. I'm Vairagya—Vai to everyone who bothers remembering—and I'd moved to this district last year searching for better educational opportunities. What I found instead was a daily reminder of everything I couldn't be.
My body doesn't support neural bonding. It's a rare condition, but not unheard of—maybe one in ten thousand people are born with nervous systems that reject the synthetic-organic interface that makes modern enhancement possible. When I was a kid, I used to dream of standing among the guardians, protecting this world like the legends of old. I'd practice sword forms in my bedroom mirror, imagining myself moving with impossible speed and strength.
But reality is a cruel teacher. Doing guardian work on mana alone is impossible in this age. Even Iqbal—the greatest Sealbearer in generations—relies on cybernetics to enhance his already superhuman abilities. When even the strongest warrior alive needs technological augmentation, what hope did someone like me have?
I can't even register for guardian training programs. The neural compatibility test is mandatory, and I fail it every time. The scanners light up red, the technicians shake their heads sympathetically, and I walk away knowing that my childhood dreams will remain exactly that—dreams.
"Besides," Uncle Harish continued, wiping down his counter, "if the seals were really weakening, wouldn't we feel it? The air itself would taste different. My grandfather lived through the last minor breach in 2847, and he always said you could smell the otherworld bleeding through."
Hector nodded, his enhanced reflexes already tracking the next customer entering the store. "Exactly. Plus, Iqbal's there. As long as he holds the Sealbearer title, those barriers aren't going anywhere."
"Oh, and Vai," Hector turned to me as we prepared to leave, ""Hey, don't cook for me tonight, I've got late training."
"Okay," I replied, adjusting the grocery bag in my arms.
"Thanks for handling all the cooking and cleaning, by the way. You're a lifesaver." He patted my shoulder with his human hand—his cybernetic one was still too strong for casual contact.
After we left the store, I heard Uncle Harish talking to his next customer. "That Vai's a good kid, you know. Always polite, always helps out."
Hector's voice carried from just ahead of me. "Yeah, far too good. If it wasn't for his cybernetic incompatibility, he would've become one of the kindest guardians I've ever known."
I pretended not to hear, but the words stuck to my ribs like honey.
Back at our small apartment, I found Phantom—Hector's sleek black cat—perched on the windowsill, watching the city's neon pulse through the glass. I pulled out a small container of the expensive protein treats Hector bought for her and shook a few into my palm.
"At least there's someone doesn't make me hopeless around here," I murmured as Phantom purred and rubbed against my leg, her whiskers tickling my fingers as she ate. Her warmth was comforting, a small anchor in a world where I often felt like I was floating without direction.
The communication device chimed, displaying my mother's familiar face on the holographic screen. Her smile was tired but genuine, the way it always was after long shifts at the medical facility.
"Vai, beta, how are you eating? You look thinner. Are you getting enough protein? And don't tell me you're living off those instant meal packets again."
"I'm fine, Mom. Hector's been sharing his guardian rations with me, and I've been cooking real meals." I held up one of the vegetables from today's grocery run as proof.
"Good, good. And your studies? The academy isn't giving you trouble about the... the compatibility issue, are they?"
"No trouble, Mom. They're actually pretty understanding about it." A small lie, but one that would let her sleep better.
"That's my brave boy. You know your father and I are so proud of you, right? Guardian or not, you're going to do amazing things."
"Yeah, by the way speaking of Dad, where is he? I haven't heard from him in weeks."
Her expression shifted slightly, the way it always did when she tried to shield me from worry. "Oh, he's dealing with some local gang troubles in the outer districts. Guardian duty, you know how it is. He'll be back soon, and I'll make sure he calls you the moment he's free."
Before I could ask more questions, she added quickly, "I have to go, beta. Another shift starting. Take care of yourself, and remember—we love you."
The call ended, leaving me alone with Phantom and the quiet hum of the city beyond our walls. I scratched behind the cat's ears, wondering why conversations with my parents always left me feeling like there were words we weren't saying, truths we weren't sharing.
In the distance, the Monument of Seals glowed with its eternal light, a reminder of heroes I could never hope to become.
Soon The lights began to flicker.
Not just in our apartment—when I pressed my face against the window, I watched the entire city spasm. Neo-Valdris, the jewel that never slept, suddenly convulsed like a dying star. Holographic advertisements dissolved mid-sentence. Traffic control grids went dark, leaving mag-lev vehicles suspended in confusion. The neural networks that connected millions of minds went silent, and for ten seconds, we were all catastrophically, impossibly alone.
Phantom hissed, her fur standing on end, backing away from the window as if she could see something I couldn't.
The hospitals lost power—I could see their emergency red lights struggling to ignite across the district. Manufacturing plants went silent. Even the Monument of Seals, which had burned with unwavering light for four millennia, flickered like a candle in wind that shouldn't exist. My communication device died in my hand, its screen going black mid-emergency alert.
The silence was wrong. Not peaceful—hungry. Like the world had stopped breathing and was waiting to see if it remembered how to start again.
Ten seconds. That's all it was.
Then everything roared back to life with a violence that made me stagger. Systems rebooting, people gasping as their neural links reconnected, the city's heartbeat resuming its familiar rhythm but somehow off-tempo, like a musician who'd forgotten a single crucial note. My hands were shaking. My communication device blazed back to life, already flooding with emergency broadcasts, confused voices trying to explain what couldn't be explained.
A power outage. City-wide. System-wide. Something that hadn't happened in two thousand years, not since humanity rebuilt itself after the Age of Darkness. Our redundancies had redundancies. Our backup systems had evolved consciousness of their own. We'd made ourselves immune to the very concept of technological failure.
And yet, for ten seconds, we'd tasted the void.
Outside my window, I watched a woman collapse on the street, her cybernetic enhancements stuttering back online. A child was crying, pointing at the Monument of Seals and screaming something about the light changing colors before it stabilized. Emergency vehicles were already screaming through the air, their sirens sounding almost panicked.
I couldn't have known then—none of us could—that we'd just felt the universe flinch. That ten-second stutter was history drawing breath before screaming.
That was the beginning, though we were too blind to see it.
Far beyond the reach of civilization, past the Dead Sectors, past even the Forgotten Wastes where satellite coverage turns to static—in a place the world had deliberately stopped looking:
The cave was vast enough to swallow cities. Vast enough that ancient civilizations could have built their greatest monuments in its shadow and still felt insignificant. The darkness here didn't just exist—it had weight, presence, intention. It pressed against reality like a hand against glass, testing for weaknesses.
The walls curved in geometries that shouldn't be possible, stone that looked almost organic, as if the cave itself had grown rather than formed. Veins of something that might have once been luminescent threaded through the rock, long since gone dark, creating patterns that hurt to look at too long. Symbols, perhaps. Or warnings that time had rendered meaningless.
At the center of this impossible cathedral of stone and shadow, something waited.
The cocoon was massive—easily fifty meters tall, maybe more in the darkness where perspective became negotiable. It dominated the space like a monument to something humanity had spent four thousand years trying to forget. The material it was made from defied classification: part chitin, part crystallized darkness, part something that seemed to exist between states of matter. Layers upon layers wrapped around whatever slumbered within, each one inscribed with patterns that might have been writing or might have been the fossilized screams of the last age.
The structure within was barely visible through the translucent outer layers—something immense, something regal, something that made the word "creature" feel inadequate. Its form suggested insectoid nobility taken to a cosmic scale. Limbs folded in perfect symmetry, each one longer than ancient trees, crowned with thorns or horns that could have been carved from solidified night itself. A carapace that gleamed dully even in total darkness, plated and segmented with an artisan's precision.
It had been sleeping for so long that the cave had forgotten it was a tomb. So long that the very concept of its awakening had faded from possibility into myth into less than myth—into the blank space where even legends fear to tread.
Then, as the last echo of that ten-second silence rippled through the world, through the seals, through the threadbare fabric of reality itself—
Something shifted.
The cocoon didn't crack so much as it exhaled, a hairline fracture appearing along its surface with the sound of breaking glaciers. The fissure was small, insignificant against the structure's enormity—barely the width of a hand, hardly worth noticing.
Except for what it revealed.
Through that crack, in the infinite darkness of that forgotten place, something opened.
An eye.
Just one.
But gods, that was enough.
It was massive even in that sliver of visibility—easily the size of a human torso, perhaps larger, the crack revealing only a fraction of its terrible entirety. The color was wrong, fundamentally wrong, a shade that existed somewhere between colors, the way black exists between all light. Not quite purple, not quite void, but something that made both concepts feel inadequate. Within that iris, if it could be called an iris, patterns swirled like galaxies dying in reverse, like time itself trying to remember how to flow backward.
The eye didn't blink. Didn't move. It simply was, and its existence carried more weight than the mountain of stone above it.
And it was aware.
Not groggily waking, not confused or disoriented. This was the awareness of something that had been dreaming with purpose, counting the centuries like heartbeats, waiting with a patience that made stones feel hasty.
The pupil contracted slightly—just slightly—adjusting to a darkness that was somehow less dark than what it had been seeing.
Somewhere in that infinite black gaze was recognition. Hunger, yes, but more than that. Intelligence. Ancient, terrible intelligence that had watched humanity's first cities burn and had been old even then.
A sound emerged from deep within the cocoon. Not a roar—that would have been too simple, too animal. This was harmonic, layered, a note that existed in frequencies reality wasn't designed to carry. It resonated through stone, through darkness, through the seals that humanity had spent four millennia maintaining.
In Neo-Valdris, thousands of kilometers away, seismographs registered something impossible—a vibration that moved through the earth not as a wave but as a pulse, deliberate and rhythmic, like a heartbeat from the world's core. Guardian monitoring stations would flag it as an anomaly. Scientists would spend weeks trying to explain it. And in the depths of their quantum computers, pattern recognition algorithms would start identifying a rhythm they'd been trained to watch for, a signature they prayed they'd never see.
The creature's mandibles—just barely visible through another crack that hadn't been there moments before—shifted infinitesimally. Testing. Remembering how to move after an eternity of stillness.
That single eye gleamed with something that might have been satisfaction.
One thought radiated from that cave, from that eye, from that ancient, patient, terrifying consciousness. It didn't need words. It carved itself into reality like a promise written in scars:
The first seal trembles. The Sealbearer grows comfortable. And I... I have been so very, very hungry.
The eye closed again, vanishing back into darkness.
But now that darkness felt different.
Now it felt like something was watching back.
Retry
SS
I don't want it 50 m tall just 2-3 m is enough
Edit
The lights began to flicker.
Not just in our apartment—when I pressed my face against the window, I watched the entire city spasm. Neo-Valdris, the jewel that never slept, suddenly convulsed like a dying star. Holographic advertisements dissolved mid-sentence. Traffic control grids went dark, leaving mag-lev vehicles suspended in confusion. The neural networks that connected millions of minds went silent, and for ten seconds, we were all catastrophically, impossibly alone.
Phantom hissed, her fur standing on end, backing away from the window as if she could see something I couldn't.
The hospitals lost power—I could see their emergency red lights struggling to ignite across the district. Manufacturing plants went silent. Even the Monument of Seals, which had burned with unwavering light for four millennia, flickered like a candle in wind that shouldn't exist. My communication device died in my hand, its screen going black mid-emergency alert.
The silence was wrong. Not peaceful—hungry. Like the world had stopped breathing and was waiting to see if it remembered how to start again.
Ten seconds. That's all it was.
Then everything roared back to life with a violence that made me stagger. Systems rebooting, people gasping as their neural links reconnected, the city's heartbeat resuming its familiar rhythm but somehow off-tempo, like a musician who'd forgotten a single crucial note. My hands were shaking. My communication device blazed back to life, already flooding with emergency broadcasts, confused voices trying to explain what couldn't be explained.
A power outage. City-wide. System-wide. Something that hadn't happened in two thousand years, not since humanity rebuilt itself after the Age of Darkness. Our redundancies had redundancies. Our backup systems had evolved consciousness of their own. We'd made ourselves immune to the very concept of technological failure.
And yet, for ten seconds, we'd tasted the void.
Outside my window, I watched a woman collapse on the street, her cybernetic enhancements stuttering back online. A child was crying, pointing at the Monument of Seals and screaming something about the light changing colors before it stabilized. Emergency vehicles were already screaming through the air, their sirens sounding almost panicked.
I couldn't have known then—none of us could—that we'd just felt the universe flinch. That ten-second stutter was history drawing breath before screaming.
That was the beginning, though we were too blind to see it.
Far beyond the reach of civilization, past the Dead Sectors, past even the Forgotten Wastes where satellite coverage turns to static—in a place the world had deliberately stopped looking:
The cave was vast enough to swallow cities. Vast enough that ancient civilizations could have built their greatest monuments in its shadow and still felt insignificant. The darkness here didn't just exist—it had weight, presence, intention. It pressed against reality like a hand against glass, testing for weaknesses.
The walls curved in geometries that shouldn't be possible, stone that looked almost organic, as if the cave itself had grown rather than formed. Veins of something that might have once been luminescent threaded through the rock, long since gone dark, creating patterns that hurt to look at too long. Symbols, perhaps. Or warnings that time had rendered meaningless.
At the center of this impossible cathedral of stone and shadow, something waited.
The cocoon was no larger than a human standing upright—perhaps three meters at most—but its presence filled the entire cave like a scream fills silence. Size meant nothing here. A dagger pressed against your throat is infinitely larger than a mountain on the horizon.
The material it was made from defied classification: part chitin, part crystallized darkness, part something that seemed to exist between states of matter. Layers upon layers wrapped around whatever slumbered within, each one inscribed with patterns that might have been writing or might have been the fossilized screams of the last age. Despite its modest dimensions, the cocoon commanded the space around it, as if reality itself was holding its breath in its presence.
The structure within was barely visible through the translucent outer layers—something elegant, something terrible, something regal. Its form suggested insectoid nobility taken to nightmarish perfection. Limbs folded in perfect symmetry, crowned with thorns or horns that could have been carved from solidified night itself. A carapace that gleamed dully even in total darkness, plated and segmented with an artisan's precision. Compact, efficient, beautiful in the way a predator is beautiful.
It had been sleeping for so long that the cave had forgotten it was a tomb. So long that the very concept of its awakening had faded from possibility into myth into less than myth—into the blank space where even legends fear to tread.
Then, as the last echo of that ten-second silence rippled through the world, through the seals, through the threadbare fabric of reality itself—
Something shifted.
The cocoon didn't crack so much as it exhaled, a hairline fracture appearing along its surface with the sound of breaking glaciers. The fissure was small, insignificant against even the structure's modest size—barely the width of a finger, hardly worth noticing.
Except for what it revealed.
Through that crack, in the infinite darkness of that forgotten place, something opened.
An eye.
Just one.
But gods, that was enough.
It was large even in that sliver of visibility—the size of a human hand, perhaps larger, the crack revealing only a fraction of its terrible entirety. The color was wrong, fundamentally wrong, a shade that existed somewhere between colors, the way black exists between all light. Not quite purple, not quite void, but something that made both concepts feel inadequate. Within that iris, if it could be called an iris, patterns swirled like galaxies dying in reverse, like time itself trying to remember how to flow backward.
The eye didn't blink. Didn't move. It simply was, and its existence carried more weight than the mountain of stone above it.
And it was aware.
Not groggily waking, not confused or disoriented. This was the awareness of something that had been dreaming with purpose, counting the centuries like heartbeats, waiting with a patience that made stones feel hasty.
The pupil contracted slightly—just slightly—adjusting to a darkness that was somehow less dark than what it had been seeing.
Somewhere in that infinite black gaze was recognition. Hunger, yes, but more than that. Intelligence. Ancient, terrible intelligence that had watched humanity's first cities burn and had been old even then.
A sound emerged from deep within the cocoon. Not a roar—that would have been too simple, too animal. This was harmonic, layered, a note that existed in frequencies reality wasn't designed to carry. It resonated through stone, through darkness, through the seals that humanity had spent four millennia maintaining.
The creature's mandibles—just barely visible through another crack that hadn't been there moments before—shifted infinitesimally. Testing. Remembering how to move after an eternity of stillness.
That single eye gleamed with something that might have been satisfaction.
One thought radiated from that cave, from that eye, from that ancient, patient, terrifying consciousness. It didn't need words. It carved itself into reality like a promise written in scars.
The eye then closed again, vanishing back into darkness.
But now that darkness felt different.
Now it felt like something was watching back.