The sky above Earth was no longer ordinary.
Every night, streaks of blue-white fire carved across the heavens—not meteors, not satellites, but something stranger. Each falling light spiraled like a comet and split into fragments before crashing into mountains, plains, and drowned cities. Humanity called them Awakening Crystal Tombs. They landed wherever fate pleased, shards of other worlds burning their way into reality.
And wherever they fell, someone awoke.
Sometimes a child. Sometimes a dying soldier. Each chosen human rose from the mist, shaking, screaming, radiant with new power granted by invisible forces—the Constellations.
Not stars.
Not gods.
Something in between.
They were Upper Realm entities, unseen watchers who observed, judged, and blessed. They had no faces, only nicknames whispered across the surviving networks: Iron Claw. Moon Fang. Void Whisper. Silent Ember. The Unblinking Eye.
To humankind, they were both salvation and doom.
To dragons, demons, and elves—ancient races ripped from other realities through the same tears in space—they were immutable law.
---
After the Fall
There were no nations anymore. No borders. No presidents or parliaments—only alliances built to endure the Rift Cataclysm.
When the first cracks split the sky, monsters poured through like floodwater. Governments collapsed in days. What survived wasn't civilization but adaptation: fortress-cities built atop mana veins, powered by crystal reactors mined from the rift zones.
Now humans lived beside elves who taught runic combat, dwarves who engineered reactors, and dragons who guarded the skies like living dreadnoughts.
Mana lamps buzzed in every street. Buildings hummed with soft blue light. The air itself vibrated faintly—alive, metallic, always watching.
But beneath the progress lay a quiet dread. Every new rift might be the last.
---
Voices in the Plaza
In Aetherion City, once Singapore, neon sigils lit the night.
"Did you see the tomb at Sector 12?" a girl whispered, eyes wide. "He shattered the pavement with one strike!"
Her friend nodded, awe-struck. "Void Whisper sponsored him. They say it's a new constellation—no records anywhere."
An elf artisan adjusted his crystal monocle. "Curious. The Upper Realm grows restless. Their eyes linger longer now."
A dwarf beside him grunted. "Aye. Watchin' or waitin', I can't tell which is worse."
Billboards flickered overhead—rankings, awakenings, territorial alerts. Fame now came not from wealth, but from which constellation watched you.
And tonight, even those constellations seemed uneasy.
---
The Harbor
Far from the plaza's noise, Aetherion Harbor trembled under a restless sea.
Mana currents glowed turquoise beneath black waves. Lightning pulsed inside the clouds.
A fisherman leaned over the railing. "You see that shimmer?"
His partner squinted. "Rift distortion. Level five, maybe?"
"No… look at the color. That's not turbulence."
The water convulsed. A sound like a deep bell tore the air apart, and a golden-violet tear opened over the horizon.
Then—silence.
From that silence stepped a shadow. A man, hunched and round, dripping wet. A torn black hoodie clung to him like shame.
He looked ordinary. Soft-cheeked. Heavy. His face the kind strangers forget seconds later.
Yet every mana sensor in the city spiked red.
Dragons mid-flight froze. Elves meditating miles away snapped their eyes open. The ocean itself seemed to bow under invisible weight.
Something ancient had come home.
---
Crowd and Whispers
"Another survivor?" a merchant murmured.
"Impossible," said a horned demon quietly. "Rifts do not release humans."
An android clerk's eyes flickered. "Mana density rising exponentially."
"Do not underestimate him," the demon added. "Even the constellations cannot see everything. Some powers hide in flesh and fear."
High above, unseen shapes stirred.
---
The Upper Realm Watches
Across the void between worlds, colossal minds turned their gaze toward Earth. Thoughts rippled through the cosmic dark.
> "A mortal returns?"
"No—an anomaly."
"We cannot read his thread."
"He should not exist."
For the first time in epochs, even the oldest constellation—Void Whisper—hesitated.
> "He once walked among us."
The void shivered.
---
Return to Earth
The man staggered out of the dying light, water dripping from his fingers. Each step left faint circles of energy in the puddles.
To most, he was just another overweight stranger crawling from disaster.
To the gifted, standing near him felt like standing beside a collapsing star.
An elven mage fell to her knees. "That pressure— impossible!"
Her mentor hushed her, eyes wide. "Be silent. Do not draw his attention."
Harish lifted his head. His eyes were brown—tired, human—but for an instant, galaxies spun inside them.
---
Containment
Guild soldiers rushed in, barriers humming.
"Identify yourself!" the captain shouted.
He blinked, dazed, voice raw. "Harish."
"From where?"
He looked past them, toward the skyline of crystal towers and flying beasts. "Home," he whispered. "Finally… home."
---
The Illusion Shatters
Energy spiked again. Mana crystals screamed under pressure. The barrier faltered.
Light tore through his hoodie, peeling away like paper in flame.
The softness dissolved. The disguise—years of deliberate dullness—collapsed.
In its place stood a figure carved from surviving suns. Scars ran across arms that could split mountains. His skin glowed faintly, veins pulsing with dormant runes.
Naked. Radiant. Infinite.
The guards froze. The air thickened until even dragons hesitated in the clouds above.
And far beyond the stars, constellations blinked—not in anger, but in recognition.
---
Eternal Years
Thunder rolled again. Rain hissed off his skin.
Someone—an old dwarf in the crowd—found his voice.
"How long… were ye in there, lad?"
Murmurs rippled. "He vanished five years ago," someone said. "During the first Rift Wars."
Harish turned slowly. His gaze silenced them.
"Five years for you," he said softly. "For me…"
He looked skyward, where dimensions bled together like bruises. "…time had no mercy."
The elf beside the dwarf frowned. "What does that mean?"
"The Nexus World doesn't measure years. Each heartbeat there stretches into centuries. I've watched suns die and empires rot. Lived and died a thousand times."
He flexed his fingers; energy traced golden lines along his skin. "In your world, only five years passed. In mine—"
He smiled faintly, the kind that carried exhaustion older than language. "—eternity."
Rain hammered harder. The dock steamed where drops met his warmth.
"I fought under ten skies," he murmured. "Learned from dragons who named the first magic, from swordsmen who cut through dimensions. I became what the Nexus demanded."
"And you came back?" the demon asked.
Harish's eyes softened, almost human again. "To see if anything worth saving remains."
Lightning flared. Somewhere high above, a constellation blinked in something that almost resembled fear.
---
The Shift
In the heavens, voices trembled.
> "He broke the law of return."
"No mortal may cross back from the Nexus alive."
"And yet he stands."
Void Whisper exhaled through the void.
> "He is no mortal now."
On Earth, dragons roared in instinctive terror. Mana networks crashed city-wide. People fell to their knees, unable to breathe under the weight of presence alone.
The balance the constellations had built—the careful system of awakenings, tombs, and chosen champions—cracked like thin ice.
Because the one who had outlived time itself had come home.
Harish lifted his face to the storm, rain washing years—or centuries—of blood and silence from his skin.
"Did you miss me?" he whispered.
Thunder answered.