The towers faded behind him, glowing faintly through the golden haze of the Aetherion sky. Elias moved cautiously, boots sinking slightly into the soft blue grass before it gave way to cracked obsidian slabs. The ground here wasn't flat—it tilted and shifted beneath him, subtle but constant, like the memory of the world was stretching itself across uneven thoughts.
Every step made a soft hum vibrate through the soles of his boots. It was the pulse of the world, or perhaps the pulse of himself reflected in it. He flexed his fingers, feeling the black veins along his wrist shift, a faint tingle reminding him of the first fragment he had absorbed. Energy Resonance. It was still alive inside him, a small whisper at the edge of perception.
He paused at the edge of a street—or what had been a street once. The slabs of obsidian were interrupted by fissures that glowed faintly, molten lines running like blood through stone. Shadows curled inside the cracks, as though the fractures themselves remembered shapes they had once held. The world here was breathing, stretching, but in fits and starts.
Something moved. Not far ahead, at the curve where the road disappeared beneath a floating arch of rubble. Elias froze. His eyes caught the faint glint of light against a surface that should not have reflected anything. A figure crouched, or maybe leaned, a pale silhouette framed against the golden fog.
It didn't step forward. It didn't move closer. But the instant he blinked, it seemed to shift, almost like it had stepped sideways—but there was no step to see.
They are watching, Elias thought, though he couldn't tell if it was curiosity, caution, or predation. His heart didn't race; he had long since learned fear was a whisper he could ignore. Still, a line of sweat ran down the side of his face. The world didn't feel like it wanted him here.
He walked slowly, careful not to make noise. Every footstep seemed amplified, echoing against invisible walls that hadn't been there a moment ago. The figure vanished as he approached, leaving only the faint shimmer of heat—or was it light? He couldn't tell. A soft hum rose again in his wrist.
He pressed his palm against the black veins. The fragment throbbed faintly. Echo of Death. Energy Resonance. A warning pulse, weak, as though the world itself was testing him.
The street ended abruptly in a tangle of collapsed structures. Buildings hovered at impossible angles, jagged towers leaning like broken teeth. Some floated above the ground entirely, held up by thin beams of shimmering light. Wind—or whatever passed for wind here—blew fragments of debris sideways, and the faint scent of ozone and burnt metal clung to the air.
Elias picked his way carefully between the ruins. He avoided gaps where the ground had split open into glowing chasms, stepping only on surfaces that seemed stable. Every step left a faint trace in the obsidian, glowing for a heartbeat before fading.
Then he heard it. A low rumble beneath the stones, not a sound carried through the air but through the world itself, through the very ground beneath him. The pulse intensified, irregular, like a staccato heartbeat. He crouched, hand on a fractured slab. Tiny tremors ran along the lines of his wrist, a resonance responding to whatever throbbed below.
Something moved inside the fissures. Not fully visible, not fully real—just a shadow, a flicker, a glint of something alive. Elias inhaled, feeling the hum in his veins deepen, almost a symphony of anticipation and warning.
The first word came unbidden, unspoken. Run? It was a question, a suggestion, and yet it came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Elias did not move. He had never learned to obey instinct blindly. Not anymore.
From the shadows of the fractured street, the shapes emerged. They were humanoid, yet distorted: limbs too long, torsos elongated, faces that bent and shifted like reflections in broken glass. They moved in silence, fluid, as if unburdened by the world's gravity. Their eyes—if they could be called eyes—glowed faintly, an amber light that pulsed in time with the fissures beneath his feet.
One stepped forward. Its arm extended, not in aggression but in observation. Elias felt the pulse in his wrist flare, faint lines of black snaking up toward his elbow. Energy Resonance, it whispered again, teasing, probing. He instinctively clenched his fist.
The creature didn't attack. Instead, it tilted its head, an impossible angle, as though curious. And then, almost imperceptibly, it shifted. The shape multiplied. One became three, three became six, each reflection slightly different, each echoing the last. They were studying him. Watching. Learning.
Elias stayed calm, scanning. He noticed the faint patterns along their skin, like circuitry or veins, glowing and fading with rhythm. He realized the world itself responded to them. Each step they took made a faint ripple in the obsidian, shadows bending to meet the curvature of floating ruins.
"What… are you?" he whispered. The word didn't leave his lips; it curled inside his mind, carried by the hum of the fragment. The nearest figure tilted its head again. No sound came. And then the pulse stopped. The world went still. The fissures dimmed.
For a moment, nothing moved. The golden haze seemed to thicken, swallowing color and light. Elias felt something cold press against the back of his mind: awareness. Not just of him, but of everything around him, including the pulse of his fragment.
He drew a slow breath and stepped forward. The figures did not react. Or maybe they did—but subtly, imperceptibly, like the wind rearranging itself around him.
The street ended at a massive plaza, half-collapsed and floating above a chasm. Ruined statues hovered in midair, frozen mid-motion, their limbs stretching toward nothing. In the center, a pillar of light rose from the abyss, bending as though breathing, warping space around it.
Elias felt the hum in his wrist flare again, stronger now. The new fragment pattern had grown. A subtle warmth spread up his arm, pulsing like a heartbeat that wasn't entirely his own.
Another acquisition, he thought, eyes narrowing. Something wants me to see this.
As he stepped closer to the pillar, the air shifted. A shadow flickered inside the light—a human shape, impossible yet unmistakable. It moved gracefully, almost floating, arms extended toward him. A faint voice echoed inside his mind, not words but emotion: curiosity. Sadness. Hunger.
Elias felt the pull of the world, the tug of something alive in the abyss below. He realized that these streets, these fractured cities, were not abandoned. They were aware. And he was trespassing in a body that was already marked as an anomaly.
He swallowed. The golden sky stretched endlessly above, the floating islands turning slowly in impossible rotations. Everything around him breathed in rhythm with the fragments inside his wrist.
This is not a world that forgives, he thought. And I am not meant to understand it fully… not yet.
The first living beings of Aetherion watched him with patience, their eyes—or lights—tracking every breath, every movement. Elias clenched his fists. The hum of his fragment thrummed stronger. His heartbeat merged with the pulse of the fractured streets, with the world itself.
And then he took a single step forward.
End of Chapter 4.