Aaron slumped back onto the mattress, the tangled sheets offering no comfort as the bedsprings groaned under his weight.
A sharp, stinging scent of ozone still hung in the air, mingling with the faint smell of singed flesh.
Instinctively, his hand drifted toward his right shoulder, where the fabric of his shirt was scorched, stiff, and soaked with dried crimson.
He hissed, a sharp intake of breath, as his fingers grazed the raw, puckered skin—a jagged pulse of pain that reminded him of the previous impact.
His eyes wandered toward the gaping hole in the ceiling, where the relentless rain dripped through a charred, twisted maze of roof materials.
“So much destruction from something no bigger than a tennis ball,” he muttered, his voice raspy.
He forced his gaze away from the ruined ceiling to the dresser.
There, nestled ominously beside his academic accolades and engineering trophies, sat the object.
It was an empty, metallic, fist-sized sphere—a cold, charred remnant that had once housed an unknown entity, now free and inside his mind.
How had it survived the hellish friction of entry?
Physics—cold, hard, and predictable—had brought it here.
There was no need for the supernatural; the object was dense, charred, and horribly real.
A tiny hatch, now broken, was meticulously etched into its side.
This wasn’t magic, he reasoned, but rather an exquisite fusion of advanced biochemistry, computer engineering, and physics.
He leaned forward, ignoring the fire in his shoulder, grabbing the strange sphere to examine it.
The metal was surprisingly cold to the touch.
He pondered the implications: “If quantum mechanics could cross the void to bring this here…
to Earth, couldn’t those same laws, if properly manipulated, fold space back on itself?” He looked at the broken hatch, a spark of calculation returning to his eyes.
“Maybe I can make today’s technology work for me.”
***
Out of the darkness, Rykker spoke.
“Is the artifact that struck you still retained?”
“Yes.
I have it.
It’s right here.”
“I ask your pardon, Sir Aaron, I am without my senses.
I cannot gaze upon it.
I cannot discern its form.
Please paint its likeness with your words.”
Aaron looked down at the object that had upended his life, directing his thoughts inward to Rykker.
“It’s a fist-sized sphere, or it was before the impact,” Aaron explained.
“It’s pitch black, though that might just be char from its fall through the atmosphere.
The surface is…
unsettling, General.
It’s not bumpy or porous like a stone, and it isn’t irregularly shaped like a common meteor.
There are deep, structural dents in the side, but it doesn’t feel like scrap.
That’s just the damage from the crash.”
He traced the edge of the artifact with his finger.
“It feels designed; like it was made or forged.
When it first hit me, it burned my skin, causing it to blister, but when I picked it up later, it was freezing—as if it was made of ice.”
Aaron’s hand drifted to his shoulder, tracing the scorched fabric and the tender skin where the artifact had hit him.
“Then, I saw it—a tiny, hairline fracture.
A seam so precise it was almost invisible.
I ran my fingers along it and a hatch snapped open, releasing a thick, ashy-purple mist.
It moved like it was alive.
As it turned out it was you, well your spirit or your soul, I suppose.”
Aaron shuddered, the phantom taste of the horrid event coating his tongue.
“You tasted like batteries and oily sludge.
I felt the weight of you pushing through my throat and into my chest.
That’s how we got to where we are, General.
You came out of that dark orb and became part of me.”
A cold knot formed in Rykker’s gut.
The description was unmistakable: a warped, scorched soul-cage.
A rare, demonic thing.
While many such artifacts existed, few were capable of holding life, and even fewer could capture a soul.
The realization hit him with cold clarity.
Feroz hadn’t just ambushed him; he’d captured his soul and sent it screaming across the veil, to a different realm altogether.
Panic surged.
He had to return.
His wife, his people…
“Listen well, Sir Aaron, for the mists of deception have cleared.
That foul relic you bear is a vessel of binding—a collector of souls, a demonic artifact.
Its ruin was my release from that cold, empty prison.
Its magic was broken, released as wraith-like vapors; a miasma, and my spirit, my essence, now resides in you.”
***
Hours bled away as Aaron and Rykker traded tales of their respective worlds.
Rykker enthused about scenic cottage groves, surrounded by lush meadows teeming with the local flora and fauna.
He fawned over the rustic manors that were tucked away within flourishing forests, where elderwoods and silver moon-blossom trees wove a protective canopy overhead.
He gushed that the air was thick with the scent of vinewood resin, damp rich soil, and the forest floor was bedded with a soft carpet of whispermoss and starflowers that bloomed in perpetual spring.
Rykker spoke about Heartwater, his birthplace, where majestic mountain ranges loomed over the opulent (wealthy and lavish) rows of estates, their jagged granite peaks dusted with eternal snow that glowed violet at twilight.
From these heights, crystal clear rivers tumbled down in a series of thundering waterfalls, carving deep, turquoise pools into the rock before winding through the valleys like ribbons of glass. Read the latest chapters at novelping dot com.
In the heart of the lowlands laid bustling towns built of warm timber and river stone.
These were places of deep connection where everyone knew everyone; the morning air was filled with the smell of woodsmoke and fresh bread, the rhythmic clanging of a blacksmith’s forge, and the constant, friendly hum of neighbors sharing news across garden fences.
***
Rykker switched from talking about the picturesque villages to the different races that lived there; starting with his own.
“Listen closely, young one.
We are the Elementals, bound to the very heartbeat of our world.
We do not simply ask, we command—calling forth roaring fire, shaping the rushing water, summoning the shrieking air, and commanding the solid ground to tremble beneath our feet,” Rykker bragged.
“We are the ones who tame the lightning, binding it to our will, and we stir the deep shadows that others fear.
And for those who master the deepest secrets?
We weave the very fabric of time and space, bending reality itself.”
Rykker guided the conversation to how beastmen and the Fae folk prowled the thick forests and vampires dominated the night sky.
Finally, he talked about the two warring factions of Lycanthropes.
He explained his last mission before his spirit was imprisoned inside the artifact and sent to Earth; about how his army of twenty had intercepted a plot to annihilate the Cerulean Moon Pack.
“Alas, a trusted spy brought grim tidings to the Emperor, telling a tale of a wicked scheme to extinguish the entire sect.
But through the might of the gods, we thwarted this foul plot!”
Aaron was fascinated, his mind struggling to bridge the gap between the General’s lush descriptions and the bleak reality of his hometown, Shady Knoll.
To him, the world was an unending trail of asphalt and oxidized steel, a suffocating contrast to the “serene” paradise he’d just heard described.
As an inner suburb of Cedar City, populated with 4.3 million residents, Shady Knoll was substantially smaller, housing roughly ninety thousand people.
Here, the sky was rarely blue, instead it wore a permanent veil of polluted fumes that clung to the stark skyline of the “annexed suburbs.”
In the distance, massive steel skeletons of suspension bridges stretched across the murky water, connecting the decaying urban core to the endless industrial reach beyond as they groaned under the weight of endless commuter traffic, acting as iron ribs for a city that never stopped breathing exhaust.
The atmosphere was choked by a thick layer of smog, casting a hazy veil over the sprawling apartment complexes that crowded the horizon.
Below, cracked asphalt of the city streets slickened under the constant glow of flickering neon signs, while towering billboards advertised dreams that felt worlds away from the reality of run-down buildings lining the blocks.
Nature was a luxury item.
In Shady Knoll, the only “greenery” Aaron ever saw was the occasional patch of stubborn weeds cracking through the pavement or the meticulously guarded gardens of the wealthy, who grew flowers like they were hoarding gold.
While rumors of plush forests and winding rivers existed outside of Cedar City and Shady Knoll, as well as in textbooks, they felt as mythical to Aaron as the General’s world.
His entire existence was bound by the residents packed into the gray corridors of his neighborhood; he was a prisoner of a city that had paved over the very idea of a horizon.
***
Rykker listened to the fascinating features of Aaron’s world.
As Aaron described it, it was a noisy, technology-ridden place absent of magic or qi; powered instead by complex, cold technology.
Aaron’s words painted a world without legends or tales of the gods, instead, he spoke of a reality where the shadows were just shadows created by the sun and the forests belonged only to those with fur and claws.
While the beastmen of Rykker’s world sounded more like intelligent humanoids, the beasts that Rykker talked about were much like the animals of Earth.
These creatures were only interested in survival and procreation, not complex thought and reasoning.
There were no Lycans prowling under the full moon, no Fae tricking travelers in deep groves, and no Merfolk haunting the tides.
The supernatural had been replaced by the biological.
In this landscape, humans stood as the sole controllers of culture and history.
There were no other rival sentient species, the burden of “complex thought” and the conflict it brought rested entirely on human shoulders.