Aster keeps walking because stopping is how the thoughts catch up.
That was the official medical guidance, more or less. Keep moving. Keep the mind occupied. Give it something to chew on before it started chewing on itself.
Not that it ever seemed to stop it.
The advice had come from a woman with two degrees and a life structure that didn’t need to explain itself as if global debt was personally responsible for her stubbed toe.
Aster suspected this was what people called stability. Presumably there was a pamphlet.
“Keep the wheels turning,” she’d said. “Don’t let them catch on the wrong track.”
Simple enough.
Except he could already feel it rising.
That quiet pressure just out of sight. Like a missed call from your mom at two a.m. Probably nothing, but you don’t check. Not out of fear, of course. According to his psychologist, there isn’t a call. No mom either. Just his brain playing tricks with the lights off.
Yeah, because nothing screams mental wellness quite like deliberately pretending your mom doesn’t exist.
Not that she does currently—she’s been dead for most of his life—but that’s beside the point. It’s a metaphor. It’s about the universe dialling his mind at two in the morning with a debt collection scam and the sinking certainty that somehow, someway, the bill really is in his name.
Better to keep the thoughts noisy. Tangled up in movement. Best not to look.
The city at midday is a furnace with opinions. The sun hammers the concrete as if it owes it money. Heat rolls off the asphalt in waves that whisper insults in a voice suspiciously like his old gym teacher. Sweat pools behind his neck, under his collar, down his spine, and keeps going from there in ways he refuses to document for the public record. Smoke from a corner braai curls into the air, mixing with exhaust fumes and something faintly metallic—rust, maybe. Or blood. Hard to say as every street corner smells like compound interest and predatory loans.
Minibus taxis play God with the road. Horns blare. Passengers shout.
Aster keeps walking like someone who’s memorised the script for life but refuses to act in it. Hands in pockets. Head on a swivel. Eyes half-lidded with the practised look of: Yes, I’m late. No, I won’t explain.
Movement is safety.
Movement is denial.
Movement means he’s not available for introspection, deep reflection, or—God forbid—hope.
He doesn’t have a destination.
Just movement.
Just don’t stop.
Don’t check the mental voicemail.
That creeping static? Probably nothing.
Definitely nothing.
Behind him, the world shudders.
Not with thunder or tremor, but with the whisper of something waking beneath skin. The kind of shiver that lives just behind the teeth—like the first brush of fever or the reminder of debt. The kind of shift that doesn’t tear reality, just loosens it. A quiet pucker in the membrane. A soft click of perception slipping slightly off-centre.
And just like that, the Astral surfaces.
It doesn’t explode into being. It simply is, in the way rust exists on metal before you notice it. The other reality—the realer one—blinks into awareness beneath the polite collective hallucination of city, nation, and nine-to-five. It isn’t new. It isn’t hidden. It has always been there, squatting in the crawlspace of reality, gnawing at the insulation of the human soul.
Matter moves through the Astral like it was built for him—untouched by the world it shadows.
It consisted of the same structure. Same Streets. Same buildings. But wrong.
Not wrong like a mistake—wrong like a metaphor that’s grown teeth.
On the surface, Johannesburg roars—heat and steel and thudding bass. Beneath that, it writhes. Buildings lean under the weight of forgotten grief. Walls are pitted with psychic mildew—not mould precisely, but something that feels like it. Guilt in spore form. Regret stratified in concrete. Billboards blink advertisements that no longer sell anything but hunger. Logos fossilise into emotion, flickering like relics from a consumerist religion no one remembers joining.
And the Myst.
It pours through gutters like breath held too long. Thick. Viscous. A rolling sea of deep purples, bruised blues, and searing oranges, waist-high in places and always moving. Not mist, but the exhale of minds too overwhelmed to hold their shape. Psychic runoff. The leftovers of feeling, scraped from the subconscious of billions and pooled into instinctual slop.
Not alive.
Not yet.
But it wants to be.
Matter keeps moving, the Myst nothing more than an afterthought.
Above him, the sky knots into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of multi-coloured clouds shifting endlessly through different shades.
The Astral Storm covered the sky like a global ulcer, thick with clouds of psychic aether churning in slow chaos—a system of thought devouring itself endlessly, ringing the Earth like a planetary marketing campaign from hell.
Tornadoes form at random intervals, ravenous and unbidden, sucking the Myst upward in pulsing, ecstatic slurps. Raw emotion hurled skyward to be recycled, blended, churned, rebranded. Anxiety into rage. Lust into hate. Despair into momentum.
A weather system made of insanity.
Lightning forks through the clouds in colours no sane spectrum would claim. Ultraviolet gashes. Radioactive blooms. The flashes illuminate shapes drifting through the storm, impossibly large even from this far away—creatures, maybe. Or ideas with biology. Prayers that never got answered and rotted into whales.
Matter walks through it all untouched.
Flora peels back from him like oil from heat. Tendrils withdraw into cracks in the buildings. Petals fold inward with twitching, almost human speed. Blind wet things blink from the walls. Roots hiss softly in the stone, slurping the residue of collective pain like nectar.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Matter doesn’t look at them twice.
All his attention is fixed on the target ahead.
He doesn’t need to see Aster’s face to know it’s him. His gait. The way he carries weight like it belongs to someone else. The flicker of entropy that follows him like a second shadow.
Walking alongside Aster through this Astral swamp.
People move through it all like unaware gods.
Untouchable. Oblivious. Holy in their ignorance.
Coffee in hand. Phones out. Earbuds in. Every step carries them through the blistering midday as if they walk alone in all the world.
Which, in a way, they do.
Two worlds. Same space. Different truths.
Each human spirit wraps tight in a golden field, a sacred firewall humming with ancient code. Not magic. Not technology. Something older—a failsafe built into the soul by something that decided humanity isn’t ready for the full patch notes of reality.
The biofield doesn’t just block the Astral make-up—it unravels it on contact. A living anathema. Wherever they walk, the Astral flinches away, recoils, seethes.
The Myst parts from them like boiling water from wax.
Creatures dart aside. Flora folds in on itself, reacting with genetic muscle memory passed down by generations that have learned what happens if you touch the golden things.
The Astral seethes around them.
They aren’t aware of it.
But the Astral is deeply, obsessively aware of them.
It is a realm of reaction, and they are the storm it keeps rebuilding itself around.
And over time, some things have learned not just to avoid them—but to feed off them.
Matter sees one.
It flits through the air like a dragonfly built from chrome and regret. Wings buzzing with ambient suggestion. Its body flickers with shifting sigils—Samsung, Apple, Woolworths, Pornhub, Shell—emblems melted into its carapace and cycling like a corrupted user interface.
An Adgnat.
Tiny. Near-invisible. A psychic parasite built to bypass weak biofields and implant commercial compulsions straight into the subconscious. An intrusive thought designed by marketers and bred for insecurity.
It skims over the crowd, trailing glittery pheromones of impulse, then dives toward a woman staring into her phone. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t feel it. Its needle tongue slips through her biofield like a handshake from a trusted friend. Corporate sigils flare ghostlike across her aura. A low whine of suggestion hums through her thoughts.
Then it lifts off again, job done.
Somewhere in her head, a seed takes root. An urge. An idea. A purchase she’ll make and think was her own.
Matter doesn’t intervene.
The gnats are everywhere. Persistent, yes. Dangerous to some. But mostly, they’re noise.
His eyes stay on Aster.
The boy’s biofield flickers through the crowd like a candle in a gale—too dim, too sharp, as if it can’t decide whether it wants to live or die.
Matter stops beneath the scorched remains of a satellite dish still advertising DSTV.
He lifts his hand.
The scan triggers.
═════════════════════
— STANDARD SCAN —
[SUBJECT: ASTER ELCHEN]
═════════════════════
SPECIES: Human
PLANE: Material / Astral Cradle
STATUS: Unaware
∷ VESSEL ATTRIBUTES ∷
─────────────────────
Material Vessel: [MEASURABLE – Instability Detected]
Karmic Vector: [DETECTED — LEAKING]
Luck / Fate: [CORRUPTED]
Aura Field: [UNSTABLE]
∷ BIOFIELD HEALTH INDEX ∷
─────────────────────
Biofield Status: 22% — Flickering / Intact
Karmic Integrity: 33%
Spiritual Noise: High (Unresolved)
⚠ WARNING — PARASITE DETECTED
[CLASS - SS: VOID-WYRM]
• Classification: Karmic Parasite
• Faith Siphon: Continuous
• Status: Dormant / Feeding
─────────────────────
∷ END OF SCAN ∷
The leak has worsened. Matter can see the shimmer fraying without the scan—golden light bleeding away in irregular pulses, drawn into the thing lodged in Aster’s chest like thread pulled from a rotting seam.
Matter’s fingers starts tracing geometry older than language, older than breath.
The motion leaves no mark in the air, but the Mist recoils all the same, as if the gesture disturbs some deeper current it has learned to fear.
A low hum stirs at the edge of hearing, then comes the incantation—symbols folding inward, commands burning down to their purest ash.
The sigil completes.
A single strand of light unravels from Matters palm—thin, gold shot through with faint blues, as if lightning has learned to mourn. It writhes for a moment, resisting. Then, as if recognizing something in him, it straightens, trembling toward Aster’s faltering glow.
Karmic Threadcasting.
Aster’s biofield flares.
Golden light floods the alley like a second sunrise. The Myst screams soundlessly and peels away. Flora at the edge of the walls hiss and curl back into themselves.
∷ THREAD RECONVERGENCE IN PROGRESS ∷
Biofield Status: 22% → 39% → 47%
Thread Cohesion: Reestablishing
Karmic Drain: Temporary Suppression
For a moment the leak slows. The field steadies.
And then resettles into its uneven flicker.
Stable again. But not whole.
Never whole.
Matter lowers his hand.
This has been his role for twenty-one years: always just behind the curtain, stitching the unravelling edge. Never enough to repair. Only enough to prolong. Just enough karma to hold back the inevitable.
Ahead, Aster reaches the curb just as the Dread settles in his chest.
Low. Slow. Like sickness behind the lungs. Not sharp. Not urgent. Just there.
Heavy. Cold.
A thing he can’t see but knows intimately.
The Dread. Capital D, trademark pending.
He named it years ago, the way you might nickname a volcano that lives next door and keeps setting fire to your porch. There’s no real hope in it. Just that dumb, hopeful ape-brain reaching for something to recognise. Something it can bargain with. Something it can ask why me, why now, maybe not the cat.
It isn’t fear exactly. Fear has edges. Fear points at things. Fear at least has the decency to come with a map.
The Dread is more like a bureaucrat-god who works in finance, shuffling through paperwork without looking at you, then stamping RESTRUCTURING across your chest in red ink. Not good. Not bad. Just irreversible. A cosmic balance sheet being audited, and somehow your existence shows up under non-performing assets.
Dr Scholtz calls it a feedback loop. An internal script his brain defaults to whenever things get too quiet.
He, however, calls it her business model: charging him to diagnose dread in a system designed to produce it, while “treating” him by telling him in a hundred different ways to let go of things he can’t change.
And it keeps happening.
The Dread arrives more reliably than the seasonal flu, and lately it’s getting downright ambitious—maybe it spent a holiday at a wet market and picked up some career advice from a passing Covid strain.
“You expect the worst, so you interpret the smallest signal as danger,” she tells him, more than once. “It becomes prophecy because you make it one.”
Just old wiring. Learned responses. Survival instincts misfiring in a safe room.
Sure.
He doesn’t think she’s wrong—but she also bills him R1,500 to explain why curses don’t exist, so who’s really the irrational one here?
Aster stops at the curb and glances back.
The city sprawls behind him, bright and loud and utterly indifferent. People under faded awnings sell mangoes out of crates and knock-off sneakers off mats. A woman balances a month’s groceries on her head like she’s auditioning for a documentary on human resilience. A boy runs laughing behind a dog that isn’t his. Taxis hoot so often it feels like someone outsourced the city’s anger management programme to cats trapped in pianos.
Everything normal.
And still the Dread clings.
Colder now. Slick. Winding through his ribs, slow and deliberate.
Not a curse. Not a curse. Not a curse.
He tells himself this like a mantra. Like a prayer. Like a captain rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
Because it always starts this way.
Pressure.
Then the spiral.
Then crash.
Plans fall apart. People flip. Opportunities rot in his hands like fruit he didn’t realise was bruised. Self-sabotage, Dr Scholtz would call it. A submerged trauma response. Learned patterns. Old wiring.
All plausible.
All very diagnosable.
Right up until it happens again. And again.
“It’s in my head,” Aster mutters.
It sounds less like conviction and more like someone filing a customer support ticket with the universe.
Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe he’s just catastrophically, professionally consistent at getting in his own way.
But his shoulders tense anyway.
He keeps walking.
Because that’s all he can do.
And the feeling stays right where it is, lodged beneath his sternum like a truth trying to be remembered.
He tells himself it’s nothing.
Because there’s no such thing as curses.
Right?