The Astral Storm clenches with pressure.
Aether currents twist overhead like strained tendons in a dying god’s wrist, their colours pulsing wrong—bloated bruises of sulphurous green, haemorrhaged orange, oily golds that shimmer like false promises and collapse like guilt. The sky churns. Layer by layer, the ceiling of the world presses downward, as if testing how much tension the bones of reality can bear.
Below, the Material city doesn’t notice.
But the Astral does.
Even the Myst pauses, curling tighter along the gutter edges as if bracing for impact.
Then the rain comes.
Not rain. Not really.
They fall not like water, but like consequences, crackling beads of unprocessed psychic fallout dropping through the Astral like filings through a magnetic field. Each one strikes the sidewalk with a hiss, gnawing at Astral flora with tiny bites of electric hunger.
The rain tastes like regret and anxiety.
It sizzles against Matter’s cloak but doesn’t stick. He moves through it like it isn’t there, the threads of his robe repelling the fallout on reflex. His cyan eyes stay fixed ahead on the only soul in the crowd that matters.
Aster’s glow falters with every step.
The drain is faster than Matter anticipated. Fading quicker than his projections allowed. He’d hoped for eight hours. At this rate, the field will start to buckle at four.
Aster veers off the street and down a side road where foot traffic thins.
Matter follows.
The change is immediate.
The Myst deepens, heavier now, coiling low and wide beneath the overhanging highway. Flora thickens around it, drawn to the runoff and the dark.
Ahead, Aster moves toward a storefront from which a particularly virulent Myst seems to pour.
It sits sunken into the concrete like a bad idea someone forgot to remove. No branding. No lights. Just grime, shadow, and an open door.
Above it—
Matter slows.
A glow. Pink. Sick. Pulsing like a wound with a heartbeat.
It flickers once.
Then again.
A lure.
His jaw sets.
A Scam Angler.
Not just a simple parasite—a con artist with teeth. It baited people into bad decisions, let the shame and panic ripen, then fed on whatever smaller Astral scavengers came to gorge themselves on the fallout. A lure, a trap, and the cleanup crew all in one. A con-nivore.
Aster strides straight past it, oblivious, and pushes into the store. The soft clink of the bell echoes thinly in the hollow air.
Matter follows, every sense narrowing to a point.
To the blind, the shop is unremarkable: dingy shelves, worn tile, the stink of dust and stale sugar hanging in the stillness. But to Matter’s senses, the air thrums—thick with the static charge of predation barely masked by the mundane.
His gaze sweeps the corners.
And finds another.
Bloated and pulsing in the shadows, its bulk quivering beneath a slime-slick sheen of stretched skin. Scales ripple faintly beneath the translucent film, colours shifting like oil on water. Its eyes are vast and lidless, dead with a kind of omniscience that understands nothing. Above its head, the lure sways—pink, rhythmic, vile.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
Matter stills.
The one outside is bait.
Four means a feeding ground.
The deceptions are layered into the walls, soaked into every crack and faded advertisement. He can taste it in the air—the sour hum of greed and grievance, petty lies and sharp cons exchanged over counters.
The customers move through it all, gold-lit and oblivious.
Aster moves deeper into the trap, heading toward the hum of fridges in the back, while the glow around him dims and thins.
Matter’s chest tightens.
No. Not now.
His fingers twitch beneath his sleeve, already forming the sigils, summoning the golden thread that can patch the breach.
Too soon. Too fast. The draw is accelerating.
He steps forward, the first word of the incantation coiling low on his tongue—
But Aster’s shoulder grazes the lure.
The pink light flares.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
And the shield—
the fragile, flickering cocoon—
shatters.
A ripple tears through the unseen air, sharp enough that even Matter feels it in his bones. The golden field collapses, sparks sputtering out like dying embers.
The Scam Anglers surge.
Mouths splitting wide. Lures blazing. Lunging toward the sudden, gaping vulnerability.
Matter’s heart strikes once—sharp and hard—then stills as his mind clears.
Before the second beat, the creature that shattered Aster’s shield is already airborne, hurled across the room in a burst of force.
By the next pulse, Matter is moving.
Aster scans the shelves with all the enthusiasm of a man trying to find meaning in a rigged game. Instant noodles, instant regret, but a man’s got to eat. His fingers trail over garish packaging, searching for the one brand that justifies dragging himself in from the blistering streets and into this fluorescent purgatory.
The hum of the fridges drones on like some dying machine god.
“Come on,” he mutters. “Sold out? Seriously?”
He crouches, knees popping like cheap fireworks, and glares at the lower shelves.
Something in the corner of his vision twitches.
Aster blinks.
The shelves ripple.
No—not ripple. Bend. Like reality’s suddenly remembered it can be a funhouse mirror if it wants to.
The hum deepens. Warps. Worms into his ears and turns liquid and wrong.
Then everything snaps sideways.
The store fractures.
Splinters.
Cracks apart like glass hit with a hammer.
And there it is again, that thought he’s been trying very hard not to have all day:
I knew that expired tuna was a bad idea.
His stomach drops as the ground tilts. The lights above him stretch and smear like melting plastic, the shelves twisting into shapes that make his head ache just to look at. The air vibrates like it’s laughing at him.
His foot catches on something that absolutely was not there a second ago, and he goes down hard.
The Myst surges in.
A wave of colour and rot and raw feeling—like being swallowed whole by a kaleidoscope that hates him personally. It slams into him like a psychic car crash, crawling into his mouth, his nose, his lungs—sharp and cloying, electric and wet, wrapping around him like a bad lover whispering every awful thing he’s ever felt.
Rage.
Shame.
That one time in third grade he called a teacher Mom.
All of it. All at once.
Oh great. Emotional trauma fog.
He gags, shoving at it, but his hands pass straight through. He coughs, breath stuttering, and for one bright, stupid second he wonders if this is it—if he’s about to drown in his own unresolved mommy issues while shopping for instant ramen.
Then, with one desperate push, he drags himself above the Mist and sucks in air like a billionaire getting a bailout after a ten-percent stock dip.
The store is still here.
Kind of.
The lights flicker greenish-yellow, casting halos like bruises. Shelves tilt at angles that make his temples throb, and they’re—oh god—they’re alive. Vines curl around them, pulsing like arteries, splitting the metal open like cracked bone. Their leaves spread wide, cradling products that should not be glowing like that.
Logos on the packages pulse in time with his heartbeat, warping and shifting like they’re breathing.
Aster swallows against the bile rising in his throat.
Nope. Nope. This isn’t the store I walked into. This is some kind of retail fever dream from hell.
Then—
Pulse.
A sickly pink light flickers in the mist. Then another. And another.
Aster’s eyes snap to the nearest glow, and his lungs forget how to work.
It steps into focus.
All teeth and slime and lidless eyes that look through him and see what’s left. The lure on its head flickers invitingly, a neon SALE sign for the damned.
What the actual fuck is that?
Then it moves.
Fast. Too fast for something that size. It lunges, lure swinging, jaws yawning wide.
Aster freezes.
Because of course he does.
What’s he supposed to do here? Scream? Bargain? Ask for a manager?
His brain scrambles for logic and finds none. His legs drag backward through the Mist, slow and heavy, like the floor itself wants him dead.
Where the hell even am I? Discount Silent Hill? A strip mall built by trauma?
Then—
a robed figure.
Moving between him and the thing like a blade through water.
A sharp crack splits the air. A barrier slams down in front of Aster, shimmering gold, solid enough to make the world shudder. The creature smashes into it and rebounds with a ripple that tears through the Myst like a stone dropped into sludge.
It screeches.
A wet, grating sound like someone strangling a clogged drain.
The robed man doesn’t even blink. Just a flick of his wrist—efficient, terrifying—and the barrier folds inward like a bear trap.
The creature pops.
One second it’s thrashing.
The next it’s pulp.
“Move!” the man snaps.
Aster does not move.
His brain is still flickering between convenience store and horror show like a busted TV. His limbs have locked somewhere between run and scream, and neither option wins.
Another one lunges.
The man is already moving.
His foot hits a glowing platform and launches him across the room. His palm drives into the creature’s chest with a wet impact, sending it into the wall hard enough to make Aster’s teeth clench.
More pink lights flare in the fog.
A bigger one this time. Thicker. Uglier. Its lure flickers like a cheap porch bulb as it barrels toward Aster.
The robed man doesn’t hesitate. His hand slices through the air—clean and bright, and the thing just… falls apart. Cut in half like it’s nothing.
Aster stumbles back, panic finally kicking his body into motion. Two more come screaming out of the fog, fast enough that his pulse spikes into outright mutiny. Their lures whirl. Their jaws snap.
The man moves like violence given form.
He doesn’t run. He steps—through the air like a goddamn fever dream and crushes one of the things mid-lunge with a slab of force. The platform slaps it down like God losing patience. Before it can twitch, another blast drives into its side, hurling it across the room like trash.
The last one darts low, coming from behind Aster.
He doesn’t see it.
Another shield snaps into place just as the creature lunges—sound and light exploding outward—and before the thing can recover, the man is on it.
One step.
One stomp.
Crunch.
It twitches once.
Stops.
Aster stands there shaking so hard his bones feel like they’re humming. His breath comes in sharp, shallow bursts, and his eyes keep darting around the warped store like he’s expecting the walls to have a go next.
Then a line of golden light lashes from the man to Aster.
The world starts flickering.
Nightmare.
Store.
Nightmare.
Store.
More shrieks echoes through the mist, the man doesn’t break stride.
He lifts a hand, and something massive and golden gathers above them, as though the ceiling itself is about to drop.
It does.
The impact booms through the room like a god’s gavel.
The last creatures are obliterated.
Silence crashes in behind it.
Heavy. Total.
For one long, quivering breath, there is only the faint hum of energy and the robed man standing amid the ruin, eyes fixed on the churning fog.
Aster’s field stutters back to life.
It flares weakly, flickering like an old neon sign, then locks into place—bright, golden, solid.
The Mist recoils instantly.
The nightmare store wavers.
Glitches.
And vanishes.
Reality slams back into place.
Fluorescent lights.
Regular shelves.
Neatly stacked noodles and candy bars.
The hum of fridges. The crinkle of plastic. Customers drifting past like nothing happened.
But Aster—
Aster just stands there, hunched and shaking, breathing like he’s been running for miles. His hands twitch at his sides. His whole body is wound tight, poised for flight even though there’s nowhere left to go.
To everyone else, he looks insane.
A man having a breakdown in aisle three.
Flinching at invisible things. Wild-eyed. Twitchy.
People start giving him space. A woman backs away. A man glances over, then quickly looks away, like eye contact might be contagious. A kid stares until his mother pulls him aside. Someone’s already reaching for their phone, thumb hovering over the emergency dial, trying to decide whether this is a police call or a viral video.
Aster doesn’t notice.
His ears are full of blood and static. His heart is still trying to punch its way out of his chest.
And his mind is stuck on one loud, looping thought:
What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck.