The darkness wasn't just around him—it lived inside him.
Kaelen lay sprawled on a slab of black stone, his body bare except for the rusted shackles biting into his wrists and ankles. His once-pale skin was now a mosaic of bruises, incision lines, and scarred-over burns. The room was cold and metallic, walls humming with barely perceptible vibrations. The ceiling was hidden behind layers of shadow and curling steam, and the only light came from a single dangling shard of blue crystal overhead—pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
His heartbeat.
Or what remained of it.
His chest rose slowly, jaggedly, as if even the act of breathing had become a negotiation with pain. Every inhalation brought memories—of screaming without voice, of searing lights, of whispers spoken in tongues that no throat should shape.
He didn't know how many days had passed since he'd been dragged into this subterranean tomb. Time had become meaningless—erased by agony, rewritten by ritual, reshaped by the silent figures in bone-white robes.
The Scales of Equilibrium.
They never spoke directly to him. Only about him.
Subject Theta-Nine.
Mutation stable.
Phase transition incomplete.
"He responds to spatial seeding abnormally," one of them had said, just before they carved a spiral of crimson runes into his spine. "Possibly a bleedover effect from the—"
Kaelen had screamed then. Not from the pain of the scalpel, but from what came after.
The power.
The thing.
It had awakened again.
Not fully. Not consciously. But a fragment of something too vast, too ancient, had stirred in the marrow of his being—and reality had responded like a sheet pulled too tight. The walls had bled. The floor had melted into an oily mirror. For exactly four seconds, one of the masked researchers had ceased to exist—displaced from both time and space, dissolved into nothing.
They'd called it a "spatial feedback event."
Kaelen didn't care what they called it.
He called it revenge.
Yet even that had earned him nothing but more sedation, more restraints, more runes etched into his body. Each line of glowing ink sealed the power deeper, pressing it beneath his skin like a dam braced against a rising flood.
Now, he was a ruin.
A weapon half-forged.
And still they came.
Another door hissed open.
Kaelen blinked against the sudden rush of sterile light. Two figures entered—one tall, cloaked in gray. The other smaller, gliding like smoke. He recognized them. The Warden and the Archivist.
The Warden's voice was like iron dragged over stone. "Subject Theta-Nine. Responsive?"
Kaelen didn't answer. His eyes were glassy, bloodshot, but not unfocused.
The Archivist clicked her tongue. "He's awake. Remarkable endurance. The Spindle's flow hasn't fully devoured his cognitive matrix. Uncommon."
Warden: "Proceed with Echo Induction."
Kaelen's heart stuttered.
No. Not again.
They placed the device—an angular obsidian crown with glowing filaments—onto his head. The filaments wriggled as if alive, burrowing into his scalp. Pain lanced through him. He bit down on his tongue to stop the scream.
Then the world cracked.
He stood in a field of silver grass beneath a bleeding sky.
A dream. No. A memory. A hallucination.
Everything shimmered with unreality. Trees bent backward. Clouds dripped upward. And at the center, a boy stood—barefoot, eyes like amethysts.
Kaelen stared at him.
The boy stared back.
"…Do you know who I am?" the boy asked, tilting his head.
Kaelen's lips moved on their own. "You're me."
"No," the boy said. "I'm what's left. The part that broke off when the rest fell."
Kaelen shook. "This isn't real."
The boy smiled. "It's real enough for what comes next."
The sky above them cracked like glass.
A black thread descended—coiling through the air—and when it touched the ground, the entire world ignited in silence.
Flames without heat. Fire without light. Everything collapsed into a spiral of screaming colors.
And Kaelen was back.
The device snapped off his head, short-circuited by his raw resistance. Sparks flew. The Warden swore and stepped back.
Kaelen's body arched. Blood poured from his nose and eyes.
But he was laughing.
Softly. Brokenly. But laughing all the same.
The Archivist tilted her head. "Unexpected side effect. His psychic field is stabilizing."
Warden: "He's forming cognitive anchors. Dangerous. Increase dosage—"
Kaelen surged.
He didn't break the shackles. He bypassed them.
One second, he was on the table. The next, he was standing—metal cuffs unraveling into dust around his limbs.
The Warden reached for his nullifier blade.
Too late.
Kaelen raised his hand.
Space didn't ripple—it tore.
A line of invisible force split the air. The Warden's chest opened like a puppet sliced down the middle. He staggered, gasped—and fell without sound.
The Archivist backed away. "Impossible. The seals—"
Kaelen looked at her.
Not with hate. Not even anger.
With understanding.
"I remember," he whispered, voice like velvet and glass. "You tried to erase me. But you can't unwrite a thread that was never yours to begin with."
She activated a failsafe glyph. A wall of light erupted between them.
Kaelen walked through it.
It screamed.
She tried to run.
She failed.
He didn't kill her. Not completely.
Just folded her—crumpled her essence into a pocket of warped reality, a sealed knot of thought and terror. Her last breath echoed in a dimension no longer accessible.
Silence returned.
Steam hissed from broken vents. Sparks lit the darkness. Sirens began to howl in distant wings.
Kaelen stumbled.
His strength was gone. That burst had cost him. Blood dripped from his fingers. His body was broken—but not beyond repair.
He staggered toward the exit.
One hallway.
Then another.
Twisting corridors of surgical metal, black stone, and alien glyphs. His bare feet slipped on blood-slick floors. He passed rooms with shattered containment pods, broken glass, and collapsed ceilings.
The facility was dying.
Just like him.
He reached the main shaft—a spiraling stairway leading up, up, toward a distant sliver of starlight.
Kaelen breathed.
And climbed.
He didn't remember how long it took.
His vision blurred. His muscles tore with each step. The runes on his body pulsed with conflicting power—some sealing, others breaking, all bleeding raw energy into his nerves.
But he reached the top.
A final door, half-open.
Beyond it: night. Open air. Wind. Freedom.
Kaelen stepped through.
Collapsed.
The stars above shimmered like watching eyes.
And in the vast sky overhead, something moved.
A ripple.
A thread.
The Weave itself… had noticed him.
And for the first time in uncountable ages—
—it welcomed him back.