Elian had always hated the way the city breathed.
The low groan of steel bones. The neon buzz of broken signs. The smog choking every rooftop like an unseen hand. Vireholm wasn't alive — it was infected. And the people crawling through its alleys were symptoms, not survivors.
He crouched behind a ruined bus stop, face dirty, hoodie torn, eyes locked on a half-rotten vending machine across the street.
Dinner.
Or at least a stale protein bar if the gods were feeling kind.
He waited. Counted the camera rotations. Tracked the one-eyed drone buzzing overhead. The rules were simple — move fast, hit hard, disappear.
Five seconds. That's all he'd need.
But as he bolted across the cracked asphalt, the sky… twitched.
Elian skidded to a stop, one hand pressed to the machine, heart thudding louder than the sirens ever had.
Everyone else froze too.
The sky didn't turn black. It didn't thunder. It didn't blaze with divine light.
It cracked.
Hairline fractures spread from a single point above the city — thin, red veins in a glass dome no one had ever seen. The clouds stopped moving. The smog held its breath. The sun bled sideways.
And then — the noise began.
Not sound. Not really.
Just a pressure. Like something thinking too loudly behind your eyeballs.
Elian dropped to his knees, clutching his head.
Others screamed. Some ran. Some just stood there, muttering prayers into the air.
Then came the voice.
[Designate located.]
[Thread status: orphaned.]
[Initiating forced sequence.]
[WARNING: Vessel stability… 2%.]
Elian gasped as his vision blurred into blue fire. Symbols danced in the air, indecipherable but urgent. His body twisted—not physically, but contextually. Like reality was trying to reassign him.
He wasn't in the street anymore.
The world had vanished.
There was no ground. No sky. Just folded space.
Thousands—maybe millions—of other shapes floated nearby. Some human. Some… not. All suspended in that same flickering void, veins of red and black webbing between them like nerve endings. Pulsing.
Something enormous moved in the distance — a shape too large to describe, too alien to exist.
And above it all… a ring. Shattered, spinning slowly, humming like the edge of a scream.
Elian wanted to look away.
But something inside him watched back.
[You are not yet chosen.]
[You are not yet formed.]
[But you are aware. And awareness… is disobedience.]
The voice didn't come from the ring. Or the creature. Or the void.
It came from Elian's own mind. A whisper between neurons. A shiver across his spine.
Then everything turned red.
[Time breach detected.]
[Soulform: unstable.]
[Involuntary Descent commencing.]
He fell.
No wind. No speed. Just the feeling of movement, like falling through the cracks between thoughts.
Then—
Impact.
Elian slammed into something hard and wet.
Air punched from his lungs. His back arched. His vision went dark, then darker.
And when he could finally breathe again…
…it smelled like ash.
And iron.
The sky was still cracked. But now it hovered above a twisted, monstrous world.
Mountains floated in the air like islands drowned in black flame. Rivers of glass cut through the soil. The stars were too close. The trees had no leaves. The wind wept in a language he couldn't understand.
His body screamed. His mind refused.
But he stood up.
Naked. Bleeding. Terrified.
And still thinking.
"Where the hell am I…"
[Dreadroot status: Connected.]
[Core Thread: Faulted.]
[Soulweave: Instable. Manual intervention required.]
[Do you accept emergency integration?]
[Y/N]
Elian blinked.
A message. In the air. Glowing faint blue, flickering like a dying thought.
He didn't know what would happen if he accepted. He didn't know if it was a trick, or a trap, or a test.
But he had one rule: when the world sets you on fire, you either burn… or you learn.
"…Yes."
[Emergency Integration acknowledged.]
[Initializing Failsafe Loop.]
[Thread registered: FRAIL-000]
[Welcome, Soulfrail.]
Suddenly, information poured into him like boiling ink.
Pain. Knowledge. Madness. The names of things he'd never seen. The smell of blood that hadn't been spilled yet. The scream of a memory that didn't belong to him.
He collapsed. Convulsed. Then… stopped.
A new screen shimmered above him.
Name: Elian
Threadline: Soulfrail
Core: Unset
Classification: Aberrant
Stability: 3%
System Access: Restricted
Status:
— Memory fracture: 47%
— Spiritual resonance: unlinked
— Cognition drift: minor
— Physical integrity: low
Primary Directive: Survive
Secondary Directive: Endure
Something hissed behind him.
Elian rolled.
A creature—not a beast, not a man—crawled from a shadow that hadn't been there before. All bones. All teeth. No eyes. It smelled him.
He had no weapons.
No armor.
Just fear.
And fear, like fire, could be fed.
Elian crouched, fist wrapping around a broken shard of obsidian.
He would not die here.
Not like this.
Not before he understood what the hell he'd just become.