Link, Universe, Death

LINKS & SYMPTOMS

The world was quiet, but never still.

Even in its silence, something pulsed beneath the surface—like a heartbeat too faint to hear, but too heavy to ignore.

Across the continent of Azireth, the skies stretched a little too far, and the sun lingered a little too long. The people didn’t question it. They had long since learned not to. Questions were dangerous. Curiosity even more so.

There were places you didn’t go.

Rules you didn’t break.

And names you didn’t say out loud.

One of those names was LINK.

No one remembered where the term came from—only that it was older than any nation, older than the global ministry that enforced it, older than language itself. The word appeared in crumbling documents, etched into the bones of extinct beasts, and whispered in legends carried across the wind.

But to most people, it was just that—a word. A rumor. A myth drowned in bureaucracy and buried in fear.

Still, it lingered.

⸻

On the far edge of Azireth, beyond rusted border stations and forgotten outposts, lay a small mining town named Belmorra. It was the kind of place that seemed designed to be forgotten: sand-colored buildings stacked like crooked teeth, dust storms that ate the roads whole, and a clock tower that hadn’t worked in seventeen years.

Belmorra had no schools. No libraries. No government presence.

But it had one thing that made it different.

A rumor.

A whisper that beneath the northern ridge, past the collapsed tunnels and echoing shafts, something ancient slept.

Something no miner dared touch.

They called it a gate. A Link Gate.

No one knew what a Link Gate looked like—not even the eldest among them—but everyone seemed to agree that if such a thing existed, it would hum. Just faintly. Just enough to vibrate in your bones when you were near.

And some said, on nights when the wind was low and the sand didn’t scream, they heard it.

⸻

In Belmorra, there was a boy.

No name. No age. Not important—not yet.

He worked at the edge of the mines, carrying scrap from collapsed passages and sorting through rusted tools. No one paid him much mind. He was just another body trying to survive, another pair of hands in a town that had long given up on hope.

But he listened.

And every now and then, when the shift bell rang and the others left to drink away the dust in their lungs, the boy stayed behind.

He would sit by the old lift shaft—the one they said had swallowed six men and a full rail cart—and he would wait.

Not for something to happen.

Just… to hear it.

Sometimes, he swore he could feel the pulse.

Not like a heartbeat.

More like a countdown.

⸻

Meanwhile, far away, a ripple passed through the world.

Not a tremor. Not a quake.

Just… stillness.

Across hundreds of nations, birds stopped mid-flight. Clocks ticked slower. Wind stopped brushing the leaves. And in places few remembered, flickers of violet light blinked out of nowhere—then vanished before anyone could be sure they were real.

Somewhere, behind reinforced walls and endless glass screens, a man in a white uniform stared at a monitor that had just gone black.

“No recorded activity…” he whispered.

But his voice trembled.

Because he knew what it meant.

One of the gates had moved.

⸻

The Global Ministry of Links had no public headquarters. No one even knew how many members it had—if they were human, machine, or something in between.

But their presence was absolute.

They were in every country. Every major city. Every communication line. They weren’t worshipped. They weren’t loved. But they were feared. Their symbols were carved into every checkpoint and military badge.

A triangle. A ring. A line.

They called it the Seal of Balance. But to those who had seen its true shape, it was something else entirely.

A warning.

The ministry claimed to protect the world from the chaos of the Gates. That was the story. That anyone who touched a Gate and survived would bring back more than just memory—they would bring change. Unstable, dangerous change.

The few who did emerge from a Link Gate alive were hunted. Caged. Questioned until they forgot their own names. The public never knew what happened to them.

Only that they were never seen again.

That’s why the ministry created the Link Guards—an elite force with one mission: keep the gates untouched. Guard them with your life. Or lose more than your life trying.

The guards weren’t born. They were chosen. Trained from childhood. And each one knew the consequence of failure, and they were dire. Dire, dire consequences. Consequences that made you taste something red..

⸻

But the truth?

Even they didn’t know what the gates really were.

Not all of them, anyway.

Some believed the Gates were prisons. Others said they were trials. And a few, the most silent of the ministry’s inner circle, claimed the gates were not made by human hands at all—but by something older.

Something that remembered.

And if the wrong person were to collect all seven of the legendary artifacts hidden behind those gates—the LINKS themselves—the world wouldn’t just change.

It would collapse.

There had only ever been one person to collect them all. A figure known only by a single letter:

K.

No history books spoke of them. No photographs existed. But everyone in the ministry knew the name.

And they feared its return more than death itself.

⸻

Back in Belmorra, the boy sat beside the old shaft, still waiting.

He didn’t know the ministry was watching.

Didn’t know that in another part of the world, a silent war was being fought over something he couldn’t even name yet.

He only knew the hum was louder today.

And for the first time…

it sounded like a voice.

⸻

To be continued..