Chapter 25:

CH 21 The Descent

The Wildworld

#Aiden

The first thing I noticed wasn’t the fall. It was the algorithm of nausea.

Spinal stress. Reversal of internal gravity. Vestibular failure.

My body registered the physics before my mind did.

My stomach surged up into my throat, and the world cracked open beneath me.

Far below, I saw people standing on distant bridges. Overhead, a swirling violet dome shimmered with stars I didn’t recognize. Beneath me stretched a transparent platform, smooth as ice, floating on compressed air. On its surface, a massive rune glowed — overlapping circles and jagged sigils pulsing emerald-blue.

Then I dropped.

No drifting. No gliding.

Just plummeting.

The sky shredded into lines. Wind ripped at my skin. The clouds howled past, sparking with static. My ears collapsed under the pressure — popping like brittle shells.

My vision splintered: sky, code, echoes, heat trails, mirrored sky again.

And the ground below — it wasn’t ground. It was raw digital chaos.

I passed two people during the fall. A dark-haired boy flailed as his net fizzled out too late. His eyes went wide before he struck with a sickening crack somewhere far below. A woman’s ring pulsed bright — then died. She screamed something garbled, then turned into ash.

Bodies dropped faster than the system could stabilize. One man struck the glass platform at a crooked angle; his arm folded like fabric, legs twisting out of shape. He screamed, but the translator only caught static.

The world fed it to me clean:

“Velocity: terminal.”

“No stabilization.”

“Trajectory: death.”

No control. No exit. I’m going to die.

“Incorrect.”

I didn’t hear the voice so much as feel it — cold and female, clinical. Every syllable cut like it had been honed.

“Probability of lethal impact: 97%. Suggested action: cast or die.”

Something inside me opened. Floodgates. Memory I hadn’t earned. Concepts I’d never studied — but understood instantly.

Parameters. Constructs. Casting interfaces. Symbolic vectors.

They all snapped into place. Like someone else’s mind was booting up inside mine.

This isn't mine. These aren't my thoughts.

And yet my fingers moved.

The watch on my hand turned into a ring and ignited. Transparent glyphs and framing lines burst into the air like blueprints unfolding.

Form. Force. Flow. Anchor. Scale.

Too many variables. Not enough time.

Anchor: Self. Flow: Downwards. Force: Minimal. Scale: Lowest.

ERROR: Anchor instability. Fractal drift detected.

Didn’t matter. I cast anyway.

“Casting integrity at 11%. You’re either brave or biologically stupid.”

The ring screamed. Code flared — like lightning trying to hold shape. A net formed beneath me. Glitching, barely stable. It warped, trembled—

And I saw it too late: the lower anchor was three-tenths of a degree off.

No. No—

Impact.

I didn’t hit clean. I clipped the edge, bounced hard, slammed into the secondary tether.

Ribs cracked. Two, maybe three. The shock lanced all the way to my molars. My shoulder tore out of its socket.

Then the net yanked me upright — violently.

White light swallowed my vision. My ear split open. My jaw pulsed with sharp, rhythmic pain.

But I was alive.

---

I lay there on the net, stunned, every nerve burning. Above me: a sky fractured beyond understanding.

The net threads dissolved slowly — like smoke drawn back into glass.

Breathing hurt. But I forced it anyway.

“Holding that shape cost you a mild cortical hemorrhage. Performance grade: D-minus. Did you attempt a phase-corrective override mid-cast?”

I coughed, tasted blood.

“Yeah,” I rasped.

“Fascinating. You almost succeeded. Statistically impressive — except now you have a dislocated shoulder. Classic.”

I gritted my teeth, sat up.

“Name?” I managed.

“Lyra.”

“Lyra,” I echoed. It sounded artificial. Alien. I frowned. This device was talking like it had a mind of its own. Making decisions. Judging me.

I stayed silent.

“Cerin said names should be chosen, not assigned. So I chose this one.”

Of course you did.

A screen bloomed across my vision:

DEVICE RECOGNIZED

DESIGNATION: AIDEN HOLT — Novitiate 847,223

STATUS: SURVIVED INITIAL DESCENT.

“You're not good at this,” Lyra said. “But you’re interesting. That will do.”

I pushed myself to my feet. Each breath still a battle. My shoulder hung limp. I dragged myself toward the open gate.

If I ever had to do that again, I’d make it cleaner. Next time would be cleaner.

But then the ground trembled.

A deep, grinding groan echoed across the shattered court. Like ancient stone waking from sleep. Something massive shifted in the haze beyond the gate.

Metal. Walking. Each footfall weighed like gravity itself.

The air thickened. Pressurized. Like the world was shrinking to make room.

My ring flickered. Every instinct screamed.

Beside me, someone whispered—

“What is that?”

And I whispered it too, in perfect sync:

“What is that…?”

Then it stepped into view.

A black giant, humanoid in shape, but scaled like a god of war. Obsidian armor layered with sigils and glowing spine vents. One cold, white eye burned from the faceplate.

The earth fractured beneath its weight. But it wasn’t metal — it was made of something else. Something energetic.

It didn’t speak.

It didn’t need to.

Its presence pressed down on every bone in my body.

“It's called a Forge, A nine feet beauty” said a voice behind me. Calm. Watching.

The machine turned slightly. Scanning us.

My blood chilled.

The old man beside me gave a soft smile. “You should enter the gates. The gas will soon reach you.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t move.

Just watched as the Forge passed.

Then I staggered forward again, every step screaming in my ribs. The thought of turning back filled me with dread — a choking sense of death too familiar to ignore.

I’d felt that before.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I limped through the gates.

---

Inside was… vast.

A cathedral-sized wound in the sky. But even that didn’t do it justice. Whole cities could disappear into the verticals of this place.

Columns taller than mountains rose to a flickering ceiling of starlight and data-vaults. A hundred thousand seats spiraled out in perfect rings — some made for humans, others clearly not.

Glass beneath. Dome above. The sky inside flickered, broken like fevered memory. Star-maps. Symbols. Runes. Sigils. They appeared, then vanished, rewriting themselves endlessly.

I watched in silence.

Other recruits slumped onto floating benches, unimpressed. A few coughed. One puked. A pale girl up front whispered something over and over like a prayer.

“Stress levels consistent with unscreened selection,” Lyra murmured. “Forecast survival rate: 18%.”

I sank onto the outermost bench, pain lancing through my ribs.

Wherever this was — it made Aureialla’s cities look like ruins.

Then the lights dimmed. My eyes adjusted — and I saw it:

A mural, massive and alive with circuitry. It only revealed itself when a Forge passed nearby.

Behind the central figure: the Founding Emperor, Alaric IX. On the left… Cerin Holt, etched in light beside the Omukubi w’ebizimbe — Builder of Buildings.

But at the heart of the mural stood Temidayo, the 7th Emperor. Largest carving I’d ever seen.

Half-regal, half-machine. His crown fused to his skull. One eye burning like a sun. The other — deeply human.

A robed figure below him chanted:

“All iron bends to Will. All Will answers the Forge. In Temidayo’s image, we build eternity.”

I knew this. Temidism — a hyper-faith growing faster than even Tharozh.

A warrior-priest machine-religion. No choice. No decline.

My stomach turned.

Why was his face here? Dad?

Around his image, one ring of code pulsed, clear as day:

“Design Key Override: HOLT-PRIME — Archive Rootchain Signature Recognized.”

I didn’t see the light first.

I felt the pressure—like the world inhaled and held its breath—and then the marble beneath me softened, turning to something warm and humming before my eyes snapped open.

I was inside a hall.

Enormous. Circular. Walls carved from something not stone, not metal—something alive. Faint blue filaments pulsed beneath its surface like veins under skin.

And in the center sat a man.

His head was shaved to a reflective shine, except for the thick puckered scar that cut across his skull like a butcher’s mark, crudely sewn back together with black thread. One of his eyes was metal—bronze and obsidian gears whirring faintly beneath a glass iris. He wore monk’s robes stitched with the Empire’s flag across the chest. And when he lifted his face toward us, he tried to smile.

It was… wrong.

The left corner of his mouth stayed frozen, the right twitching upward like a faulty puppet string. Half a smile. Half a stroke.

“The myths,” he rasped, voice dragging like sandpaper. “The myths are true.”

My stomach tightened.

He pushed himself upright with visible difficulty, joints popping, robe swaying. And when he spoke again, the hall trembled with it, like his words had weight.

“About the Emperor having a secret order that serves him alone.”

His mechanical eye clicked once, focusing on each of us in turn.

“With great difficulty,” he said, spreading both arms, “and even greater pride—we are called the Watchers.”

There was an hourglass beside him, tall as a child. The sand inside glowed blue.

He gripped its frame, flipped it over—

—and the world slowed.

The falling sand thickened, each grain drifting like drifting embers underwater. Even the air moved differently, denser, syrup-like. I felt my heartbeat lag. The vibration in my bones muted.

The man smiled his broken smile again.

“Good,” he muttered. “We have time.”

His gaze swept across us. A girl in a towel shrieked softly and tried to cover herself; a boy still wearing half of a training harness trembled. I realized we’d all been taken from wherever we were a second ago.

“You want to know why you’re here,” the man said. “Understandable.”

He strode forward—slowly, but each step echoed like a hammer tapping glass.

“The Harness chose you,” he said. “Or…” He tilted his head, metal eye whirring. “You were unfortunate enough to witness an active-duty Watcher die—” he pinched his fingers together, “—and in that instant, their Harness found you… compatible.”

Someone near me gasped.

“Compatible with what?” someone whispered.

“With the Bandwidth,” he said. “With the emotions of the world. With the cosmic currents no normal Awakened can survive.”

He sighed, long and tired.

“You are not normal Awakened. You will never again be normal anything.”

Then he paused… and his expression softened, strangely.

“Oh. And… apologies.”

He looked toward the woman in the towel.

“Truly, apologies.”

He walked to her—slow, reverent—and placed a gentle hand around her waist. Her breath caught. His voice dropped to a soft murmur, almost suggestive:

“No one likes being dragged out of a bath.”

A shimmering cloth of blue energy blossomed from his touch, wrapping her like liquid silk, forming robes around her shoulders, her legs, her trembling hands.

“There,” he said. “More decent.”

Then he turned back to the rest of us.

“Time is moving differently,” he said. “We’re speaking in a bubble between seconds. When this ends, you’ll be thrust back to the exact moment you were taken.”

He clasped his hands behind his back.

“Now listen carefully.”

The temperature in the hall dipped.

“Anyone who wishes to leave… may leave now.”

Silence.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

He blinked once, then laughed—a dry, broken thing.

“Oh, are you afraid for your lives?” he said cheerfully. “Don’t be. You’re going to lose them soon anyway.”

A few people flinched.

He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper that still echoed in my skull:

“Most of you, in fact.”