CHAPTER 33 —
The desert winds of Solaris were usually harsh in the early morning, sweeping across golden dunes and echoing through sandstone cities as life slowly stirred awake. Today, however, the winds carried something heavier. Something tense. Something people could not name, but felt crawling up the back of their necks.
News crystal towers flickered across the empire, broadcasting reports with frantic voices that struggled to hide their panic. Every screen displayed the same headline in pulsing red:
SKYRAIL TRAIN 7 VANISHES WITHOUT A TRACE
The streets buzzed with speculation. Merchants shouted over one another. Nobles argued in estate halls. Students gathered near floating monitors whispering theories.
"It must have derailed."
"No, the rails were perfect. They said it was gone. Gone. Not crashed."
"Was it a beast attack?"
"How can a beast swallow a train without leaving scraps?"
Inside a lavish chamber of polished sandstone and gold-trimmed banners, Solaris nobles argued around a round table.
"Aetheria hides something."
"No, they trusted us with the Skyrail. They would not sabotage it."
"Whether they intended it or not, the train was passing through their routes. Their system failed!"
A general, old and scarred, raised his hand. The room fell silent.
His voice was low, steady, and afraid in a way none of them wanted to admit.
"Trains do not vanish. Someone made it vanish."
And the chamber grew cold.
Far across the continent, the Dominion Empire's war council gathered. Twelve military commanders, three royal strategists, and one ancient sorcerer sat beneath a towering statue of their founder.
Maps were spread across a grand obsidian table.
Blinking lights marked every Skyrail checkpoint.
One light was missing.
Vanished.
Royal Commander Tarken slammed his fist on the table. "Aetheria is rising too quickly. They built a miracle. Now that miracle has swallowed seventy humans. We cannot allow them too much influence."
Another commander retorted sharply. "You dare accuse Prince Haruto? That child saved your soldiers from the beast invasion last month."
"He also commands mana levels we cannot measure. Perhaps the catastrophe was his doing."
"It was not his doing," growled another. "This was an external attack. Aetheria would never risk their own Skyrail."
The old sorcerer sitting at the edge of the table finally opened his eyes.
His pupils were white, as if they peered into dimensions unseen.
"This is the first sign."
Tarken froze. "Sign of what?"
The old sorcerer exhaled slowly.
"The void is stirring again."
A ripple of horror ran through the room.
In the far north, where mountains pierced the clouds and frost bit like fangs, the Velnar Frost Kingdom remained silent and still. Snow never frightened them. Blizzards were friends. Ice was breath.
But this morning, something else traveled through the cold.
Something that made even the wind hide.
Inside the glacial temple, an oracle sat before a pool of frozen water. Her silver braid lay against her white robes. She inhaled deeply.
And froze.
Her breath turned black.
Not fog.Not ice vapor.Black.
She whispered the words before her mind could stop them.
"The world's heartbeat is disturbed."
Her attendants trembled.
"What does it mean?"
She did not answer.
Because she could not.
Deep beneath the earth, in Abyssion's caverns where sunlight rarely reached, the shadow monarchy held court. Bioluminescent moss lit the hallways with soft blue glows. Assassins knelt on one knee before their emperor, their shadows dancing like ink spilled across stone.
One assassin spoke, voice barely more than a whisper.
"A train vanished with no trace. No shadow. No echo. No essence."
The Abyssion emperor sat tall on his throne of carved obsidian, his eyes gleaming with a mix of concern and calculation.
"Aetheria is walking toward a storm," he said.
His shadows bowed lower.
And the world above continued spinning, unaware of the darkness now stretching its fingers.
But not all nations were so loud. Not all nations were known.
In the endless skies above the world, far beyond normal sight, a floating kingdom drifted like a mirage woven from clouds and light.
The Celestial Sovereignty.
A place of shimmering towers, radiant bridges, and sun halos that hung like crowns above sacred plazas. Protected by illusions, hidden from the unworthy.
In a chamber woven entirely from white starlight, the High Oracle walked with serene grace.
She lifted her staff.
It slipped from her hand.
It clattered to the ground, ringing like a warning bell.
Her guards froze.
The oracle stared at the horizon with wide, terrified eyes.
"The Grinning Circle," she whispered, "has awakened."
Her guards felt their hearts stop.
Legends said that name meant extinction.
Far away, in the deep interior of the continent where black storms raged eternally, the Obsidian Republic stood in defiant silence. Its walls were carved from volcanic stone. Dark clouds coiled around its towers like serpents made of thunder.
Inside a hall filled with flickering prophecy stones, one stone cracked down the center.
The masked governor placed his fingers on the fracture.
His laugh was soft, amused, and chilling.
"So the children of Aetheria have stirred the ancient one."
His aides shivered, clutching their cloaks.
The governor lifted the fractured stone and placed it back into its cradle.
"We will watch. For now."
And the storm outside howled like a beast sensing blood.
Back in Aetheria, the day should have been bright.
Children should have been buying Airi cookies.
Tourists should have been taking pictures with glowing lanterns.
Spirit beasts should have been wandering peacefully.
But something felt wrong.
Lanterns flickered without wind.
Mana crystals dimmed for the first time since the city's founding.
Spirits hid in corners, trembling.
Shadows stretched too long across the ground.
Rails hummed off pitch, like strings pulled too tight.
Wind refused to move.
Plants stood stiff and silent, their leaves held unnaturally still.
Aetheria itself felt watched.
Airi walked through the plaza with a basket of cookies, but even she paused.
She looked up.
No wind moved her hair.
The lantern near her dimmed, then flickered, then pulsed like a stuttering heartbeat.
Airi whispered softly.
"Onii Chan… something feels wrong."
That night, long after the last train returned to the Grand Skyhub, Airi slept curled beneath soft blankets, her breathing gentle.
Until she heard it.
A whisper.
Close. Too close. Right behind her ear.
"Airi…"
Her eyes tensed in her sleep.
Another whisper.
"Airi…"
She tried to roll away, but the voice followed.
"Airi…"
She opened her eyes and found herself standing in the middle of a black desert. The sky above was cracked like broken glass. Sand beneath her feet rippled like liquid shadow.
And ahead of her…
A circle.
Smiling.
Drawn in midair with dripping darkness.
Eyes crooked. Nose uneven. Mouth too wide, stretching almost to the edges.
Behind that floating smile, a shadow shifted shape.
Long limbs.
Tall frame.
Head tilted.
Watching her.
Airi reached out a trembling hand.
And the smiling circle stretched wider, dripping more darkness.
She woke up with a scream lodged in her throat.
Her body was covered in sweat, her hands shaking uncontrollably.
Haruto stood on the balcony of the Skyhub, eyes scanning the silent city. He had been restless since sunset, unable to shake the pressure crawling beneath his skin.
His breath condensed in the warm night air.
That should not have happened.
He placed a hand against his chest. His heartbeat felt heavy, as if something invisible pressed on it.
His thoughts drifted unwillingly to the void. To the place he and Airi had passed through after the plane crash.
This sensation was the same.
But older.Heavier.More malicious.
His mana flickered out of rhythm.
His death aura tightened around his body like a coiled serpent.
He whispered into the quiet night.
"Something crossed the world's border."
And he was right.
Inside the Skyhub, Lyria hovered with trembling wings, the gentle light from her body dimming and brightening erratically.
Her voice quivered.
"The world's heartbeat… it is wrong… wrong… wrong…"
She curled into herself, tiny hands gripping her chest as if trying to hold the world steady.
Frost growled deeply, fur standing on edge from tail to shoulders. His eyes darted across the horizon, tracking something no one else could see.
The last time he reacted like this was when Haruto was in front of the God of Dominion.
His instincts screamed danger.
Ancient, impossible danger.
Lunara, who never showed fear, whose strength rivaled whole empires, whose presence always filled the room with confidence, stood frozen.
Her wings twitched violently.
Her pupils thinned to slits.
"This presence… no mortal… no dragon… no god should feel this."
Her voice was low, strangled.
For the first time since arriving in Aetheria, Lunara was afraid.
And that fear spread across the city like a quiet plague, turning every living creature tense.
Outside Aetheria's gleaming walls, in the empty plains where light normally danced across the grass…
Everything stilled.
Wind vanished.
The grass stopped swaying.
Crickets fell silent.
The moonlight bent unnaturally, as if avoiding something.
Shadows circled in slow spirals.
The air itself cracked like thin glass.
Lines of black light spread across the empty space like a spiderweb, stretching and twisting.
Then the crack widened.
Not a portal.
A wound.
A tear in reality, raw and pulsing with darkness.
Something stood behind the tear.
And then…
It stepped through.
The Herald.
He was tall. Taller than any normal being. His frame stretched like an elongated silhouette carved from shadow. A long, tattered coat dragged behind him, moving as if underwater.
His limbs were slightly too long.
His posture slightly too still.
His presence wrong in every possible way.
In one hand, he held a staff topped with a circular emblem.
The Grinning Circle.
The same crooked smile.The same uneven strokes.The same haunting symbol.
His face was covered by a black mask carved into a wide, unsettling grin. The eye holes were too large, too empty.
And through the cracks in the mask…
Void leaked like smoke.
His footsteps made no sound.
Not even a crunch on the grass.
He simply existed.
Watching.
Breathing without lungs.
Moving without sound.
Thinking without thought.
His presence alone made the plains tremble.
Aetheria felt it.
The rails hummed off key.
Lanterns dimmed.
Airi woke up with tears in her eyes.
Haruto staggered forward, clutching his chest.
Frost bared his teeth.
Lyria fell from the air before being caught by Lunara.
The Herald turned his head, looking toward Aetheria's glowing lights.
And then he spoke.
But not with a voice.
His words echoed inside the mind.
Inside the bones.
Inside the soul.
"The Princess of the Eternal must fall."
Haruto felt the world tighten around him.
Airi felt her breath catch painfully.
The Herald tilted his head once more.
Then he turned sideways.
Not turning physically.
His body simply rotated into a plane of darkness, like a painting sliding into a wall.
And he vanished.
No smoke.
No magic.
No sound.
Reality swallowed him whole.
And the world screamed silently.
Haruto raced to Airi's room. He found her sitting against the wall, hugging her knees, trembling violently.
She looked up at him with wide eyes filled with fear she could barely hold back.
"Onii Chan," she whispered.
He rushed to her side, kneeling down and holding her shoulders.
"Airi… something came. Something from outside this world. Something that…" His breath shook. "Something that targeted you."
Airi swallowed, her voice barely audible.
"I know."
Haruto tightened his grip.
"Airi… this thing… it targeted you."
She pressed her forehead against his chest, her voice cracking.
"Onii Chan… it came for me."
And Aetheria's night deepened into a silence that felt like a warning.
The Herald had walked.
And it would return.