The carriage rattled on for three days without stopping.
Aether sat in the back, watching the landscape change through the window. Cities gave way to smaller towns. Towns became villages. Then the villages just... stopped. After that, it was only mountains, snow, and dead trees that looked like they'd been standing there for centuries.
His father sat across from him, pulling out a worn map every couple of hours. Not because he needed to—Nexus Corp had given him clear directions. But it seemed like he needed something to do, something to check, like the map could somehow promise they were going the right way.
His mother was quiet. She'd been quiet since they left the city.
That was what worried Aether most. Back home, when the debt collectors came knocking, his mother would hum. Just quietly, under her breath, some old song Aether had never asked her the name of. It was how she coped with things. The fact that she hadn't hummed once during the entire journey meant something was wrong.
"How much longer?" Aether asked, breaking the silence.
His father looked at the map again, then out at the darkening sky. "Two or three more days, I think. The facility is in the northern pass. Remote location. That's why the pay is good."
Good pay. Those words had taken over their entire household for the past month.
The debt wasn't something that had built slowly. It had crashed down all at once. One day his father was going to work. The next day he stopped. His mother started rationing food. They began selling things—little things at first, then bigger things. A chair. A painting. His father's good coat.
Then Nexus Corp knocked on their door.
The man wore a suit that probably cost more than their entire house. His smile looked practiced, like he'd used it a thousand times before.
"We need cargo transported," he'd said. "From the city to a remote facility. One trip. Your debts disappear."
It sounded impossible. But when you're drowning, you grab at anything.
"Maybe things will finally get better," his mother had whispered the night before they left. She was staring at a candle, watching the flame flicker.
His father hadn't said anything. They both knew the truth—one job wouldn't fix everything. But it would buy them time. And time was something they desperately needed.
Now, three days into the journey, Aether was starting to realize that time might be the only thing they didn't have.
"The air feels different," his mother said suddenly.
She was right. Aether had noticed it too, but he hadn't wanted to say anything. The air felt heavier. Thicker. Like breathing underwater, except it didn't hurt. It was more like something was just... wrong with it. Off.
"It's the altitude," his father said. But his voice wasn't convincing, even to himself. "High up in the mountains, the air is different."
Neither of them believed him, and his father knew it.
The carriage kept moving. The sun started to set, and the mountains got bigger, darker. There were no villages anymore. No signs of people at all. Just stone, snow, and silence.
"Do you think it'll be okay?" his mother asked quietly. "The job, I mean. Do you think it'll really solve things?"
His father shifted in his seat. "It has to," he said. "What choice do we have?"
It wasn't really an answer.
They rode in silence after that, listening to the wheels of the carriage grinding against the frozen ground.
The carriage lurched to a stop.
Aether grabbed the frame to keep from falling. His mother gripped the bench so hard her hands shook.
"What's happening?" she asked.
His father climbed down without answering. Aether and his mother looked at each other, then followed him outside.
The cold hit immediately. It was sharp, cutting, the kind of cold that made your lungs hurt when you breathed. But there was something else too. That same wrongness from before, except it was stronger now. More present.
The road had just... ended.
Not like it had been destroyed or blocked. It just stopped, like whoever built it had decided not to continue. Beyond it was twisted rock, dead snow, and mountains that seemed to go up forever.
"This isn't right," his father said quietly.
He was wrong. It was exactly right for this place.
Aether's eyes moved past the landscape and landed on something carved into the mountainside. At first, it was just a shadow in the rock. As they got closer, it became clear—a structure. A building. Carved directly into the mountain itself.
It wasn't like any depot Aether had ever seen. Those were open, busy places with workers and horses and the smell of hay. This was different. The stone was black, ancient, scarred by something more than just time. Symbols were carved into the walls—not like merchant marks or anything normal. These symbols hurt to look at. They seemed to move when Aether wasn't looking directly at them.
"Nexus said the facility was isolated," his father said, trying to sound confident. "Remote locations pay more, so they probably have something... special."
He was clearly lying, and he knew that Aether knew it.
The horses refused to go forward. They stamped nervously, their breath coming in panicked bursts. His father had to coax them with quiet words and gentle pulling on the reins. Even then, they moved reluctantly, like the animals themselves knew something was wrong with this place.
As they got closer, Aether realized there were no guards. No workers. No sound at all. Just the structure, carved into the mountain like something had hollowed it out.
The entrance was a massive gate made of blackened iron. It had the same symbols carved into it that covered the walls. When Aether looked at them, he felt that pressure behind his eyes again. Stronger this time.
His father approached the gate. "Hello?" he called out. "Nexus Corp delivery."
Nothing happened.
"Maybe we need to knock," his mother suggested, though her voice shook.
His father stepped forward and pressed his hand against the gate.
It swung open silently. Like the mountain was breathing and exhaling them inside.
The corridor beyond was dark. Torches lit up as they walked in, showing stone walls carved with those same symbols. They were everywhere—on the floor, on the ceiling, on every surface. Looking at them made Aether's head hurt.
The smell reached them before they saw anything. Iron. Decay. Something burned.
His mother's breath caught.
His father stopped walking.
The corridor opened into a large underground chamber, and Aether's entire body went cold.
Bodies.
There were hundreds of them.
They were stacked against the walls. Some were stuffed in cages. Some were tied to metal frames that had symbols carved into them. Some were fresh. Some were just dried outlines on the stone—barely recognizable as ever being human.
The smell was overwhelming.
"No," his father whispered. "No, this can't be right."
Footsteps echoed through the chamber.
Men in dark robes emerged from the shadows. They walked slowly, calmly. Their faces weren't surprised or worried. One of them smiled.
"Welcome," he said simply. "You're on time."
His father stepped back, pulling Aether and his mother behind him.
"What is this place?" he demanded, his voice steady despite the fear Aether could feel coming from him. "This wasn't what was in the contract."
The robed man tilted his head slightly.
"This is the contract," he replied. "You just didn't get to read all of it."
Behind them, the entrance sealed shut.
The sound of stone grinding against stone was loud, final, absolute.
Aether felt panic rising in his chest. That trapped feeling. The kind from nightmares where you try to run but your legs won't work.
His father grabbed both of them. "Run. We need to—"
The pressure hit like a wall.
It wasn't something you could see or touch, but it was real. It pushed down on his shoulders, made it hard to breathe. The symbols on the walls started glowing with a blue light.
"No!" his father shouted. "Let them go! Take me instead!"
But the robed figures were already moving. They moved smoothly, like they'd done this many times before. Aether and his parents were separated, each pulled toward a different platform arranged in a circle.
Aether fought. He actually fought, clawing and kicking against the hands holding him. But his body felt heavy, slow, like he was moving through water. The pressure in the air was crushing, making every movement an effort.
The restraints locked around his wrists and ankles. Not chains, but something that held him in place completely. Magic, maybe. Or something even older.
"Don't look!" his mother called out. "Don't look at what they're doing!"
But Aether couldn't help it.
The robed figures arranged themselves around the circle. The chanting started—low, guttural, in a language that sounded wrong. Not like any language Aether had ever heard. Like it came from somewhere else.
The symbols on the walls got brighter, and the bodies in the chamber—the old ones, the dead ones—they started to glow. Light was being pulled from them. Sucked out, like water going down a drain. It wasn't violent. It was methodical. Careful.
That made it worse somehow.
His father was struggling against his restraints, his face red. His mother had her eyes shut tight. Her lips were moving, like she was praying.
The light got brighter.
One of the nearest bodies just... stopped. What was left of it fell apart and scattered across the stone floor like ash.
Aether understood then. They were being used as fuel. The ritual was eating the dead, and when it was done with them, it would eat the living.
The light moved toward his mother.
She opened her eyes.
For a second, she looked at him. Not scared. Not angry. Just sad. Like she'd accepted what was about to happen.
"I'm sorry," she said.
The light took her.
She didn't scream. She didn't fight. She just... stopped. One moment she was there, and then she wasn't. Like she'd never existed at all.
His father howled. A sound like nothing Aether had ever heard before. Raw. Broken. The sound of someone losing everything.
"Aether!" his father screamed. "Run! You have to—"
The light reached him.
And then Aether was alone on his platform.
All the other bodies were gone now. The light was pulling inward, condensing into something bright and terrible. Aether knew, without any doubt, that it was coming for him next.
But something was happening inside him.
There was a pressure building. Not outside. Inside. Like his chest was going to explode. Like something was trying to claw its way out from inside his body.
The robed figures were chanting faster now, more desperate. Some of them had blood running from their noses. They were struggling to hold something back—something huge that was trying to come through from somewhere else.
The light reached him.
And Aether *broke*.
Not his body. Something deeper. Something fundamental.
For just a second, everything made sense. The ritual was opening a door. A crack. A thin place between worlds. And on the other side of that door, something massive was trying to push through.
Something that didn't belong in this world.
But something else happened before it could get through.
---
System Notification
[OVERLAW INVASION DETECTED]
[PRIMORDIAL SOURCE LOCATED — LIGHTNING AUTHORITY (FRAGEMENT)]
[PRIMORDIAL SOURCE LOCATED — SPATIAL DISTORTION (FRAGEMENT)]
[ACQUISITION INITIATED — ANTHESIS CORE AWAKENING]
---
Power flooded through him.
Not warm. Not painful. Sharp. Electric. Old.
For a moment, he could feel everything. The stone beneath him. The air around him. The space between things. The weight of the mountain above him. And above all of that—lightning.
Not the kind that comes during storms.
Something older. Something that existed before the sky even did.
The restraints shattered.
The nearest robed figure turned around, his eyes wide—
Aether moved. He didn't think about it. He just moved. And when he did, space bent around him like something dropping into water.
The figure fell.
The next one started to cast a spell. Aether could see the magic forming. He could feel it being pulled together from the air. He didn't know how he knew that. His body just did.
He tore the spell apart.
The magic unraveled like a thread being pulled from a piece of cloth. The man who cast it screamed.
Aether kept moving.
Lightning crackled along his arms now. Not like electricity, but like something fundamental in reality had cracked. Every movement was destruction. Every breath was a threat.
Bodies fell.
Spells fell apart the moment they touched him. The robed figures tried to fight back, but it didn't matter. They'd opened something they couldn't close. They'd brought something into the world that shouldn't exist, and now it was loose.
Blood soaked into the stone. The chamber filled with screaming.
Eventually, the screaming stopped.
Aether stood in the center of the chamber, breathing hard, covered in blood. Around him lay the robed figures—some dead, some not quite dead. The chamber was silent except for his breathing and the sound of the symbols on the walls fading.
The ritual was broken.
But the power inside him was still burning. It was tearing at him from the inside, burning away everything he had been. His body couldn't contain it.
His vision started to blur.
Aether staggered. His legs barely held him up. He fell to his knees on the stone.
Through the haze, he saw something.
A figure standing at the edge of the chamber. In the shadows. An old man, maybe. Tall. Still. Just watching.
Not moving to help.
Not moving to stop him.
Just watching.
Like he was waiting for something.
Aether tried to see the man's face. Tried to understand who was watching him. But his eyes wouldn't work right. The power inside him was burning everything from the inside out. His mind was breaking apart.
The figure didn't move.
Aether's eyes closed.
And everything went dark.
---
End of Chapter 1