’Huh?’
Velyrian opened his eyes—or at least, he thought he did.
There was no sense of blinking, no lids, no lashes.
Just sudden awareness that clawed his mind.
The space around him was sothing that he never thought he would see.
Stars hung like scattered lanterns in a sea of shifting galaxies. So pulsed gently.
Others spiraled in frozen elegance.
He was floating, but he didn’t feel weightless.
He didn’t feel anything. Only silence and light.
’Where is this place?’
He looked down, half expecting to see the battered remains of his body.
But instead, what he saw stopped him cold.
His arms were translucent, webbed with veins of soft glowing wires.
They pulsed with an inner light, as if his blood had been replaced by stardust.
And below... his legs.
’...How?’
They were now chanical.
Sleek and angular, they glowed with the sa light as the galaxies around him.
They weren’t clunky prosthetics but refined, almost graceful in design.
Instead of nerves, slender glowing lines ran up into his waist, connecting to whatever form he had now beco.
"You have crossed a threshold."
Velyrian tried to flinch at the sudden voice but he couldn’t.
The voice wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t even really a sound.
It was more like a thought pressed gently into his mind... broken in places, like a record skipping a few beats but unmistakably clear.
It was speaking only to him.
Velyrian looked around, trying to find the source but all he saw was a cluster of stars.
Space that rippled with slow waves of color the sa way a mana core progresses.
"Where am I?" he asked, or thought, unsure if his voice carried at all.
"A place between. Beyond the core. Beyond the reach of your stars."
The voice replied, cold and unbothered with anything.
He frowned. "This... isn’t the core’s energy field. This is sothing else."
"It is outside your fra of ti and space. It is not life. It is not death. You were not ant to be here, Velyrian."
He tried to move.
There was no sensation of muscle or bone, but his body responded.
Slow at first, like he was learning to walk again.
He floated forward, arms spreading out for balance.
The stars didn’t move, but space bent around him as he did.
His steps began to solidify into sothing more rhythmic—natural.
The new legs didn’t clunk or grind.
They moved silently, smooth as silk.
The wires connecting them to his torso pulsed gently, like heartbeats.
"The body you wear is not a gift," the voice said. "It is a key. And a tether."
"A tether to what?"
"To the mory you tried to bury. To the place you must now return to."
Before he could respond, the space around him convulsed—like a giant breath had been taken and then held.
The galaxies distorted.
Stars bent in on themselves.
Sothing cold gripped him—not physically, but within.
’What is happening!?’
He staggered, reaching out for balance, but there was nothing to grab onto.
His light-form flickered and then the space cracked.
Not with a sound, but a sensation.
Like the splitting of an old scar that was on his body for longer than he rembered.
’AHHHHH!!’
His body jerked, spine twisting from a force outside his will.
A gust of invisible pressure slamd into him, and then—
He fell.
There was no ground below him, Velyrian just felt a motion.
He fell through layers of reality.
Colors he didn’t have nas for.
Shapes that weren’t shapes.
Whispers brushed past his ears.
His heart or whatever he had in its place began to race.
"The Spirit Realm," the voice said, calr now. "This place is untethered by linear ti. Souls drift here, unaware of what they are and so never leave."
The descent slowed.
The stars faded into mist.
The world reshaped into sothing dense and heavy, like a dream pressed too deep into sleep.
Shadows twisted in the fog and a ground ford beneath him.
Velyrian landed softly though there was no sensation on his feet.
He exhaled, though he hadn’t known he was holding his breath.
"What... do you want from ?" he asked aloud this ti, his voice steady but wary.
The voice didn’t answer right away. Just the sound of the mist curling and the stars above dimming.
Then—
"I am not what wants. I am what waits."
Velyrian narrowed his eyes. "You’re part of the core?"
"I was born from it. But I am older than what you built. You only opened the door."
His gaze drifted up toward the sky that no longer looked like sky. "So what now?"
"Now, you rember why you started."
The mist shifted and far in the distance, a small figure stood—a girl, holding a paper star.
Velyrian stepped forward, breath catching in his throat.
"...My little star," he whispered.
And then, he moved toward her.
But it only took him two steps before everything turned into mist.
Velyrian blinked, trying to understand what happened.
His legs began to move even though he didn’t wish for it.
And before long he was running towards a hill.
"What the hell is happening!?"
Velyrian yelled but he got no answers from the voice.
He looked around only to find he was going towards the broken sun hanging in the sky.
’Is this east?’
He wondered as he climbed to the top of the hill with ease.
Velyrian stood there, with no problem with his breathing even though he was running for miles.
"Hmm?"
Finally.
After so long he finally saw a human figure but the relief soon turned into confusion.
Velyrian looked at the boy with a serious expression.
The boy had wheat blonde hair with purple lightning crackling over his body.
He was fighting against multiple grueso beings.
He frowned. "What are those?"
"Specters."
The voice replied.
Velyrian looked at those things more intently.
Suddenly, as if noticing his gaze they all stopped and looked at him.
Then as if fearing him, they all began to run away.
Velyrian opened his mouth to speak only to stop midway.
Because...
The boy looked his way as well and he could clearly see him.
Velyrian tried to tremble but couldn’t.
A single word escaped his lips. "Asher?"
Before he could make sense out of it the world around him twisted once again.
He was thrown away and his spine twisted with the force.
Velyrian wanted to scream yet he couldn’t do that.
The world stabilized, leaving him gasping for breath.
Now, he stood in an entirely different place.
A ruined world that felt eerily familiar to him.
...Because it was his hotown.
Velyrian’s eyes widened in horror as he saw littered corpses that were thrown around the place.
"No... way." He whispered in disbelief. "...W-what happened here!?"
Velyrian staggered forward, heart pounding in his chest—or whatever now passed for one.
Buildings were torn in half, their edges lted and blackened.
Every step he took was slower than the last.
There were bodies everywhere.
Friends. Neighbors. People he used to greet every morning. All gone.
He knelt beside one of them, an old man who used to sell peaches by the square.
Velyrian rembered him smiling, always giving extra fruit to kids who didn’t have coins.
Tears began falling down his eyes.
"...M-my people." He whispered griefly. "My k-kingdom."
He bowed his head, taking in deep breaths along with the sll of ash and burning wood.
Even though he wasn’t sure if he could sll anything at all in this form.
"W-wait... burning wood?"
With an awkward body that didn’t listen to his emotions... Velyrian looked back.
"..."
There...
He saw it.
The World Tree of elves...
...Was burning.
Velyrian stood frozen, unable to look away.
The World Tree... once towering with life, its branches ho to the royal elves... was now ablaze.
Flas licked its roots, climbing the sacred trunk like hungry beasts.
"...No," he breathed. "That’s not possible."
His legs moved on their own again, carrying him toward the tree.
"How did this happen...?"
Velyrian whispered, clutching his chest as if trying to keep it from splitting open.
Finally...
At the base of the tree he saw a man.
Sa wheat blonde hair and blood red eyes that stared at the burning tree.
Behind him was an army of deford beings that were in tens of thousands.
...The army of mimickers.
The boy, as if sensing him, looked toward his direction.
Velyrian felt like his voice was leaving him yet he still forced his na.
"...Asher?"
The world twisted once again.
"So much senseless pain this world will suffer."
The voice echoed once again as he was plumted back to reality.
"In all tilines... in all possibilities, only you h—elp h—im, save this world."
Velyrian was once again knocked back to his office room.
---
"Cough! Cough!"
A sudden series of violent coughing grabbed Velyrian.
His disoriented eyes looked to his legs only to find the chanical ones slowly retracting back in his body.
"No... no."
He whispered but couldn’t do anything.
"Wait, Ven core!?"
Velyrian looked around the room in search of it but couldn’t find it.
He panickingly tried to stand up only to fall down face first.
"Huh?"
It was only then did he notice...
...An abnormal pulse where his heart should be.
"No! No!"
Velyrian crawled on the floor towards an X-ray machine.
"Please be a lie! Please be a lie... Please."
He barely reached for the scanner and used it on his chest.
When he saw the live scan on the screen...
Velyrian felt his heart stop.
Yet, it was nothing but an illusion.
Because...
He doesn’t have a heart now.
The Ven core had replaced it.
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