Chapter 15: Another Reality

Vorynxis sat motionless in the dark, his breath slow, measured, his body still adjusting to the embers coursing through his veins. His cave, once a sanctuary, now felt too small, as if the very walls were pressing inward, suffocating.

Something was wrong.

He had noticed it first in the air—a thickness that clung to his skin, not like humidity, but like something unseen was watching.

For days, he had sensed an absence of motion outside, a silence too perfect, too unnatural. The forest did not whisper. The winds did not shift. The world beyond his cave had gone utterly still.

And then, the crack appeared.

It began as a hairline fracture in the air itself, a sliver of something that should not exist.

A soundless, motionless tear in reality.

It did not glow, did not pulse, did not tremble—it simply was.

A thin, jagged line, sharp against the darkness.

Vorynxis did not move.

His instincts screamed.

Do not look.

Do not look too deeply.

Do not acknowledge it.

Yet, even as he willed himself to ignore it, he felt his perception stretch toward it, like fingers reaching into fire despite knowing they would burn.

Then, the crack widened.

And everything changed.

A sucking, silent void pulled at his mind, and the world beyond the fracture peeled away.

At first, he thought he was gazing into somewhere else.

Then, realization struck like ice in his veins—

No.

This is what was always here.

His breath hitched, his pulse a steady drum in his ears, yet his body remained still. Every instinct screamed to not accept what he was seeing.

But he could not unsee it now.

The Sun Was Not the Sun

The sky above was alive.

Not in a poetic sense. Not in a way the weak-minded might describe spiritual energy flowing through the world.

It was literally, sickeningly, alive.

The heavens, once vast and open, were now a layer of pulsating, veined tissue, stretched across the endless void like a grotesque membrane.

Something beat within it.

A pulse. A slow, deliberate thrum that reverberated through the land.

It was breathing.

Above it all, the sun still burned.

Or at least, it resembled the sun.

But it was not a star.

It was a gaping, molten wound, a sphere of ever-burning, regenerating flesh.

Not light—but radiance, bleeding out from its surface, an open sore in the heavens, endlessly consuming itself only to reform again.

Vorynxis stared at it too long.

And the sun twitched.

A small movement. Barely noticeable.

Yet the moment it did, a wrongness settled into his bones, as if some vast, slumbering intelligence had stirred.

The sky was not watching him.

But it could.

And something deep in his soul begged him to not draw its attention.

Vorynxis forced his gaze downward.

Away from the sun. Away from the heavens of flesh.

Toward the land he had known.

The small village, nestled beyond the hills, was still there. The roads, the homes, the people.

Yes. The people.

They walked the streets. They talked, they bartered, they laughed. They went about their daily lives as if nothing had changed.

Yet their bodies were wrong.

At first glance, they looked the same.

But now, he could see them fully.

A merchant unloading crates stretched his arm too far, his flesh elongating unnaturally to reach across the stall. Yet, as soon as someone looked at him, it snapped back into place.

A woman adjusted her scarf, but Vorynxis now saw that it was not fabric at all—but an extension of her own skin, blending seamlessly into her shoulders.

She smiled at a passing child.

Her lips stretched too wide, curling up toward her ears, exposing something far too many teeth before snapping back into normalcy.

A man unloading fish at the dock coughed—and something inside his throat twitched, his chest rippling with unnatural movement, as though something else within him was shifting in place.

They were still human.

Still spoke like humans.

Still lived like humans.

Yet he now understood.

This was what they had always been.

And none of them knew.

Vorynxis felt his hands tremble. Not from fear, but from something far worse—

Recognition.

A part of him, deep within, felt no horror. No rejection.

A part of him felt this was normal.

And that part of him—that realization—was what terrified him the most.

He looked toward the marketplace.

The stalls were made of wood.

But wood should not move.

Yet he saw it now—tiny veins running through the grain, throbbing softly, expanding and contracting as if the planks were alive.

The stone roads, meant to be firm beneath their feet, twitched under every step, subtly shifting like they were aware of being walked upon.

The mountains in the distance rippled, as if exhaling a slow breath.

The trees swayed not with the wind, but with purpose—their branches curling toward movement, watching the passersby.

And beneath it all, the earth itself…

He had always felt a hum when channeling his embers. He had assumed it was the pulse of natural energy, the breath of cultivation.

But now, through the crack, he understood.

That hum was a heartbeat.

The land itself was alive.

And it was waiting.

The crack widened again.

And then… the whisper came.

It was not a voice.

It was not sound.

It was a certainty that flooded his mind.

"This is what is real."

Vorynxis' heart slammed against his ribs.

His breath stilled.

For the first time since his execution, fear crept into his mind.

Not fear of death. Not fear of pain.

But fear of understanding.

His vision flickered. The crack began to seal.

The grotesque world faded—or perhaps, it merely hid itself again.

The sky was blue once more.

The sun was distant.

The people were normal.

The land was solid.

Yet as he sat in his cave, staring at the now-empty space where the crack had been, he knew.

It hadn't been a hallucination.

It hadn't been an illusion.

It had been the truth.

And now, he could never unsee it.