Chapter 16:A Fractured Truth

Vorynxis did not move.

His breath came slow and steady—controlled, measured. And yet, his fingers had curled into the cold stone beneath him without his realizing.

The crack in reality had vanished.

But its truth remained.

It clung to him like a sickness, burrowing into his thoughts, poisoning his mind.

The world outside his cave looked normal.

But it wasn't.

He knew it wasn't.

The realization settled into him like a weight, heavy and suffocating.

He had lived his entire life believing in this world.

The vast sky, the rising sun, the distant stars that shimmered in the night. He had taken them as fact, as unshakable constants.

But now…

Now, he had seen beneath the surface.

And what lay beneath was wrong.

The sky was wrong. The earth was wrong. The air, the light, the space around him—all of it felt off in a way that defied explanation.

Had it always been like this?

Had he spent his entire life walking through a lie?

Was the sun ever truly burning, or had it merely been another illusion—another mask placed over something incomprehensible?

Had he ever been real?

The thought slithered through his mind, cold and suffocating.

No.

No, he could not afford to think like that.

Not now.

Not yet.

Vorynxis shut his eyes, forcing his mind into stillness. Panic was useless. Fear was useless.

The only thing that mattered was power.

And he still had power.

He had torn through the rogue cultivators. He had stolen their embers. He had fed his fire.

That was real.

His strength remained his own.

But everything else…

Had it ever truly belonged to him?

He pressed his fingers harder into the stone beneath him. The surface felt solid, cold. But for the first time, he found himself doubting it.

Was it truly there?

Or was it only there because he believed it should be?

Something had changed.

And he had to find out what.

The silence was different now.

Vorynxis had spent years inside this cave, enduring its stillness. He had once known it—its every crack, its every shift in air.

But now…

Now, it felt alive.

The walls breathed.

Not in the way a living creature would—not with lungs or movement—but with something deeper.

With awareness.

It was as if the very stone had begun to watch.

It should have been impossible.

Yet he felt it.

No sound. No movement. No whisper of foreign energy.

Yet something watched him.

Not from the outside.

From within.

His fingers twitched.

Something inside him had awakened when he had looked through the crack.

Something that should have never been aware.

The thought sent a slow, crawling unease down his spine.

What had he seen?

What had seen him?

The silence pressed against him, thick, suffocating.

He had to move.

He had to leave.

He could not remain here—not with this presence pressing against his mind, whispering something he could not hear.

Something was wrong.

And he needed to know what.

The outside world greeted him with stillness.

No wind. No movement.

Just a sky that should not exist.

It was the same sky he had always known.

Yet now, as he gazed upon it, his mind rejected it.

The color was wrong.

It was not blue. It was not black.

It was tired.

As if it had been stretched too thin, forced to exist when it no longer had the strength to do so.

His breath hitched.

And then—he looked up.

For a long moment, his mind refused to process what he saw.

The sky was not a sky.

It was cracked.

Fractured, just like the one he had seen inside the cave.

And beyond it—beyond the veil that should have hidden all things—he saw.

A battle.

Two lights clashed, their impact sending ripples through the very fabric of existence. Their forms were indistinct, shifting, too great to comprehend.

And in the spaces between their battle, he glimpsed something far greater.

A cosmos beyond his world.

A universe that should not have been visible.

Planets.

But not normal planets.

They were wrong.

Not too many—but even infinity seemed small.

Endless spheres, twisting in ways that made no sense.

Some were not spheres at all.

Some were mirrors. Their surfaces reflected infinity, warping the light of existence into something incomprehensible.

Some were bones. Vast continents of ribcages, spines that curled into themselves like the remains of forgotten things.

Some were nothing but color. Not planets, not celestial bodies—just hues shifting endlessly, burning into the eyes, changing with every breath.

Some were spirals. Shapes that should not have been, twisting upon themselves, coiling in and out of dimensions.

And some… some were just voids.

Not black holes. Not empty space.

Just places where existence refused to be.

His thoughts spiraled.

There were too many.

His mind could not hold them all.

The universe was not what he thought it was.

His own world was just a fragment. A piece of something greater.

And the crack in the sky had been a mistake.

Something had gone wrong.

Something had let him see.

The air shuddered.

The sky groaned.

And the crack in reality began to close.

But it was too late.

Vorynxis had seen.

And some truths, once glimpsed, could never be ignored.

His breath came ragged now.

His mind was fractured.

The world around him still looked normal.

But it wasn't.

He could not unsee it.

Could not pretend it had not happened.

Had the world always been like this?

Had he simply not been meant to notice?

Or had something… changed?

Had something let him see?

His fingers twitched.

Was there a world where everything was fire?

A reality where only ice remained?

A place where all things were color, shifting and formless?

Or a place where only bones remained, where flesh had no meaning?

His thoughts spiraled.

There were too many possibilities.

Too many truths.

And yet, something about it all felt wrong.

As if none of these worlds, none of these things, were ever meant to be known.

As if something was watching.

And it did not want him to understand.