The Spark That Burns Through the Fog

The room smelled like rusted iron and sterilized agony.

Chris laid Kelvin on the cold metal table, careful not to let any of the still-seeping wounds touch the jagged, unsanitized edges. He was light—too light—and his skin, once sun-kissed with life, now clung tightly to his bones like wet paper over sticks. He looked like a wireframe model of himself.

Chris paced. His blood wouldn't settle. It hissed and coiled like it was boiling under his skin.

"He won't survive long like this," the AI muttered, voice clipped.

"Yeah, no shit. You got a plan or are you just here for color commentary?"

"Magicka," it said flatly. "There is one method. A hard reset of the cognitive lattice."

Chris blinked.

"A reset?"

"Yes. You will act as the conduit. Magicka into nervous system. Magicka into bloodstream. Then magicka directly into cerebral tissue. Electro-thaumic induction, if you want the long name."

Chris looked down at Kelvin.

The man didn't even flinch when the AI spoke. His eyes still stared dead ahead. There was nothing behind them.

"How do I not melt his brain?"

"You don't use your magicka."

Chris raised an eyebrow. "Then whose?"

"His."

Chris scoffed. "His? He can't even blink, and you're telling me to siphon magic from his nerves?"

"Magicka never leaves," the AI said. "Not truly. Not unless the soul is gone. And he's still crying, Chris. So the soul's in there, no matter how lost."

Chris swallowed.

"Alright. What do I do?"

"Place your left hand on his chest. Right hand on his forehead. Channel through the sternum, pull from the heart—don't force it. Guide it. Think of it like heat moving from one metal rod to another. Let it transfer."

Chris hesitated only a second longer.

Then did as he was told.

Kelvin's chest was cold. His skin felt like a corpse's. But beneath the chill, there was something faint—a throb. A flicker.

"Okay," Chris whispered. "Kelvin… I'm gonna need you to help me out here. Just a little. One spark."

"Now," the AI instructed.

Chris closed his eyes.

And pulled.

At first, there was nothing.

Then—

Pain.

A migraine of molten glass. A static charge erupted from Kelvin's skin and surged up Chris's spine. He grit his teeth so hard his molars groaned. His vision blurred. The room pulsed and vibrated like he was inside a speaker at max volume.

He felt Kelvin's fear.

It screamed through him. The memories weren't words or images—just raw, jagged sensations. Drowning. Needles. Hands that didn't stop. Darkness. Cold. Screaming in a soundproof room. Screaming until the lungs bled.

Chris coughed, nearly puked.

"Guide it," the AI reminded. "Control it."

He focused.

Channeled.

Took that wild, self-destructive static and grounded it—turned it into a pulse. A rhythm.

The air in the room cracked with ozone.

Then—SNAP—

A blue flash danced across Kelvin's skin. Like thunder trying to speak.

Kelvin gasped.

It wasn't much. But it was something. A twitch. His fingers flexed.

Another pulse.

Another flash.

Kelvin coughed—wet, like his lungs were full of tar.

Chris opened his eyes and saw the impossible:

Kelvin blinked.

"...Chris?"

The voice was hoarse. Like it hadn't been used in years.

Chris couldn't hold back the relief that broke across his face. "Hey, dumbass."

Kelvin blinked again. "Where… the hell…"

"You've been on a vacation in hell. Congrats. I'm your shitty tour guide."

Kelvin weakly tried to smile. It didn't quite land.

Then he convulsed.

Chris caught him before he fell off the table, holding him upright while the spasms ran through his limbs.

"That's his nervous system realigning. Perfectly normal," the AI explained. "He'll be shaky. No combat. No sudden movements. But he should be able to walk, speak, and remember. Mostly."

Chris looked at Kelvin, whose eyes were now focusing. Tracking. No longer glassy.

"Can you stand?"

Kelvin groaned, but nodded. His legs trembled like a newborn deer's, but he stood.

It took everything he had.

But he stood.

"You look like shit," Chris said.

"You look like something I flushed three years ago."

They both laughed, and it sounded like a dying engine, but it was laughter.

"Touching," the AI muttered. "Now can we leave before the next batch of guards comes to investigate the psychic scream you just broadcasted through the walls?"

"Yeah," Chris said, grabbing Kelvin's arm and slinging it over his shoulder. "Let's get Stitch and get the hell out of this meat factory."

Kelvin glanced around, then down at his scarred arms.

"What the fuck did they do to me?"

Chris didn't answer.

He didn't need to.

The walls around them bled. You could see where the human restraints had fused into the operating tables. There were burn marks on the floor in the shapes of bodies. Not just surgical.

Ritual.

"They weren't testing your limits," the AI said. "They were trying to unlock something."

Kelvin didn't respond.

Chris just muttered: "Let's hope they didn't find the key."

And then they moved—slowly, silently—through corridors where shadows breathed, with the electric scent of magicka still lingering in the air like ozone before a lightning strike.

The corridors were empty. Not quiet — empty.

Not a smear of blood. Not a scuff mark. Just fluorescent hums and air so still it felt like it had been vacuum-sealed by God Himself.

Kelvin's voice cracked through the silence. "Where the hell is everyone?"

Chris paused, scanning the sterile hall. Before he could guess, his AI piped up.

"Guards were stationed here three minutes ago. Forty-six, armed. Now... zero. No audio, no vitals, no residual magicka. It's like they were overwritten. Scrubbed from reality."

"Scrubbed?" Kelvin asked.

"Yes. Like they never existed. No data. No shadows. They were redacted from existence. This... is not protocol."

Chris's jaw clenched. "The hell kind of place is this?"

"Only one biological trace remains. Cell 11-F. Designation: Subject 'Stitch.'"

The door to Stitch's cell wasn't locked.

No biometrics. No guards. Just a loose-hinged wooden slab bolted onto a rusted frame like someone gave up halfway through construction.

Chris stepped inside.

It was dark. Cold in a way that didn't make sense.

There was a stench like burnt plastic and dried blood left too long in the sun. Stitch sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, barefoot and rotting, one arm missing, torso wrapped in his own torn robes like someone tried to mummify him mid-surgery.

Flies didn't even dare land on him.

Chris crept closer, weapon raised.

"Stitch...?"

The corpse flinched.

Then he moved.

Head tilted at a sharp, wrong angle. One of his eyelids tore slightly as he forced it open. A dry smile peeled across his waxy lips, revealing chipped teeth and a mouth full of stitches.

"...Oh. It's you."

Chris blinked. "You recognize me?"

"I'd recognize that dumbass haircut anywhere," Stitch croaked. "Jesus Christ, they really let you play Captain again?"

Chris sighed, half relieved. "You look like hell."

"I am hell, sweetheart."

The undead husk snorted, leaning forward. His spine cracked loud enough to echo. "Get me out of here before I die again. Or do you need a reminder on how doors work, Captain Mantle?"

The trio limped down the corridor. Kelvin looked around, tense. "No guards. Not even a camera. What the hell happened?"

"This entire wing was operational minutes ago. Thermal logs confirm. Forty-six souls. Now… nothing."

"Ghosts?" Kelvin asked.

"Worse. Ghosts don't erase files."

"Something killed them?"

"Something unmade them."

Chris didn't like the tone.

Neither did Stitch, who let out a dry wheeze that might've been a laugh or the last bubble of air from a collapsed lung.

"Maybe they finally realized this place wasn't worth guarding."

Chris raised an eyebrow. "Who's they?"

Stitch just grinned, a bit of cheek flesh sloughing off with the motion.

"You'll see. You always see. Eventually."

They reached the ground floor.

A heavy door. No keycard. No magicka sigil. Just… a knob.

Chris hesitated, then turned it.

Cold punched through the hallway like a scream.

Beyond was an open tundra, cracked and snow-blasted. Gothic towers jutted from the frost like fossilized bones, some collapsed, others standing at crooked angles like they were drunk.

The air smelled like old blood and ozone.

Chris stepped into the snow, shielding his eyes.

"Satellite uplink achieved. You are currently in present-day Siberia. Coordinates match the ruins of Base Sekhmet — a Tartarian Empire stronghold. Status: presumed destroyed over 100 years ago."

Kelvin stepped beside him, stunned. "But it's still here."

Chris looked around at the towers.

"No. It's still alive."

Stitch limped out behind them, dragging his foot.

He looked around and let out a rattling breath.

"Hah. You morons really woke it up. Tartaria never dies, Captain. It just goes quiet until someone dumb enough opens the door."

Chris narrowed his eyes. "What the hell is this place really?"

Stitch didn't answer.

He just smiled, blood dripping from between his sewn lips.

In the snow, beneath the wind, something whispered in tongues not heard since Babylon.

Chris took a step back.

"Stitch—what are they saying?"

The corpse leaned closer, voice low.

"They're welcoming you home, Captain."

30 minutes later.

Chris leaned on a twisted iron support, his body still sore and cold, watching Stitch mumble to himself while picking frost off the stitches on his jaw. The snowstorm hadn't let up. If anything, it was getting worse. The ruined buildings surrounding them weren't just destroyed—they'd been emptied, like someone had sucked the insides out with a vacuum and left the bones to freeze.

Chris couldn't take the silence anymore.

"Stitch," he said, "What the hell are you? Where are you from? You've been running your mouth since we met, acting like you know everything. What's really going on with the Tartarian Empire? And don't give me riddles this time—I want details. Names. Places."

Stitch turned slowly. He looked like hell, even by undead standards. Pale flesh stretched too tight. One eye permanently bloodshot. Lips frayed like an old tire. Still, he grinned.

"You wanna know what's really beyond the walls? Fine, Captain Mantle. Let's talk geography."

Kelvin was silent, leaning against a chunk of black stone, shivering slightly as the Magicka flow in his veins kept him from freezing solid.

Stitch stepped closer to the others and pointed to the ice-covered horizon.

"Everything you've ever known, everything Earth's been told it is—that's the Inner Circle. That's the space between the Central Ice Wall and the First Wall. Your Africa, your Americas, Asia, Europe, all of it. Enclosed. Caged. A terraformed prison built after the fall of the Old Civilizations. The Tartarian Empire was one of the last great ones to hold power inside the Inner Circle, before it collapsed."

Chris frowned. "I already knew that."

Stitch's grin widened.

"But you don't know what lies outside."

He raised a trembling hand, as if gesturing to ghosts only he could see.

"Past the First Ice Wall? That's where the Shadow Nations start. Lands scrubbed from Earth's maps and memories. You've got the Serpentine Confederacy stretching across an entire continent of obsidian sand, ruled by bloodline psychics who never sleep. Further west lies Thule, a theocratic machine-empire powered by lunar tides and necromancy, built on fossilized god-flesh. And don't forget Orbis, a spiraling landmass of ever-moving tectonic rings—a living continent—governed by the Parliament of Teeth. They speak with mouths that aren't their own."

Chris blinked, but Stitch was still going.

"Past the Second Ice Wall—you step into the Second Circle. That's not Earth anymore. That's where the Outer Worlds begin. Continent-sized laboratories built to dissect time, where armies are bred for wars that already happened. There's a floating landmass up there, Eidolon, chained in orbit by gravity engines older than the Moon. Populated by blind engineers who worship entropy. There's Gravemire, an endless salt flat of dead gods and metallic trees, where it rains spinal fluid and children are born with memories from ten lives ago."

Kelvin looked like he was going to be sick.

Chris stared.

"And the Third Wall?" he asked.

Stitch's grin faltered.

"You don't go past the Third Wall."

"Why not?"

"Because everything past the Third Ice Wall is dead. The land's cracked like shattered glass. Radiation doesn't even cover it—it's something worse. There's no air, no color. No geometry makes sense. Creatures—if you can call them that—don't move, they just appear. Buildings stretch into the sky and loop back down. The last empire to try colonizing past the Third Wall was the Aurelian Nest. They brought a quarter million soldiers. Not one came back. Not even bodies."

The snowstorm howled, louder now.

Chris's AI finally chimed in, its voice flat. "Stitch's account aligns with 6.3% of the recovered Tartarian logs. Multiple references to uninhabitable zones beyond the Third Ice Wall. Common term: 'The Cradle's Edge.'"

Chris stepped back, silent.

"I thought Tartaria was the peak," he muttered.

Stitch laughed again, bitter and broken. "Tartaria was a toddler empire in a neighborhood full of serial killers. They had the best containment protocols, sure. But power? Influence? You ever wonder why the Tartarians started building walls instead of armies? Because they saw what was coming. They knew Earth couldn't fight it. So they tried to hide."

Chris looked back at the facility doors, then toward the crumbling towers in the storm.

"And now?" he asked.

Stitch didn't smile this time. He just stared.

"Now it's waking up again. And you're smack in the middle of it."

Stitch stood silent for a moment, the wind shrieking through the ruins like a mourning spirit. Snow laced the folds of his decaying robes, bones poking through torn seams. Then, in that grotesque half-smile of his, he sucked in a rattling breath.

"And just so you know," he rasped, "I only named a handful. There are at least fifty continents I know of. Maybe more. Most don't even have names anymore—just coordinates and hazard ratings that make your precious Inner Circle look like a playground."

He began to pace, dragging one foot behind him like something had eaten half the muscle off. "Some are covered in fog so thick it rots your lungs. Some are sentient landmasses that feed off dreams. There are islands that don't stay still—they hunt ships like predators, shift under the water and snap hulls like twigs. And then there are the Domains of the Gods…"

Chris and Kelvin glanced at each other. Stitch's tone had changed. It was quieter now. Careful.

"Don't let the name fool you. The 'Gods' out there? They're not omnipotent. Most of them are… withered. Bound. Trapped in their own pocket worlds like dying suns in glass jars. You'd think that'd make them safer—but no. See, weak gods don't get to die. They get desperate. They trade in memories, sanity, years of your life just to blink at you. You don't worship them. You survive them."

Chris swallowed hard.

"Only one place past the Third Wall is livable," Stitch said after a pause. "Asgard."

Chris raised an eyebrow. "You're serious?"

Stitch's face didn't move. "Dead serious. The last bastion. Supposedly. Golden fortresses, gravity anchors, weather control, food grown from light and music. But it's not a paradise. It's a last stand. Asgard isn't built for people like us—it's built to keep things out. It's the lid on a coffin the size of a solar system."

Chris's voice was dry. "Can we get there?"

Stitch scoffed and rolled his torn eyes. "If we had a functional Tartarian capital-class aircraft? Maybe. Maybe. It'd take months. That's with solar tunneling, anti-inversion shielding, and a magicka-catalyzed stasis core. And that's assuming you don't get intercepted once."

He leaned closer, breath steaming, his half-missing lips peeling into a sneer.

"If you don't have that? Then it's fifteen years, on foot or scavenged skimmers. That's if the lands themselves don't eat you alive. Literally. And that's not accounting for any of the things that hunt outsiders—*time-fractured clones, faith-based fauna, sentient winds, soul parasites—*you name it."

Chris let the silence sit before asking the obvious.

"So say we get the aircraft. We make it out. Escape the Inner Circle. Then what?"

Stitch's smile dropped.

"And go where, Chris?"

His voice wasn't mocking now—it was guttural. Low. Almost like a growl.

"You think the torture we've been subjected to here was bad?" He stepped forward, his teeth showing like shards of porcelain behind rotting gums. "You think injections and surgeries and containment chambers are the worst of it? Do you have any idea what the outer species do to people like you? Like us?"

Kelvin winced, still unsteady, the frost shaking on his shoulders.

Stitch kept going. His voice became breathless, intense.

"I once waged war with Hell, Captain. Not metaphor. Not religion. Hell. A dimension so riddled with quantum screams it can't hold a straight shape. I fought alongside condemned kings and failed gods. My bones were used as stakes for the damned. My voice was ripped out and used to lull a demon-brood into eternal sleep. And I swear to you…"

He pointed at the sky—past the storm, past the black stars.

"...Hell was a pissing tea party compared to what's out there."

Stitch turned his back to them and started walking into the storm as if it were warm.

"Out there," he said, almost softly, "pain isn't a tool. It's a currency. Hope's illegal. And you? You're just a species designation on some slaughter map."

Chris stood frozen, processing every word.

The AI on his chest finally spoke, voice quiet, flat. "Stitch is not exaggerating. Probability matrices confirm high likelihood of existential horrors in Circles Two and Three. Survival curve drops to 1.2% upon crossing Third Wall without celestial-grade shielding."

Chris took a breath. Frost gathered on his lashes. Kelvin didn't say a word.

Then Chris finally asked, "What the hell do we do, then?"

Stitch didn't look back. His voice came through the snow like a whisper dragged through a meat grinder.

"You adapt. Or you die screaming in a language your mind will never understand."