The Fragment

Mark thought an asteroid had landed in his field, so he went off to check. The sound of leaves rustling as they played around with the wind added a rather suspenseful feeling to the atmosphere. 

Mark gathered up his courage and walked towards the crater. 

It looked like a normal piece of space rock until it spoke. 

"Help me!" it said in a weak tone. 

Mark jumped. He thought he must be dreaming, so he pinched himself. But when he felt the pain, he wanted to run. Yet his feet were buried in the ground. 

"Don't be afraid. I have the least interest in harming you. My name is Drima and I am something called the Makito. I am a fragment of the power of the authority possessed by the almighty one that just passed overhead." 

"What do you mean? It was a space rock that passed overhead. It is not a living thing." 

"I guess that's why he chose this planet despite being so powerful. Even though he is one of the 7 rulers, he chose this planet because the concentration of divine power here is so low." 

"That does not answer my question. And what nonsense are you saying about divine power concentration? How are you even speaking to me anyway? How do you know English?" 

"The way you perceive the stellar guardians means that you guys have very little divine power. And I am not speaking literally. I am transmitting my thoughts directly to your brain." 

"Telepathy. Wow, how cool." 

"Now come here and touch me so I can link with you so that we may get stronger together." 

"What do you mean together? And linking... what are you, Venom?" 

"What is Venom? I am not poisonous and I am definitely not asking you to eat me up." 

"Never mind," said Mark, shaking his head. After a moment of silence, he spoke again. 

"What I am saying is, what do you plan to do? Are there more like you out there?" 

"We were dispatched into a group of about 8 billion fragments. I am the second largest fragment. That entails that I am the second most powerful person after the first fragment. And our motive is to make this planet a colony for the ruler." 

"What do you mean colony and how will you achieve it?" 

"We shall concentrate this planet with divine ether so that the great ruler can descend here and we can merge with him. And you humans can see and pray to him." 

"What nonsense are you spouting?" said Mark in an angry voice. 

"What I say is the truth." 

"That's it, I am leaving." 

"Do you want this planet to die or something?" asked the stone. 

"What do you mean by that?" 

"There will be a war between the seven candidate planets chosen by our great lord. The one who manages to get through the war and win shall be taken in by the lord as his children, and the other will become fodder for the new generations yet to come." 

"What??" gasped Mark, who was flabbergasted by the story. 

"Yes. We have been dispatched to link with any living thing here, as long as they are multicellular animals. And the energy we make will feed the plants here as food for the new recombinant people. We only have 10 years.

At least 5 years will take for a fragment to completely link with an organism. The organism, once dead, will drop the fragment, which can be eaten by another fragment-linked being to grow powerful, or by a non-recombinant to become a recombinant." 

"That's so little time. How are we gonna be able to fight in 5 years of training if you guys will take up so much time linking?" 

"Blame your solar system for being located at the junkyard side of the galaxy. Our lord had so much trouble getting here. These five years will be spent constructing ether nodes in your body and filling up the useless atmosphere here with ether. We could've been done in four years if you guys could have had ether nodes." 

"What is going on? Should I trust him?" Mark's thoughts tangled into knots. "There's a 50% chance this is still a dream. I read somewhere that pricking yourself in a dream is only half-confirmation—your mind imagines pain too. But what if he's not lying...?" 

He looked down at the glowing fragment pulsing faintly in the dirt like a living ember. Its faint warmth pressed against his skin through the cold night air. Nothing about it felt natural—nothing about this night felt real. 

A chill crawled down his spine. 

The stillness of the field was now deafening. Even the breeze had died, as if the world itself was holding its breath. 

"If this is real… then I can't waste time. But what if it's a trick? What if I'm making a deal I don't even understand?" 

A dozen memories flashed through his mind—his grandpa coughing weakly in the sun, his mother's gentle voice now gone forever, the lonely silence of a house too big for just two. 

"I don't have anyone except my dying grandpa as my family anyway," he muttered aloud, almost as if trying to convince himself. 

Still… his hand trembled. He clenched it into a fist, staring at the fragment. 

"Fine," he said softly, the word barely audible in the cold air. "I will go along with your proposal." 

"Come closer," said the voice in his mind, smooth like silk but cold as stone, "and touch me with your most used hand." 

Mark hesitated again. His legs moved, but his instincts screamed at him to stop. Every step closer felt like walking into the mouth of something ancient, something that didn't belong on Earth. 

Finally, he knelt and reached out. His fingers hovered above the glowing rock. 

And then—contact. 

The sensation was wrong. Something wet and viscous latched onto his skin like a parasite. Heat flooded up his arm. He tried to pull away, but his body had already made its choice. 

"I, the second largest fragment of the Ruler of the Everlasting Dark, link to the body of this foolish mortal being," Drima's voice echoed in his mind like a thousand whispers layered together, "and swear to work towards making him and his kin submit to the greatness." 

Mark's heart pounded. "Now I will be setting up your ether nodes and pathways," Drima continued. "I hope you and I are compatible enough to do it in two years, seeing as the three years will be spent in filling the filthy atmosphere here with cleansing divinity." 

"I... I'm trusting you," Mark said shakily. "I look forward to our life… working together." 

The silence that followed was unbearable. 

"We will be talking to each other from now on like this. You can speak inside your mouth to tell me what you want. So that I won't read your thoughts." 

"Like this?" Mark asked, whispering with barely any sound. It felt strange. 

"Yes. Now I will start the linking process. It shall not be painful." 

"Ok," he breathed, though everything inside him screamed otherwise. 

Then the warmth came. 

And it wasn't comforting. 

It was wrong—a creeping burn that slithered through his veins, a pressure like thick sludge pushing through his bloodstream. His vision blurred. 

Then it hit. 

Pain. 

He screamed—a sound no one would hear in the empty fields. It felt like his body was being torn into microscopic fragments and reassembled, only to be shattered again. Over. And over. And over. 

"Aaaaaaaaaarrrrghhhh!!" 

He writhed, clawing at the dirt, the stars above swirling into chaos. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He wanted to die. He would rather die. 

"Why is the Angel fragment here?" Drima's voice shattered through his agony. 

A blinding light erupted from within him, piercing the sky, banishing the darkness. It filled every cell of his body, driving the agony into his brain like a thousand knives— 

—and then, another voice. 

Soft. Familiar. Loving. 

"Don't worry, son. Leave it all to me." 

It was his mother. 

Her voice wrapped around him like a blanket on a winter night. The pain began to melt away. His nausea faded. Warmth—not from the fragment, but from her—flooded his being. 

Drima's voice shrieked in the background. Something inside him twisted and churned. He vomited again. And again. Until finally, silence. 

Only minor aches remained. 

He looked at his palm, panting. A symbol glowed there—a shifting circle of white and black, like Taoism's yin-yang, except there were no dots. Just raw duality. Opposing forces, coexisting, moving. 

"You have successfully balanced two opposing powers in your body," the voices echoed in unison. 

"Take care, son. May I be able to speak to you someday again," his mother said one last time, fading gently into nothing. 

Tears rolled down Mark's cheeks. 

Not out of fear. 

Not out of pain. 

But out of love. 

Out of longing. 

And then, everything faded. 

His hand had a strange symbol. He turned on his flashlight. 

It kind of resembled the mark of Taoism, except there were no black and white dots. It was pure white and pure black, and they were moving in that circle as if keeping each other in check and coexisting. The mark remained there for a few minutes and then disappeared. Two voices spoke in his head: You have successfully balanced two opposing powers in your body. 

"Take care, son. May I be able to speak to you someday again," he heard his mom's voice again ringing through his mind, one last time. 

Tears continued to roll down his cheeks. He was crying. Crying to get back the sensation of the warm and soothing embrace of love he felt until a moment ago. After a few seconds, he fainted. 

He woke up again in his room, and his grandpa was sitting beside him in a very suspicious manner.