The Night Sky

The storm raged for hours. Kai just stayed huddled in his little ditch, soaked to the bone and shivering. The cut on his arm throbbed as well, with a steady ache. This was absolutely miserable.

Finally, as it got darker, the rain slowed to a drizzle and then stopped. The wind died down, and the clouds began to break apart. He pushed himself up, his clothes heavy with water, his body aching.

He looked up at the clearing sky, and it was full of stars, more than he had ever seen inside the village. Mostly since the vegetation was blown away in the storm. They were like tiny, sharp pinpricks of light in the blackness. He wondered what they really were. Old stories said they were campfires of the gods. But looking at them now, they just seemed distant and cold. The full moon hung in the sky, but it was a strange, deep red, like a drop of blood. It cast an eerie, reddish light over the wet forest. A blood moon, Kai thought, then a feeling of anxiety washed over him. That means animals might start going crazy. That was the last thing he needed right now.

The berries from earlier were long gone, and the hunger had returned, even worse than before. He was thirsty again, too. He knew it was dangerous, but he couldn't just sit here and wait for morning. He had to find more food, more water. It would be way too much torture to try and sleep in these conditions. He didn't think he could hunt anything. He had no weapons, and he was sure any animal out here was stronger and faster than he was. Foraging was his only option.

He started walking again, his feet squelching in the muddy ground. He moved slowly, his eyes scanning the bushes and the ground, lit by the strange, red moonlight.

"I don't have time for this, just show yourself berries!"

He went down another divot, and found nothing. He went up a tree, which was probably not a good idea if an animal was hiding up there, and found nothing. He went in circles trying to find anything. He was so focused on finding food that he didn't watch where he was going.

His foot caught on something hard, hidden in the wet leaves. Like a ledge or something. He fell forward, his arms flailing, unable to stop himself. He saw what he was about to hit: a long, flat slab of dark stone, half-buried in the dirt. Some kind of square block, lying on its side. In the center of the stone was a glowing, purple marker. Surprisingly, he recognized the text that was illuminated around the light, but he wasn't fast enough to read it. He was going to hit his head, right on the glowing part.

He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact, for the sharp pain.

But he felt nothing. No crash, no pain. Just a sudden, weightless feeling.

He opened his eyes. The forest was gone. The ground was gone. He was floating. All around him, in every direction, was the night sky. The endless black and purple filled with stars. The red moon hung above him, exactly where it had been before. It felt like he had fallen out of the world and into the sky itself.

For a long time, he just floated there, turning slowly in the empty space. He was too shocked to even be scared. One minute he was falling in a forest, the next he was floating in whatever the hell this place was.

"Did I die?" he whispered into the silence. After all that, after escaping the Lizardmen and surviving the monster in the woods, did he really die from tripping over a rock? How stupid. It was pathetic.

He tried to swim, to kick his legs, but there was nothing to push against.

Then another thought came to him. "Maybe I just hit my head. Maybe this is a dream." That made a little more sense. A weird dream, but better than being dead. But a dream had never felt like this before. It was strange, and he couldn't quite name what made it feel that way.

As he was trying to figure it out, something began to happen in front of him. A cloud of purple dust appeared out of nowhere. It swirled and spun, gathering together. The dust glowed brighter and brighter, until it took the shape of something solid.

A book.

It was a large, thick book, floating in the space right in front of him. Its cover was a deep, smooth black. The edges of the pages were a shining gold. There was no title on the cover, no pictures, no words at all. It was just a big, black book. It hung there silently, unmoving.

"This is so stupid," Kai muttered. He pushed off against nothing, trying to "swim" through the void toward the mysterious object. It was slow and clumsy, like moving through thick water, but eventually, he floated right in front of it.

He reached out a shaky hand and touched the smooth, black cover. It was cool and solid. It felt real. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the book open to the first page thinking he would wake up.

Written in elegant, black script were just a few lines of a poem:

The sun sets as the moon shines bright.

The true nature of the sky, reveals itself in the night.

Kai let out a short laugh. "Seriously? A poem? This is so dumb." He flipped the page.

The next page was completely different. It was filled with simple, blocky text. As he read, his amusement turned to a cold, creeping dread. The page described his escape. It talked about him slipping through the gate, his fear as he ran through the dark village, his wrong turn into the deep forest. The encounter with that monster. It went on and on, detailing every step, every feeling, right up to the moment he tripped and fell.

And so Kai, having successfully escaped his captors through the surprising kindness of a small, philosophical lizard, now found himself utterly and hopelessly lost. He had made a classic navigational error, a simple left when it should have been a right, or perhaps a right when it should have been a left. The details are unimportant. What is important is that he was now wandering aimlessly, muttering to himself about berries, a truly fascinating monologue that, sadly, no one was around to appreciate. Later, hearing a strange sound, he jumped into a bush. A startlingly vicious looking monster turned out to have been sniffing his scent! However the monster, completely bewildered, lost it and went on it's merry way. Kai walked around some more, then proceeded to fall. It was not a heroic fall, nor a tragic one. It was, to be perfectly honest, a rather clumsy and unremarkable fall over a rock. A rock, it should be noted, that had been waiting patiently for just this moment. As his head plummeted toward the strange, glowing stone, Kai was about to learn a very important lesson about watching where he was going, and also about ancient artifacts. Do you see now? Do you see that Kai was going to read this book the moment he left the orchard?

The last sentence was what really chilled him.

His blood ran cold. It knew his name. It knew everything. He slammed the page over, his heart hammering against his ribs. None of this made sense.

The next page only had a few more lines of text: Oh look at you. Can you see? Can you see how much you and the book need one another? No, perhaps not. Sometimes these things cannot be seen.

What did that even mean? He flipped the page again, frantically now, needing to see what was next, needing this to make some kind of sense. "What is this?" he whispered, his voice trembling. This has to be a dream. It has to be.

He turned to the next page. This one was different again. At the top of the page, in bold black letters, was a single word: Meteoroid

Meteoroid? Does it mean meteor? He thought to himself. Of course he knew what a meteor was; it was a glowing streak of light that came from the sky at night. Everyone told stories about how they are gifts from god, and blessing that were released onto this world. But what Kai read below the title was different from those stories.

Meteoroid is a spell of energy manipulation, projecting a dense object by using controlled gravimetric distortion. The caster initiates a localized energy sink, drawing and compressing atmospheric particles into a high-temperature core. This core is then accelerated downwards via an intensified gravitational vector, achieving extreme terminal velocities. The resulting atmospheric friction generates a plasma sheath. Upon impact, the spell unleashes a devastating combination of kinetic energy, shockwave, thermal radiation, and seismic force, creating a localized destructive event akin to a small meteor strike.

"What the actual fuck is this?" He whispered to himself once more, trying to re-read and grasp what was in this book. "I don't understand any of this."

Suddenly, a high-pitched, almost synthesized-like rumbling sound pierced his ears, sharp and painful. He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut against the noise. Just as suddenly as it started, the sound stopped. 

He opened his eyes. He was back in the forest. The strange, star-filled void was gone. He was on his knees with the hard stone block under them. The sun was rising, it was already morning. Kai let out a grateful sigh. "So I did slee-" He looked down and immediately stopped what he was saying.

He noticed his clothes were different. His simple brown tunic and trousers were gone. Instead, he was wearing a long, black robe. The edges of it were tipped with gold. He felt behind his back. Something was there. He reached back and his fingers brushed against the hilt of a sword, strapped somehow to his back. He pulled it free. The hilt was made of shining gold, and the blade was a single, long piece of deep red crystal, like a shard of the blood moon.

It wasn't a dream. He hadn't passed out. This was magic. Real magic, like in the old stories his grandmother used to tell. When there was alchemy of sorts and tales of dragons manipulating sand and materializing objects from thin air.

He looked down at the monolith he was kneeling on. The purple symbol in the center was no longer glowing. It just looked like a dull, painted mark on the dark stone. The strange text around it was still there.

His eyes were then drawn to something else. A little to his right, further in the clearing, was another monolith, almost identical to the one he was on. But this one had a symbol that glowed with a soft, green light, even with the sun up. He could see text on it, too. Curious, he stood up and tried to walk toward it.

He only took a few steps before an invisible force slammed into him, flinging him backward at incredible speed. He hit a tree with a loud thud. He expected a burst of pain, but strangely, he felt nothing that bad. He was still sore and hungry from before, but the impact hadn't hurt him much. The black robe must have done something. 

He pushed himself up, confused, and tried to approach the green monolith again. The same thing happened. He was thrown back just as hard. Giving up, he turned his attention back to the stone he had fallen on. The text was carved into the flat, upward-facing surface. He began to read.

The one who stumbles upon such a gift should be grateful, and should be someone a world should trust. The robe on the one's body is made of the mineral Nyctophyte, a substance that absorbs shock and a degree of supernatural power. The sword's hilt is made of gold and the blade is made of ruby. Though these materials are ordinarily breakable, an enchantment has been cast to encapsulate their beauty. I have named this blade Heliostra. There are six other primordial elements, in forms of this monolith. It was I who scattered them around the world, so anyone could take the power. When one dies with it, it returns to the monolith, and the monolith re-materializes somewhere else, a tradition that I plan to keep going for a long, long time. But be aware: the one who obtains this power cannot always be using it. When not activated, you are still as breakable as you were previously. Only when your eyes turn black and your pupils turn of purple stardust will one have access to supernatural abilities of the element. I made this so the possessor's body doesn't explode. They won't be re-created until the one with the power dies. This is the same for the robe and the sword though, they are ordinary weapons when the power isn't activated. Nyctophyte is strong alone, but still weak compared to some materials. The sword of ruby and gold is not enchanted when your eyes aren't black and your pupils aren't of purple stardust. You are of normal physique and ability most of the time.

There was a lot more text after that, but Kai's head was spinning. He skimmed the rest. It seemed to be the story of some man, though his name wasn't mentioned. Kai caught bits and pieces of it. It was a tale of a great betrayal, a kingdom lost to shadows, and a long, lonely journey through a dead forest. It spoke of battles against beasts made of living smoke and finding shelter in cave cities. It was a sad, epic story, but Kai couldn't focus on it. It felt like something from a different world, and it didn't help him understand his own situation. He had no idea what "black eyes and pupils of purple stardust" meant. He was confused, hungry, thirsty, and now he had a sword a robe, and an experience he didn't understand. How did this even work? What he really wanted to know was how this entire thing even happened. The writing on that book narrated his journey from the orchard to the monolith for some reason. He had no idea why.