Aster is halfway past an arguing trio outside a spaza shop, lagers in hand, voices cracking over a local soccer match like it actually matters—as if someone, somewhere, is taking notes for history—when the feeling settles in his chest.
That weight.
Low, slow, like sickness sinking behind the lungs.
Not sharp. Not urgent.
Just... there.
Like your credit score suddenly getting hit by an overdue car payment.
Heavy. Cold.
A thing he can’t see but knows intimately.
The Dread.
Capital D, trademark pending.
He named it years ago—the way you might give a nickname to a volcano that lives next door and keeps setting fire to your porch.
There’s no real hope in it. Just that dumb, hopeful ape-brain reaching for something to recognize.
Something it can bargain with.
Something it can ask: Why me? Why now? Maybe not the cat?
It isn’t fear. Not exactly. Fear has edges. Fear points at things. Fear at least has a map.
The Dread is more like a bureaucrat-god who works in finance, shuffling through paperwork without looking at you, nodding absently, then stamping “RESTRUCTURING” across your chest in red ink.
Not good, not bad—just irreversible.
A kind of cosmic balance sheet being audited, and your existence shows up as a line item under “non-performing assets.”
It’s the type of feeling that lets the monkey in you know things are about to become Not Okay in a way only your ancestors could recognize.
Dr. Scholts calls it a feedback loop—an internal script his brain defaults to whenever things get too quiet.
He, however, calls it her business model: charging him to diagnose dread in a system designed to produce it, while “treating” him by telling him in a hundred different ways to let go of things he can’t change.
And it keeps happening.
The Dread arrives more reliably than the seasonal flu, and lately it’s getting downright ambitious—maybe it spent a holiday at a wet market and picked up some career advice from a passing Covid strain.
“You expect the worst, so you interpret the smallest signal as danger,” she tells him, more than once. “It becomes prophecy because you make it one.”
Just old wiring. Learned responses. Survival instincts misfiring in a safe room.
Sure.
He doesn’t think she’s wrong—but she also bills him R1,500 to explain why curses don’t exist, so who’s really the irrational one here?
The city swarms with the golden lights of biofield glows bobbing through the Mist like lanterns lost at sea. Most are steady, whole, unaware. But Aster’s is easy to find. His glow flickers erratically, sputtering like a candle in a gale. It pulses wrong—too dim, too sharp—as if it doesn’t know whether it wants to live or die.
Matter halts beneath the scorched remains of a satellite dish still advertising DSTV. The Astral overlay trembles around them, the Mist curling like wet thought around their ankles.
Aster moves ahead, unaware. Still walking. Still leaking.
Matter lifts one hand, fingers folding through geometries not meant for flat space.
The scan triggers.
═════════════════════
— STANDARD SCAN —
[SUBJECT: ASTER ELCHEN]
═════════════════════
SPECIES: Human
PLANE: Material / Astral Cradle
STATUS: Unaware
∷ VESSEL ATTRIBUTES ∷
─────────────────────
Material Vessel: [MEASURABLE – Instability Detected]
Karmic Vector: [DETECTED — LEAKING]
Luck / Fate: [CORRUPTED]
Aura Field: [UNSTABLE]
Astral Vessel: [LOCKED]
∷ BIOFIELD HEALTH INDEX ∷
Stolen novel; please report.
─────────────────────
Biofield Status: 22% — Flickering / Intact
Karmic Integrity: 33%
Spiritual Noise: High (Unresolved)
─────────────────────
? WARNING — PARASITE DETECTED
[CLASS - S: VOID-WYRM]
Anchor Entity: Present
? Classification: Karmic Parasite ? Codename: “Void-Wyrm (Lesser Aspect)”
? Faith Siphon: Continuous
? Status: Dormant / Feeding
─────────────────────
∷ END OF SCAN ∷
The screen fades, leaving no trace but a faint taste of static in the air.
The leak has worsened. He sees the shimmer fray at the edges without even needing the scan to confirm it—golden light bleeding away in irregular pulses, drawn into the thing residing in Aster’s chest like thread pulled from a rotting seam.
Matter raises his hand.
His fingers move slowly, deliberately, tracing the geometry of something older than language—older than breath. A shape that doesn’t belong to this world but has learned to pass through it unnoticed. The motion leaves no mark in the air, but the Mist recoils all the same, as if the gesture disturbs some deeper current it has learned to fear.
A low hum stirs at the edge of hearing, like memory vibrating through a cracked bell.
Then comes the incantation—words folding inward, commands burning down to their purest ash. A thought that bends.
The sigil completes.
A single strand of light unravels from Matter’s palm—thin, gold shot through with faint blues, as if lightning has learned to mourn. It writhes for a moment, resisting. Then, as if recognizing something in him, it straightens, trembling toward Aster’s faltering glow.
Karmic Threadcasting.
Aster’s biofield flares in response.
∷ THREAD RECONVERGENCE IN PROGRESS ∷
Biofield Status: 22% → 39% → 47%
Thread Cohesion: Reestablishing
Karmic Drain: Temporary Suppression (Void-Wyrm Reaction: Dormant)
Golden light fills the alley like a second sunrise—sharp and searing. The Mist screams soundlessly and peels away, leaving the ground bare and steaming. The flora at the edge of the alley hiss and curl back into themselves, leaves twitching as if struck.
And then it dims, resettling into its uneven flicker.
Stable again. But not whole.
Never whole.
Matter exhales—a soundless gesture, more ritual than relief.
That has been his role for the past twenty-one years: a quiet threadcaster, always just behind the curtain, stitching the unravelling edge. Keeping the field from shattering. Never enough to repair—only enough to prolong. Just enough Karma to hold back the inevitable.
His cyan eyes stay fixed ahead, through veils of golden light and pulsing fields, on the only soul in the crowd that matters.
Aster’s glow is already faltering with every step—a weak heartbeat blinking through static, fading faster than Matter had calculated.
A slow bleed going septic.
Aster stops at the curb.
Glancing back.
The city sprawls behind him, bright and loud and utterly indifferent.
People hustle under faded awnings and cracked balconies, selling mangoes out of crates and knock-off sneakers off mats.
A woman balances a month’s groceries on her head like she’s auditioning for a documentary on human resilience.
A boy runs laughing behind a dog that isn’t his.
Laughter. Cursing.
Taxis hoot so often it seems like someone outsourced the city’s anger management program to cats trapped in pianos.
Everything normal.
And still, the Dread clings.
Colder now. Slick.
Winding through his ribs, slow and deliberate.
Not a curse. Not a curse. Not a curse.
He tells himself this, over and over.
Like a mantra.
Like a prayer.
Like a captain rearranging deck chairs while the ship sinks.
Because it always starts this way.
Pressure.
Then the spiral.
Then—crash.
Plans fall apart. People flip.
Opportunities rot in your hand like fruit you didn’t notice was bruised.
Self-sabotage.
A submerged trauma programming him to destroy anything remotely good in his life.
All plausible.
All very diagnosable.
Right up until it happens again. And again.
“It’s in my head,” he mutters.
It sounds less like a man making a statement and more like someone submitting a customer support ticket to the universe.
And maybe it is.
Maybe he’s just really, really consistent at getting in his own way.
But still.
His shoulders tense anyway.
He keeps walking.
Because that’s all he can do.
And yet, the feeling stays there—lodged under his sternum like a truth trying to be remembered.
He tells himself it’s nothing.
Because there’s no such thing as curses.
Right?
