Pain.

  Of course. Because why break tradition now?

  Aster awakens to the delightful sensation of being put through a cosmic juicer. Every nerve light up like an emergency flare; muscles scream in a dozen dialects of agony; bones send gentle but insistent reminders that they are, in fact, not okay. His skull throbs with the kind of pressure that suggests a meth addict has moved in, cracked open the drywall between his thoughts, and started a fire to keep warm.

  And, in classic fashion, he doesn’t even get a chance to feel sorry for himself. Because the moment he opens his eyes, he realizes he isn’t in a hospital. Or a bed. Or anything remotely human-adjacent.

  He seems to be floating.

  Above him, below him, all around him — space. Or something pretending to be space. Stars spread like pollen across the black; galaxies curl in impossible spirals; colours that shouldn’t exist stretch like oil across the void. He lies on an invisible platform suspended in the middle of what looks like the universe’s most psychedelic screensaver.

  Naturally, his first instinct is to make a joke.

  But then comes the voice.

  “So, you’re finally awake.”

  The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They arrive ancient and grating, dragging power behind them like a cathedral dragged through gravel.

  Aster turns his head and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

  The creature standing a few meters away is… a lot. Four meters of raw muscle, lion-headed, and somehow glowing with a kind of divine arrogance that says, I’ve never been wrong about anything, and I never will be. His mane shimmers with gold-threaded starlight, and his armour — if it can be called that — sparkles with moving constellations.

  Aster opens his mouth. Closes it. Settles on, “...I’m sorry, did I die and wake up in a heavy metal album cover?”

  The lion, apparently, doesn’t enjoy commentary.

  “Insolence,” the lion-man snarls, and the word alone feels like it has weight.

  Then that weight becomes literal.

  Aster hits the invisible surface like a ragdoll flung by an angry god. Air leaves his lungs in a single, undignified oof, and then a crushing pressure settles onto him, like someone has just parked a philosophical elephant on his chest.

  “You dare make fun of my presence?” the lion thunders. “A child of dirt. A vessel of corruption. And you presume to even meet my gaze?”

  The pressure doubles.

  Aster gasps, vision blurring as his ribs protest their treatment. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a familiar voice whispers: So this is what they mean by ‘divine judgment.’

  He tries to move. Fails. His joints collectively file a cease-and-desist.

  And yet, somewhere beneath the agony, under the god-squashing and the complete collapse of personal dignity, is something else.

  Rage.

  It’s petty. It’s irrational. But it’s his.

  “Oh, sorry,” Aster rasps, every syllable soaked in venomous exhaustion. “Would love to stay flattened and apologetic,” he says, “but I think you broke my spine?”

  The lion-man’s eyes narrow, and the weight increases again. Bones creak. Muscles scream. Aster tastes copper.

  Then, like a switch flipping, the pressure vanishes.

  He collapses flat, gasping like a fish tossed on a table.

  A new voice breaks through the tension — rich and clear and lined with irritation.

  “Still love crushing initiates, I see, Rhyden.”

  Aster blinks through the haze, looking up into light.

  Literal light.

  The woman standing nearby — if standing even applies — is made of starfire and solar flares. Her skin shimmers like the surface of a sun. Her hair dances like plasma in a magnetic field. She’s less a person and more why every civilization started off by worshiping the sun.

  And she’s annoyed.

  Rhyden snarls. “Insects must be reminded of their place. It’s not like there aren’t millions more of them.”

  Aster, coughing, mutters, “Oh, good. He’s a misanthrope and a statistician.”

  “The Charter forbids you from harming him,” the woman replies coolly. “And we both know why we’re here.”

  Before Aster can gather the strength to ask what charter? what we? the void around them shifts.

  Something arrives.

  Then something else.

  Then more somethings.

  One by one, they emerge — beings of impossible form and overwhelming presence. A humanoid composed entirely of magma, hissing with inner heat. A woman with the body of a spider and far too many eyes. A cloud of ash that vaguely resembles a man. Twin figures stitched from misaligned pieces who smile like they know how this will end. Twelve of them, in total.

  The resulting pressure isn’t just physical. It’s existential.

  Aster doesn’t dare look up without expecting the same treatment he’s had from Rhyden.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “You may look up,” the woman made from sunlight says.

  Aster doesn’t move for a long beat.

  Then, cautiously, stupidly, he does.

  Twelve pairs of eyes stare back. Some curious. Some hungry. Some blank with the sort of ancient calculation that doesn’t need morality to function.

  He’s never felt smaller.

  Aster blinks. “Right,” he mutters. “Another nightmare Matter conveniently forgot to mention.”

  “Do you know who we are?”

  Aster looks around. Twelve of them. Each one a fever dream.

  Other than Mr. Molten Midlife Crisis, Lady Legs-for-Days, Ash Ketchum, and the charmingly stitched-together sibling abomination from someone’s medical thesis, the rest of the council is an even mix of vaguely humanoid nightmares and divine design experiments that have clearly been given too much creative freedom.

  Some look passably human, if your definition of human includes pupils that look like spinning galaxies or hair made from pure lightning. Others are more half-monster, like the grumpy kitty Rhyden. One seems to be a robot — or at least something wearing the idea of a robot like a fashion statement. And then there’s the shrub.

  No, really. A potted shrubbery. Well-manicured. Vibrantly green. With what Aster is almost certain are tiny moons orbiting around its top like it’s the center of its own personal micro–solar system. He doesn’t know whether to bow or water it.

  “Hopefully very friendly people?” Aster offers.

  A grating voice hisses, “He’s an idiot.”

  “Correct,” Aster says, “but I’d like to add ‘consistently self-aware’ to the record.”

  “My name is Aerathena,” the woman says, ignoring the cries of insolence from her fellow members. “You stand before the Celestial Council.”

  Aerathena turns toward the other entities. “Let me fill you all in before this devolves further. This boy is the lost heir of the Elchen family.”

  The words hit like a dropped name at a funeral.

  “The one infected by the SS-level void wyrm as a baby in utero.” The room — or space, or god-chamber, or whatever it is — shifts.

  Aster feels it. A crackle in the air. Recognition. Alarm.

  “That’s impossible,” the magma man says. “The Elchen and Sikewe lines were destroyed fourteen years ago. The parasite should have hatched ages ago.”

  “That’s because the impossible has just been achieved tonight,” Aerathena continues, having the entire council’s and Aster’s full attention. “This boy has not only survived being a void wyrm host, but it seems he was transfused with the wyrm into a SymbioCultivator with the void parasite.”

  A wave of voices breaks over them — argument, demands, threats.

  Aster doesn’t speak. He can’t. He’s still caught on the phrase in utero.

  “I’ve already copied his engravings,” Aerathena says. “They were carved using sap from the Eternity Tree. Not ink. Not pigment. Sap.”

  The void stills.

  “Harvested. Stabilized. And applied by a Celestial-rank enchanter. One who cultivated that sap inside his body for over two decades, then sacrificed himself to complete the ritual.”

  Aster’s heart stutters.

  Matter.

  Then—

  “Enough.”

  The word freezes the council.

  A figure steps forward. Older. Electric-blue hair. Stormlight beard. Eyes like blades honed by authority.

  “Aerathena,” he says. “I’ll take the floor now.”

  “Kheno Mashe, you have the stand,” Aerathena says, stepping back.

  Aster stiffens as recognition hits like a sledgehammer to the gut.

  Mashe.

  “The boy is not a candidate. He’s a catastrophe. A time bomb. A weapon wrapped in skin.”

  His voice is calm. Measured. And utterly final.

  “The void wyrm is not a pet to be tamed or a tool to be wielded. It’s a force of annihilation; it infects purpose itself and unwinds fate. This boy cannot be left to live under any circumstances. He’s an existential threat to our current order and peace.”

  Aster’s heart pounds in his chest. He wants to scream, accuse the glowing blue-haired bastard of putting the thing inside him, but the weight of Kheno’s presence — the sheer, coiled power radiating from him — keeps him rooted in place.

  Aerathena’s fiery gaze narrows. “Kheno, your fear is understandable, but your conclusions are premature. We have no evidence that the wyrm inside the boy’s influence is active or uncontrollable.”

  “No evidence?” Kheno’s voice rises, sharp and biting. “The boy survived a transfusion that should have killed him. He bears engravings made from the sap of the Eternity Tree, burnt into him by the sacrifice of a Celestial. Do you truly believe such power comes without a cost? Without a purpose?” He steps closer to Aster, his movements deliberate, like a predator circling its prey. “The void wyrm is not a passive entity. It’s a predator, a destroyer. And it will use this boy to fulfill its purpose.”

  The rage burning inside Aster finally overcomes the natural fear the man’s presence evokes. He swallows the fear. Forces himself to stand.

  “You don’t know me,” Aster says, his voice trembling but defiant. “Your family… they’re the ones who infected me with the void wyrm. You’re the reason I’m like this.”

  Kheno’s smile doesn’t waver, but his glowing eyes narrow slightly, like a predator sizing up its prey. “A bold accusation,” he says, tone dripping with condescension. “And one you have no proof to support. The void wyrm is a force of chaos, boy. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t take sides. To blame my family for your… condition is not only baseless but foolish.”

  “You’ve had your say, Kheno. Why don’t you allow Aerathena to explain her thoughts on the matter?” says a blind swordsman — the most normal-looking of the bunch.

  Kheno nods. “Then I give the floor. But know that my vote is for execution. Immediately. Before this parasite learns to act through him.”

  Aerathena doesn’t raise her voice to match Kheno’s fury. She doesn’t need to. When she steps forward again, the void itself seems to hush for her, light folding along the edges of her form like even the stars want to listen.

  “I understand your fear, Kheno. We all do. No one here doubts what a full Void Form is capable of. We’ve all seen it — cities erased, realms undone, fate itself rewritten into something cruel and unrecognizable. But that… is not what stands before us.”

  She turns slightly, casting her gaze down to Aster — not in pity, not even in kindness, but in recognition.

  “This boy isn’t a ticking time bomb. He’s a living paradox. A host who should have perished in utero. A carrier of a void wyrm that should have long since hatched. And yet, because of an impossible ritual, a Celestial’s sacrifice, and something in his own will that defies calculation, it didn’t.”

  She lets that settle before continuing, her tone sharpened by resolve.

  “According to the Astral Charter — our law — he’s a Legacy. The last of the Elchen line. And that status alone guarantees him the right to training, to passage through Galamad, and ultimately, to his Severing Ceremony. That’s not conjecture. That’s doctrine.”

  Aster blinks. Wait. He’s protected… legally?

  Aerathena raises her chin. “But it’s more than tradition. More than legality. The wyrm, as it exists now, appears locked — contained at Aster’s power level, unable to grow on its own, unable to complete its metamorphosis, effectively neutralized by the ritual’s bindings. If that’s true, and our initial readings suggest that it is, then the threat has not only been delayed — it’s been disarmed.”

  Murmurs rise among the council.

  “And if that were all, it would already be enough to spare his life. But it isn’t all. This is the first recorded case of a true SymbioCultivator forged between two opposing planes: the Astral… and the Void.”

  She lets the weight of that sink in.

  “A living bridge between order and entropy. If we study him — not just as a subject, but as a cultivator in his own right — we may finally uncover a method to cure future infections without execution. We could prevent the next catastrophe before it begins.”

  Her eyes sweep across the room.

  “I don’t ask for mercy. I ask for reason. For curiosity. For discipline. I’ll personally oversee his progress. If the wyrm shows signs of growth, of influence beyond its lock, I’ll act. But until then, he’s a resource, a miracle, and by our own Charter, he’s a student. Not a sacrifice.”

  Then she steps back, voice quiet.

  “The vote will decide. But if we allow fear to guide us instead of law, we’ll be no better than the beasts we claim to stand against.”

  The room erupts.

  Aster just stands there. Waiting to die.

  But then—

  Six hands and a branch rise.

  Rhyden included.

  Five hands stay down.

  Kheno among them.

  And then, one by one, they vanish.

  Leaving Aster alone, with Aerathena — and the stars.

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