“So…” Aster says slowly, dragging the word out as if it might distract from the fact that he is, in fact, suspended in the middle of what appears to be a really expensive cosmic screensaver. “Just to clarify before my brain implodes from lack of oxygen—or sanity—are we actually in space, or is this some kind of high-budget astral illusion that just really enjoys pretending it’s more existentially threatening than it actually is?”

  His voice echoes off the nothing, swallowed by an absence so profound it makes silence feel crowded. Aerathena turns toward him with that same effortless grace, her body shimmering with heat and solar flares—a star compressed into the vague suggestion of a woman. Her eyes meet his, twin suns that don’t just look—they interrogate. Not cruelly. Just without apology.

  “We’re not in space,” she says, her voice carrying that unbearable calm of someone who not only has all the answers but has already sorted them alphabetically and decided none are worth discussing with someone who still sweats. “This is a pocket dimension—a stabilized bridge between the lower strata and the Astral Wilds. Energy down there is too thin, too erratic. If we entered in our true forms, we’d unravel the realm’s natural order. This dimension keeps things contained. Balanced. Non-destructive.”

  Aster blinks.

  Then gives the slow, resigned nod of someone pretending to understand but secretly filing everything under: magic reasons; do not question.

  “Ah. A safety bubble to protect us from yourself,” he says, blinking slowly. “Love that. My old therapist had a word for this kind of setup: ‘trauma-preventative architecture.’”

  She doesn’t respond to the sarcasm. Maybe she doesn’t hear it. More likely, she just doesn’t care. Which makes it worse.

  “I sent Rhyden ahead while I gathered the others,” she adds, as if reading his next thought before he manages to sculpt it into words. “He’s a hammer, not a scalpel. But loyal. And despite appearances, he voted to let you live.”

  Aster snorts. “Yeah. A true saint. I can’t tell you how moved I was when he tried to compress me into paste. Real tender moment.”

  Aerathena doesn’t smile. Not exactly. But something in her softens—just a degree.

  That threadbare calm wavers the moment Aster exhales again, shoulders slumping with the kind of fatigue that can’t be slept off.

  “Did he have to die?” he asks, the words low and thin and unguarded. “Matter, I mean. He said he’d protect me. That he’d stay. I didn’t know he was planning to break reality open and jump into the abyss while I watched.”

  He tries to keep his voice flat. Fails. The grief cracks through like old wood splitting under weight.

  “I knew something was off,” he adds, quieter now. “He got weird at the end. Hesitant. Detached. But I just assumed that’s what happens when you’re dealing with void rituals and fate-consuming cosmic larva. Not, you know, planning your own death. I thought we had more time. That he’d… teach me things. Help me figure out how not to implode. Maybe sit me down and explain what the hell is wrong with my back.”

  Aerathena watches him without interruption. Not coldly. Just… thoroughly. Like someone who has sat with death enough times to know there’s no point in cutting grief short.

  When she finally speaks, her voice is lower. Respectful.

  “Nothing like this has ever been attempted,” she says. “Not because we lack power, or theory, or desperation—but because no one’s been foolish or brave enough to try. The sap from the Eternity Tree is unstable outside its root-world. It exists on a plane only accessible to those who’ve bent time to their will. Past. Present. Future. Halt. All layered. All at once. It doesn’t just carry the idea of time—it is time. Distilled. Condensed. Alive.”

  She turns away slightly, as if speaking to the void itself.

  “When that sap is removed from the Tree, its polarity fractures. Each drop becomes a war inside itself—one part aging forward, another collapsing backward, another freezing, another skipping seconds like a scratched record. Put that inside a mortal body and, best-case scenario? Spontaneous chronological combustion. Worst case? You don’t even exist in the right order anymore. You bleed out through the calendar.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Aster blinks at her.

  “That is… significantly worse than what Matter told me.”

  Aerathena nods. “He wouldn’t have wanted to explain it. Not fully. Because what he did wasn’t just a ritual—it was self-destruction by inches. He cultivated that sap inside himself for over twenty years. Twenty. Years. Letting time chew through his organs until he could shape it into something stable. And then he carved it into you. Not for glory. Not for survival. For containment.”

  Aster’s chest goes tight. Breath hitches. The emptiness around him suddenly feels sharp.

  “And he did it all for me?” he says, the words landing like stones. “So I could be some kind of cosmic petri dish for a thing nobody understands?”

  Her eyes flick toward him.

  “To contain the wyrm,” she says. “And to give you a chance. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  Aster inhales sharply, but it doesn’t steady him.

  “So the wyrm. Let’s talk about that. Because Matter said it was dangerous, sure, but also like, ‘Don’t worry, kid, it’s probably sleeping and if you don’t think about it too hard it might not eat your soul’ kind of dangerous. But I’m guessing you have a less optimistic assessment?”

  Aerathena’s light dims—not noticeably, but enough that Aster feels it.

  “The void wyrm is not a parasite,” she says. “It is entropy with a heartbeat. A being born of the plane bordering our own, one that exists in opposition to everything this universe calls structure. It doesn’t just survive by feeding; it evolves by erasing. The first one we detected manifested in the late 1800s. Since then, each appearance has been met with disaster we can barely quantify.”

  She paces slowly—if such a term applies to anything in this gravity-optional dimension.

  “Once it hatches, it devours the karmic resonance of the host—faith, fortune, karma. Then it enters chrysalis. While it sleeps, it builds—using the building blocks from our plane to remake itself, immunizing itself against our energy, allowing it to wield it alongside the Void. That makes it capable of manipulating both planes’ energy. And when it emerges, it is no longer a wyrm. It is a creature designed to corrupt destiny itself. A Void-Form.”

  Aster’s hands tremble. “How bad are we talking?”

  Her expression turns distant.

  “The last SS-class wyrm—the last one bearing the cross-horn structure like the one on yours—was the catalyst for World War II.”

  She doesn’t dramatize it. She doesn’t need to.

  “It fed off despair. War. Collapse. Every economic ruin. Every act of violence. Every bomb dropped liquidated the karmic assets of the planet. It grew stronger with each broken city. Every ruin became its food. We had to gather an entire continent’s fate to force it into dormancy, and even then, we didn’t kill it. We could only contain it—until its endless hunger devoured itself.”

  Aster stares into the void. His voice, when it returns, is brittle.

  “And mine could be worse?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  And that is all the answer he needs.

  He squeezes his hands tight, fingernails biting into palms that feel too real for any of this to be hypothetical.

  “If I’m carrying something like that, why not kill me? Dissect me. Study the ritual from my corpse. That seems like the smarter move.”

  Aerathena turns fully to him. Her aura flares—not in threat, but conviction.

  “Because you’re stable. And because the fusion worked. You’re not infected—you’re merged. Symbio-cultivation is a known process: two entities cultivating toward one goal. But this? This is a first. You haven’t just survived it—you’re thriving. And that means we have a chance.”

  She steps closer.

  “If we can understand how your body metabolizes the wyrm’s energy—its void typing—we might be able to replicate it. Control it. Remove it from others without killing them.”

  Hope stirs in his chest. Then immediately tries to kill itself out of spite.

  “Void typing,” he says flatly. “So I’m not cursed anymore. Just maybe karmically radioactive.”

  “You might be the first person who can destroy a wyrm without killing its host,” she says. “And you might be the only one who ever will.”

  He stares at her.

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  Aerathena’s expression softens. Not pity. Not warmth. Just understanding.

  “Matter’s sacrifice will change the planes. Hosts who would have been executed may now be spared. You’ll be hailed as a saviour by many. But if they learn how… if they find out what was done…”

  “They’ll burn me at the stake,” Aster finishes. “In a karma-efficient way, of course.”

  She inclines her head.

  “That’s why the ritual will be classified. SS-level Secret. Celestial access only.”

  Aster sighs, then mutters under his breath, “Great. That’ll help my social anxiety.”

  Aerathena looks toward the shifting cosmos.

  “You’ll be enrolled at Galamad,” she says. “It floats above the Astral Storm, directly over the Drakensberg mountains. You’ll be behind your peers, but you’ll catch up.”

  Aster blinks. “Right. Matter said something about it. Floating school. Bad weather. Possibly haunted.”

  She nods once. “You begin as soon as we get there.”

  Aster looks down at his hands. They still tremble.

  “I guess I’m starting my cultivation journey,” he says, his voice dry.

  Then he exhales slowly.

  “And I’m only carrying the embryonic apocalypse of World War Three in my chest. No pressure.”

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