The sky cracked.
Not with thunder. Not with flame.
But with a fold — like parchment torn by unseen hands.
Kaien Vale stood at the heart of the Spire of Ascension, bathed in the eerie hum of glyphs that pulsed with celestial resonance. The ancient stones beneath him shimmered with constellations that traced orbits far beyond mortal reach.
The other candidates were gone. Failed. Folded out of the trial.
Kaien remained — and he wasn't even supposed to be here.
"Name," intoned a mechanical voice from above, echoing across the seven celestial rings.
"Kaien Vale."
"CelestiaCore: Unregistered. Status: Untethered. Lawless."
"I'm aware."
He hadn't come here with a sanctioned Core. His connection to the stars wasn't granted — it was stolen. Or maybe given, by something the world had tried to forget.
A week ago, in the collapsed ruins of the Aether Bridge, Kaien had stumbled through a collapsed shrine and fell into a dead space — a crack between worlds. There, the sky had opened like a wound, and something vast had stared back.
Not a god. Not a star.
A boundary.
And it had whispered: "You are not where you should be. That is your strength."
Now, at the Spire, the glyphs activated.
Lines of light blazed in every direction, each one anchoring to ancient CelestiaCores: Solar Mantle, Moonblood, Cometline, Tidal Vein, the familiar Laws. But Kaien's feet hovered above a glyph that shimmered wrong — not in flame or starlight, but in folded shadow and mirrored silver.
A Core unknown.
A rift that pulsed with dissonance.
"Trial begins," the voice declared. "Law must be bound. Core must be claimed."
The world around Kaien shattered.
Not visually — spatially.
The floor folded sideways into itself. Walls became tunnels, then doors, then sky. The seven rings above spiraled in impossible geometries, looping space into fractal prisons.
Kaien didn't fall.
He moved without moving — limbs stretched in opposite directions while his mind screamed to keep up.
From the vortex ahead stepped a figure.
Kaien Vale.
Older. Taller. Dressed in robes that shimmered like event horizons.
"I am you," the future Kaien said. "If you take the Riftcore — this is what you'll become."
Kaien clenched his teeth. "Good."
Future Kaien narrowed his eyes. "You'll forget where you begin. What direction is forward. What face is yours."
"Maybe," Kaien said, stepping forward. "But I'll never be stuck again."
He reached toward the hovering sigil — a shifting knot of impossible angles and fractured distance.
The Riftcore.
As Kaien's hand touched it, space screamed.
Not aloud — but around. The Spire crumpled and expanded in the same breath. Kaien's body split into afterimages, each slightly offset — one to the left, one behind, one above.
And then he folded.
The Riftcore stabbed into his chest, and Kaien disappeared.
For three seconds, every star above the continent of Aerenas dimmed.
For three more, none of them were in the same place they had been.
And in the ruins of the Spire, Kaien Vale reappeared — standing, breathing, fractured and whole, glowing with mirrored runes that bled into space itself.
He hadn't claimed a law. He'd bent space around one.
And the sky would never forgive him.