When I opened my eyes, I wasn't sure I'd actually woken up. It felt more like I had slipped between layers of sleep, each one thicker and less real than the last. My body wasn't cold or warm. I couldn't feel the ground beneath me. In fact, I couldn't tell if there even was a ground. Just a dark, mirrored surface that stretched forever, and when I looked down… it didn't reflect me.
Above me, the sky pulsed—no, beat—like the inside of a living creature. Veins of gold and pale blue light cracked across a dome of shifting cloud, silent flashes of lightning threading through it. No thunder. No wind. Just that low hum, like something ancient breathing behind the horizon. If there was a horizon.
Then the voice came.
[You lasted longer than expected.]
I turned toward it without thinking. But there was no one there. Just the weight of words hanging in the air, not spoken but… projected, like thoughts trying to form into speech.
I narrowed my eyes. "Where am I?"
[This is the Skyroot Dome.]
No echo. No authority. The voice didn't boom—it wandered. Uncertain, almost curious. Like it hadn't spoken in a long time.
"The what?"
[A shell. A scar. What's left behind when something larger breaks.]
Not helpful. Everything around me felt like the inside of a dream after it had already started decaying. I pressed a hand to my chest, half-expecting my arm to be gone again, but no—it was there. Whole. Solid. I remembered the pain. The blood. The bite. I should have died. I was dying.
"You're the one who brought me here?"
[No. You brought yourself. I just… woke up when you bled.]
My throat tightened. The creature, the fight—it had been one-sided. A massacre. I'd bitten it like a feral animal. And now I was here.
"What was that thing?"
[An Echo Dweller.]
Just the name sent a chill through me, but it wasn't fear. It was something deeper—something instinctual, like my blood recognized it before my brain could.
"You're supposed to be my guide?" I asked slowly. "Some kind of… spirit? Overseer?"
[Guide. That's the word.]
It sounded like it was testing the term, not entirely confident in it.
"And do you have a name?"
[No. I am the Fourteenth.]
"The fourteenth… what?"
A pause.
[I don't know yet.]
Great. My guide was confused and self-aware enough to admit it. This day just kept getting better.
I shifted on my feet, only to realize I hadn't moved at all since arriving. There was no distance here—just the idea of space. I stared up at the sky again. The dome was changing. The cracks of light were spreading wider, pulsing in time with something I couldn't see. And at the center of it all, growing like a cancer through the sky, was a spire.
It twisted as I looked at it, black and bone-thin, piercing through the dome like it had been forced there.
"What's that?"
[The Root. Or what's left of it.]
"That doesn't explain anything."
[It held things together. Laws. Memory. Balance.]
"Balance of what?"
[Of worlds. Of the sky. Of stories.]
I rubbed my temples. My head was beginning to throb—not from pain, but from the slow, creeping dread of realizing nothing made sense here. The more I listened, the more questions I had. And none of the answers fit into anything logical.
I wandered through the shattered remains of what was once Earth, but now looked more like the bones of a corpse picked clean by time. The city lay in ruins, crumbled and hollowed out beneath a sky heavy with ash and yellow light that bled through clouds. Towering buildings, once proud and full of life, now leaned at unnatural angles, their steel twisted like broken ribs reaching for a sky that refused to heal. Streets were cracked, swallowed by wild weeds that grew unchecked through the concrete, clawing desperately toward a sun barely visible through the gloom.
Every step I took kicked up dust that smelled of rot and forgotten memories. Cars lay overturned, glass shattered like frost across their roofs and dashboards. Sidewalks buckled, slabs of stone cracked open to reveal twisted roots and rusty pipes beneath. In the distance, the faint outline of a collapsed bridge sagged, half-submerged in water with oil and decay.
The silence was heavy, but not empty. It carried the weight of absence—the echoes of lives lost, of screams swallowed by the cold wind that whispered through the hollow shells of buildings. Somewhere, something stirred beneath the rubble, a faint pulse of movement that made the hairs on my neck rise.
Aelric, my cat, moved close to my side, eyes bright and alert, muscles like a coiled spring. He seemed to know what I couldn't yet see—that this world was not only dead but watching.
I pressed forward, heart tight, until something caught my eye: a strange distortion shimmering ahead in the cracked air, bending the broken cityscape like a mirage. An invisible barrier warped the space before me, folding light and shadow in impossible ways. Without a second thought, I stepped through, and the world shifted beneath my feet.
The moment I crossed the invisible threshold, the world shifted again—not violently, but like walking into a dream that had been waiting for me.
The air inside the barrier was… different. Warmer, almost suffocating. The ash-choked wind that had stalked me through the ruins fell silent. I took a few cautious steps forward. Aelric followed, his tail twitching like a signal I couldn't read.
At first, it looked like nothing had changed. The same ruined buildings, the same fractured sky stretched above—until I saw them.
People.
Scattered like debris, some slumped against cracked walls, others lying motionless in the dust. A few were standing, barely. Hollow-eyed. Their skin was dirt-streaked and pale, their clothes torn and crusted with dried blood. Not one of them looked whole. Not one looked safe.
I froze, stunned. My heart surged at the sight. I wasn't alone.
"[Be careful,]" the voice came—calm but edged with a weight I didn't understand. The Fourteenth. "[What you see here... it's what's left of them.]"
My eyes scanned the group again. They weren't just tired. They were broken. Some stared at their hands like they didn't recognize them. Others murmured to themselves, disconnected syllables trailing into silence. A boy sat curled in a ball, whispering something like a prayer or a name over and over. It was the look in their eyes that hit me the hardest. Not just fear—something deeper. The kind of emptiness that only comes after something has been taken and never returned.
And then—I saw her.
Rachel.
At first, I didn't trust my eyes. There, standing near the base of a half-toppled pillar, barely held together by rusted rebar and vines, was someone I never thought I'd see again.
Her hair was matted but still carried that unmistakable amber hue. Dirt streaked her cheeks, and her jacket hung loose on thinner shoulders. She looked tired—exhausted, even—but her eyes were sharp, scanning the warped air until they locked onto me.
"Rayne…?"
She said my name like it might disappear if she didn't. My mouth opened to respond, but nothing came out.
The next moment, she was already moving. Her footsteps crunched across broken glass and soot, and I stood frozen—unsure, stiff, like my body hadn't caught up with the fact that she was alive.
When she reached me, Rachel didn't hesitate. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders with the same blunt force she always had, like she believed her conviction could anchor someone else.
I didn't know what to do with my hands.
They hovered in the air awkwardly, uncertain. I never liked being this close to people—physical closeness always felt… loud. too much, like it pressed on nerves I didn't know I had. But this wasn't just anyone. It was Rachel. I couldn't pull away. I didn't want to. I was glad, relieved, even—but it didn't come naturally.
So I stood there, chest tight, arms finally lowering around her in the clumsiest excuse for a return hug I'd ever managed. My mind kept cycling through the same words: My mind kept cycling through the same words: My mind kept cycling through the same words: She's alive. She's here. She's real.
"I thought you were gone," she whispered, voice small, cracking around the edges.
"I'm… not," I muttered. "You either."
She pulled back, studying my face like she couldn't quite believe it belonged to me. There was a brief silence between us, filled only by the soft, broken wind and the subtle hum of something wrong in the air. We both seemed to sense it.
Around us, the others—those scattered survivors—were beginning to stir. Some stared at us blankly. Some shrank back, flinching at sounds only they could hear. Trauma hung in the air like smoke—thick, suffocating, clinging to skin and thought alike.
Aelric padded up beside me, brushing against my leg. Rachel knelt to look at him, voice lighter for a second. "You finally found him."
"Yeah," I said.
That was when the Fourteenth spoke again, a cold echo curling through my mind.
[The veil is thinning. Something is waking.]
I straightened, scanning the horizon. The atmosphere had changed. A tension I couldn't place was beginning to stretch the air, like something immense was about to fall.
[End of Chapter 4 - The Skyroot Dome (1)]