Episode Three - The Chronal Drift

The fall was not a descent through physical space, but a dizzying plunge through abstract concepts. Kaelen felt her very essence stretched, pulled, and then violently reassembled. The image of the cosmic loom, threads snapping under an unseen hand, was seared into her mind. When the sensation finally ceased, she didn't land. She simply was.

She was standing on a surface that felt like solid glass, yet shimmered with internal currents, like frozen rivers of light. Above her, the sky was a fractured mosaic of impossible colors: a segment of deep space studded with unfamiliar galaxies, bleeding into a patch of vibrant, swirling aurora, which in turn dissolved into a sky of perpetual, bruised twilight. There was no sun, no discernible light source, yet the entire landscape was bathed in an ethereal, shifting glow.

“Huh?” Kaelen mumbled, her voice barely a breath. “Why is this place so weird now?”

Her environmental suit, miraculously intact, registered no discernible atmosphere, yet she could breathe. The air tasted of nothing, yet felt thick, almost viscous, against her skin. The pervasive hum from the Threshold chamber was gone, replaced by a profound silence, broken only by the faint, high-pitched ping that seemed to emanate from the very fabric of this place.

She looked down at her hands. They were translucent, shimmering faintly, and for a terrifying moment, she saw the faint outlines of bones beneath her flesh. She blinked, and they were solid again. Her heart hammered against her ribs. This wasn't just a different planet; it was a different reality.

Around her, the landscape stretched into an infinite, undulating expanse of the same light-infused glass. Strange, crystalline formations, like giant, geometric trees, rose from the surface, their facets catching and refracting the fractured sky, creating kaleidoscopic explosions of light. Some of these 'trees' were perfectly formed, others seemed incomplete, as if mid-construction or mid-dissolution, their edges blurring into nothingness.

“Jarek? Anyone?” she tried her comms again, but only static answered. The silence pressed in, heavy and absolute.

As she took a tentative step, the glass surface beneath her rippled, sending concentric waves of light outwards. The crystalline trees around her seemed to lean, their impossible angles shifting, then snapping back into place. It was like the entire landscape was a living, breathing entity, constantly adjusting itself.

Suddenly, a section of the glass surface ahead of her began to glow brighter, coalescing into a shimmering, humanoid form. It was smaller than the Keepers she had encountered, and its light was less intense, more diffuse, like a distant star. It had no discernible features, but its posture conveyed caution, perhaps even fear.

“Traveler?” a voice, soft and hesitant, echoed in her mind. It was less imposing than the Elder Keeper’s, more like a fragile whisper across a vast distance. “Are you… intact?”

Kaelen braced herself. “Who are you? Where am I? What happened?”

The shimmering figure seemed to hesitate. “I am… a fragment. Like you. This is the Drift. The space between the unraveling realities. You were caught in the temporal tremor. A powerful one.”

“A fragment? Like me?” Kaelen frowned. “I’m Kaelen. From Kepler-186f. I’m a xenobotanist.”

“Your origin is… a fixed point,” the fragment replied, its light flickering. “But here, in the Drift, we are all fragments. Echoes of what was, or what might be. I am… an echo of a cartographer. My name… it is lost to the currents.”

“Lost to the currents?” Kaelen felt a fresh wave of dread. “What currents? What is this place?”

“The cosmic loom… it is not merely unraveling. It is being… rewoven. By a force that seeks to erase certain threads, to silence certain harmonies. The Great Silence is not an end, Traveler. It is a beginning. A forced re-creation.”

The fragment gestured with a shimmering limb towards the fractured sky. As it did, one of the galactic segments in the sky seemed to distort, stretching like taffy, then snapping back. The high-pitched ping intensified.

“Every tremor, every breach in the Threshold, pulls more fragments into the Drift. Those who cannot anchor themselves… they dissolve. They become part of the Silence.”

Kaelen looked at her own faintly shimmering hands. “Anchor myself? How?”

“Your chronal sensitivity. It is your anchor. The Keepers… they seek to gather those like you. To resist the reweaving. To preserve the original tapestry.”

“So the Keepers are fighting this… reweaving?” Kaelen asked, trying to process the overwhelming information. “And I’m supposed to help?”

“You are here now,” the fragment stated simply. “Your presence itself is a disruption to the reweaving. But the Drift is dangerous. The currents are strong. And the Weaver… it is aware.”

As the fragment spoke the word “Weaver,” the glass surface beneath them pulsed with an angry, crimson light. The high-pitched ping became a sustained, piercing shriek. The crystalline trees around them began to vibrate violently, their facets shattering into glittering dust that swirled into the air, then reformed.

“What was that?” Kaelen cried, shielding her eyes from the sudden, intense light.

“A pulse from the Weaver!” the fragment exclaimed, its form flickering rapidly, its light dimming. “It senses your presence, Traveler! It seeks to absorb you! You must… you must find an anchor!”

The glass floor began to crack, fissures of crimson light spreading rapidly towards them. The silence was shattered by a deep, resonant thrum, far more menacing than anything she’d heard before. It was the sound of something vast, ancient, and malevolent, approaching.

“An anchor? How?!” Kaelen shouted over the rising cacophony.

“Focus on your fixed point! Your origin! Your purpose!” the fragment urged, its voice fading, its light almost extinguished. “The anomaly… the cube… it is your tether!”

The ground beneath Kaelen’s feet gave way. She plunged into a swirling vortex of light and shadow, the last thing she saw before the darkness claimed her being the fragment, its light finally winking out, consumed by the crimson cracks. She was falling again, but this time, she was clinging to a single thought, a desperate hope: the black cube, the anomaly, her only way back.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***