Theon exhaled. His body was quite weary from the assignments of the last two days.
Yesterday he had finished the final steps of a long woven plan, having infiltrated and demolished a militant research base on the outskirts of the inhabited region.
The training room was clinically pristine, devoid of any furnishings except for the soft glow of overhead lights. Theon approached the control panel at the far end, where a dashboard flickered to life, offering a range of customizable training simulations. He lingered for a moment, his fingers hovering over the interface before withdrawing.
Today, unlike yesterday, had been a typical public-facing assignment: attending a charity gala and mingling with high-profile donors and city officials. The event had been designed to bolster the Syndicate's image as a benevolent organization dedicated to improving society as well as provide a way for the attendees to polish their images.
Though ultimately, as much effort as it took, it was a complete facade. The efforts of a single organization could never be enough to tip the scale in the current poverty ridden Ardonia.
And even though he hadn't been assigned to directly lead the event, as having someone so young be too involved would only attract unwanted eyes, managing everything behind the scenes had enough a commotion and burden.
Activating the control panel, Theon skimmed through the training options. The room could simulate anything from brutal terrains to high-intensity combat scenarios, even adjusting gravity and temperature to push him to his limits.
Settling on a basic combat simulation, he adjusted the difficulty to match his fatigue. Even when he was tired, he never skipped training, though even he knew there was a limit to how far he could push himself.
Reaching for his gloves, he slipped them on with practiced ease. He had long since gotten used to wearing them during training—just as he did on missions to the point where they had become a second skin, much like the bulletproof vest he always wore. Some people believed rough, calloused hands were proof of experience, of struggle, but for Theon, keeping his hands smooth was a convenience. Unlike most operatives, he had to maintain a presence in Veritas Corporation's public sector, where hardened hands would draw the wrong kind of attention. The only real drawback was grip—rougher hands could endure harsher conditions—but his gloves made up for that.
Just as he reached forward to start the simulation, Theon felt a small weight tug at his wrist.
He glanced down.
The plastic grocery bag.
It had slipped down his arm, forgotten in the monotony of his routine. He stared at it for a moment before exhaling, rolling his shoulders to shake off the mental fog.
"Huuuuu."
With a deep inhale and slow exhale, he swept his gaze across the sterile chamber, checking for anything else out of plac—
CRACK
A deafening rupture split the air.
Theon's body snapped taut, instincts overtaking thought. The sound was unlike anything he had ever heard—an earth-shattering resonance that drilled into his skull, shaking him to his core. Time seemed to freeze, the very fabric of space distorting as an unnatural force rippled through the room.
Then, as quickly as the rupture came—silence.
Not the stillness of peace.
The suffocating silence that follows calamity.
But even that didn't last long.
CRAAAAAACK
Before Theon could act, the sound resounded again. This time much deeper. Much stronger.
And it began.
Hairline cracks spread like veins across the air itself, forming an eerie distortion—an abyssal void, deep and endless. It crackled with an unstable energy, its presence fundamentally wrong, as though the world itself was rejecting its existence.
And just as fast it formed—
It expanded.
'Shit.'
Panic seized him, his thoughts speeding to process the situation. His acute sense for danger blared in alarm, a relentless siren screaming at him to move, to react and yet his body refused to obey. A sluggish resistance weighed down his limbs as if he were trapped in a nightmare where every command from his mind failed to reach his muscles.
Then, the growing fracture reached him.
A deafening silence followed. His awareness teetered on the edge, drifting toward a vast and endless darkness. His vision blurred, consciousness slipping through his grasp like grains of sand through open fingers. But just as the abyss threatened to swallow him whole, a crushing force snapped him back.
The weight of sudden gravitational pressure slammed onto his shoulders, forcing him down to one knee. His stomach lurched violently, a wave of nausea surging through him, far worse than any motion sickness he had ever experienced.
Quick to adapt, Theon forced his mind into a state of stability as he gritted his teeth, enduring the overwhelming sensations that battered his senses like relentless tidal waves. Each pulse of pressure sent his nerves screaming, his body struggling to keep up with the sheer magnitude of the assault. He didn't even have the leeway to think about what was going on, all he could do was scrape his consciousness by.
Just when he thought the onslaught would subside, it surged anew—doubling, then tripling in intensity. Each wave crashed down with merciless force, compounding upon the last, an exponential storm of agony that pushed him closer and closer to his breaking point. Every fiber of his being screamed for relief and yet there was none. Only the ever-mounting, ceaseless escalation of torment.
Theon clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms, warm blood slick between his fingers. He fought to stay conscious, every muscle screaming against the agony, his instincts howling at him to move, to fight—but there was nothing, only the abyss dragging him deeper.
And yet, just as he teetered on the brink, resigned to what felt like an eternity of suffering…
His feet touched solid ground.
The jolt of contact hit him like a shockwave. Stability, sudden and sharp, dragged him back from the edge. His knees buckled, legs quivering under his own weight, but he forced himself upright, scanning the shadows with calculating precision. No immediate threat. No movement.
He let out a slow, ragged breath.
The tension bled from his limbs, and he collapsed backward, the coarse dirt biting into his back. Cold seeped through his clothes, but it grounded him, tethering him more surely than the pain had. He stared upward, his gaze remained fixed on the sky above.
Stars.
Countless, brilliant, impossible stars—scattered across the void like shattered glass, gleaming with a clarity lost to time. His breath caught.
And for a moment, Theon could only stare.
Conscious thought returned in fragments, and with it, a realization that tightened his jaw.
It was beautiful.
Too beautiful.
'This isn't Spectra.' The thought cut through the haze. It couldn't be. Nowhere on Spectra were the stars still visible, they had vanished nearly a century ago.
Yet here they burned, merciless in their radiance.
Theon's fingers twitched against the earth. His expression remained still, but his thoughts sharpened.
'Where the fuck am I?'