Keith landed hard, knees slamming into soft yet coarse sand. A grunt escaped his lips before instinct kicked in and he dropped low, scanning his surroundings.
Nothing.
No movement. No sound.
Just a vast desert of jagged rock and swirling violet sky.
Everything was too quiet.
His breaths came sharp, fogging slightly in the dry air, the scent of dust and something faintly metallic tickling his senses. Keith slowly pushed himself up, brushing grit off his palms, the sand clinging to his gloves before slipping away like cold ash. The ground beneath him pulsed with a faint warmth—not scorching, but dry, ancient, as if it had baked under alien suns for centuries before he arrived.
The silence wasn't peaceful.
It was hollow.
A void was left behind after something important had died.
The words of the Messenger still echoed in his mind, resonating beneath his skull like a mantra he hadn't asked for:
"You are one of the Children of Sky."
It sounded ridiculous now, standing in this silent wasteland. Keith Skyshard, ex-operative and traitor to the most ruthless intelligence agency on Earth, dumped into a cosmic death match run by gods? It was the kind of thing that would've made Josh laugh, shaking his head as he teased Keith for reading too many conspiracy thrillers during surveillance stakeouts.
But this wasn't a hallucination.
He'd felt the bullet, the tearing agony, the betrayal. He'd seen Thorne's eyes, cold, unblinking, when he pulled the trigger. He'd heard Josh's final exhale, soft and confused, more a question than a goodbye.
Keith should have died.
And yet, here he was.
Alive.
Or something close enough to it that it made no difference.
He exhaled slowly, letting the stale air fill his lungs before releasing it in a controlled breath. The mission had changed. No more hiding from the agency. No more hunting ghosts or planning revenge.
Now, there was only one objective:
Survive.
His hand moved automatically to his chest, brushing aside the fabric of the strange new uniform that clung to him like a second skin. The locket was still there—cool, metallic, humming faintly like a small heartbeat against his sternum. He held it for a moment, feeling the steady pulse, grounding himself with the memory of Josh's laughter, of his promises, of the tiny hope they once shared about a future they never got.
Still his.
Still real.
Keith released the locket and looked up, taking in the sky that stretched above him like an oil-slick painting in motion. It wasn't blue. It wasn't gray. It shimmered with hues of violet, deep indigo, and soft gold, clouds drifting like molten rivers under the glow of something that wasn't a sun, wasn't a moon, but a massive glowing ring suspended high above, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat echoing across the heavens.
He turned in a slow circle, analyzing every angle as if mapping an escape route he might need within seconds.
The terrain was alien yet brutally familiar in its harshness. Dunes of purple-black sand rolled into the distance, broken by sharp obsidian ridges that jutted like the bones of a long-dead beast. Far beyond, jagged mountains rose under the swirling sky, carved from dark stone streaked with lines of faintly glowing blue veins that pulsed like the land itself was alive.
No footprints.
No animals.
No signs of civilization.
Just him, the sky, and the strange hum of something ancient waking up in the stillness.
Keith began to walk—slowly at first, each step deliberate, every sense tuned to the environment as if expecting gunfire at any moment. His body moved differently now, smoother, lighter, as if the weight of years had been washed away. The constant ache in his shoulder, the stiffness in his knee from Tehran, the phantom pain that used to twinge when the rain fell heavy—all of it was gone.
This body felt rebuilt.
Better.
Time passed. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. Without a sun or shadows, he had no way to measure it.
The silence was deceptive. Every whisper of wind made him turn his head, searching for threats. Every shift in the color of the sky made him brace for something to descend from above.
Then, he stopped.
A tingle rippled down his spine—not pain, but a strange whisper at the edge of his thoughts, like a vibration in his blood. His heart stuttered, then beat in rhythm with it, a slow, heavy thud that felt like it echoed through the sand beneath him.
A translucent prompt flickered into view before his eyes:
[Sync Rate: 2.5%]
Keith's breath caught.
The message hovered there like it had always been meant to appear, simple and impossibly complex at once.
Then another line appeared:
[Initializing Legacy Interface… Displaying Core Profile]
A transparent panel unfolded in front of him, smooth as glass, its text etched in glowing silver light.
⟡ LEGACY STATUS INTERFACE ⟡Name: Keith SkyshardRace: HumanOrigin Plane: Earth-616Synchronization Rate: 2.5%Legacy Type: Skyborne (Dormant)Status: Active Trial Phase
Abilities Unlocked: NonePassive Traits: Instinct Boost (Initializing…)
The interface blinked once and vanished.
Keith stood there, staring at the space it had occupied, the reality of what he'd seen sinking in.
This wasn't just survival.
This wasn't just another mission.
This was a system. A game. An evolution.
He crouched, pressing a hand into the sand, letting the grit slide over his gloves as he clenched a fist. The heat, the weight, the texture—it was too real, grounding him in the present. No simulation had ever felt like this, and he'd been through some of the most advanced VR training on Earth.
This was happening.
The sync rate. 2.5%. Barely a scratch on whatever this "Legacy" was.
And yet he already felt sharper. His hearing stretched farther, catching the faint hiss of sand drifting across rocks. His eyes picked up the subtlest shifts in light, tiny movements of distant dunes. He could feel the wind approaching before it touched his skin, the whisper of its intent clear.
He was changing.
Keith moved now with purpose, driven by the clarity that came from years of surviving the impossible. His eyes scanned the horizon, catching glimpses of possible landmarks: the faint outline of crumbling ruins far to the north, a dried riverbed that curled like a dead vein to the west, and—directly ahead—a metallic structure glinting under the violet sky.
Shelter?
Or a trap.
It didn't matter.
He needed to move.
Keith took a step forward—and his foot struck something solid beneath the sand.
He froze, dropping to a knee, brushing the grit away with controlled urgency.
A stone, smooth and black, partially buried, revealed itself beneath his hands. But it wasn't natural. Its surface was too polished, too deliberate, and it bore a symbol carved with meticulous precision—two interlocking crescents with a single dot at their center.
The symbol resonated with him.
Not visually.
Viscerally.
Like seeing a stranger who felt like family, or the flash of a memory that never belonged to him, yet felt like it had always been there.
He reached out and touched it.
The moment his fingers brushed the cold surface, a pulse surged through him.
A blast of warmth flooded his chest, a spark igniting behind his eyes, and for a moment, Keith felt like he could see the entire desert, every grain of sand, every shift in the air.
[Synchronization Progression Accelerated][Legacy Link Strengthened][Warning: Active Entities Detected Within Perimeter – 3.4 km]
Keith's eyes snapped up to the horizon, scanning for movement.
Still nothing.
The air remained quiet, the dunes undisturbed, the sky swirling slowly above. But he didn't need to see to know.
He wasn't alone anymore.
Others had arrived.
Other Children of Sky.
Keith rose quickly, his movements smooth and silent as he began to move, keeping low and swift as he cut toward the ruins he'd spotted earlier. High ground. Cover. Options. Every instinct screamed that he had minutes before first contact.
Were they allies?
Enemies?
In his experience, the universe didn't leave room for friendship in places like this.
The sync rate pulsed again in his mind—2.5% and climbing. Whatever this Legacy was, it was waking up, slowly but steadily, and with each step, he felt it growing stronger inside him.
His body responded faster than it ever had, each step precise, each breath measured, each muscle moving in perfect concert. He could run longer, breathe deeper, see farther, and hear clearer. His senses buzzed, alive on the edge of something he didn't fully understand yet.
Keith ducked behind a shattered rock spire as he reached the ruins, pausing to survey the area.
The ruins were ancient, built from dark stone streaked with those same glowing veins he had seen in the distant mountains. Crumbling archways, half-buried pillars, and broken steps formed a maze of potential cover and danger.
Keith touched the locket again, feeling its steady hum, and allowed himself a moment to breathe.
His mind, always methodical, broke down what he knew:
This was a trial, a proving ground.
There were others here, like him, hunted and hunters both.
The Legacy inside him was growing, syncing with something ancient in his blood.
A single thought slipped through the chaos:
If 2.5% felt like this… what would 100% feel like?
And what kind of person would he have to become to reach it?
Keith clenched his fists, looking up at the swirling violet sky.
Whatever he was becoming, it had started with that light, with that message, with that bond.
Keith Skyshard wasn't just a man anymore.
He was a contestant in a game with no rulebook.
A Child of Sky.
And somewhere, above this world and every world, the sky itself was watching.