The night sky over Earth was wrong.
Every star trembled faintly, like the universe itself was breathing out of rhythm.
To most eyes it looked like static interference, a solar flare, maybe a magnetic storm.
But the Citadel's deep-space sensors painted a different picture.
Dozens of points across the upper atmosphere were bending light, gravity, and time by a fraction too much.
Small distortions. Harmless at first glance.
Except they were moving.
The Citadel, Command Hall
"Seventeen anomalies confirmed," an officer called out, voice trembling. "Altitude: sixty kilometers. Descent pattern: slow, deliberate."
Lyra's eyes darted between monitors. "They're forming a lattice… are those…"
Kaelen stepped forward, his voice cutting through the noise. "Anchors. They're setting coordinates for the crossing."
"Crossing of what?"
He didn't answer immediately. The Forge's tone filled the silence.
"Fourth-Dimensional entry attempt. Their fragments are synchronizing with Earth's magnetic topology."
Lyra turned sharply. "They're coming here?"
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "They're not coming. They're arriving."
The command hall fell silent.
The sky fractured without sound.
Each distortion expanded into a ring of light, thin, golden, weightless, rotating against the laws of motion. They aligned perfectly, tracing geometric shapes no human eye could naturally perceive.
Then they opened.
From within the rings stepped figures made of shifting geometry, humanoid at first glance, but constantly changing, like statues being sculpted and unsculpted in the same second.
The first wave of Fourth-Dimensional Scouts had entered the three-dimensional plane.
And Earth's gravity screamed in protest.
Mountains far away trembled. Compasses spun. Waves rose hundreds of meters high and fell without a sound. The planet felt them.
The Citadel, War Room
"Global magnetic field destabilizing!" a technician yelled. "Power grids are fluctuating, we're losing containment!"
Kaelen's cortex pulsed faint blue, data flooding through his neural lattice. He could see them in real time, each entity flickering as it phased through the lower dimension.
"Their Aetherion levels are minimal," the Forge noted. "Scouts only. Observation units."
"Then let's show them what we've learned," Kaelen said.
Lyra reached for his arm. "Kaelen, wait…, we don't even know if you can fight them without destabilizing the planet!"
He glanced back once, faint smile on his lips. "Then I'll fight carefully."
Above the Atlantic,
Kaelen appeared midair, high above the ocean, where three of the entities had gathered in a perfect triangle. The world around them bent faintly, as if perspective itself was wrong.
The Forge hummed.
"Aetherion output stabilized. Synchronizing dimensional anchors."
Kaelen exhaled once and moved.
The first entity twisted toward him. Before it could act, Kaelen's fist blurred, no sound, just impact. The air split, forming a white halo of displaced atmosphere. The entity folded inward, its structure rippling like shattered glass.
The other two reacted instantly, shifting shape, bending the space around Kaelen into a cage of rotating angles.
Kaelen reached out with his cortex, threads of silver light snapping from his fingertips. He caught the edges of the cage, twisted, and space broke.
The geometric trap collapsed into a spiral of light, falling like liquid into the sea below.
"Dimensional integrity holding," the Forge confirmed. "Efficiency: ninety-one percent."
Kaelen floated amidst the fading glow. "Not enough."
He reached into the Cortex, pulling deeper, his aura expanding until even the Forge hesitated. The silver patterns on his skin shifted into faint golden tones.
Aetherion. True, unfiltered.
The remaining entities froze, their forms trembling as if in recognition.
You are not meant to wield this, one of them resonated.
Kaelen's eyes glowed white. "Then stop me."
He vanished, reappeared inside the entity's form, his hand pressed against what could only be called its core. Energy burst outward, folding the creature back into its own dimension.
The last scout turned to flee.
Kaelen caught it with a single motion, a gesture like crushing light in his palm, and it shattered into dust that sparkled briefly before fading into nothing.
Silence.
Only the wind.
The Forge Speaks
"You've done what no lower-plane life has ever done," the Forge said quietly. "You erased them from existence in both layers."
Kaelen's expression was unreadable. "Then they'll notice me for real."
"They already have."
The Fourth-Dimensional Assembly
In the formless expanse of Aetherion light, a ripple moved.
The scouts' destruction echoed like a scream across the higher realm.
He touched the core field directly.
He wields Aetherion as if born to it.
This cannot be allowed to grow.
One voice, older and colder than the rest, cut through the resonance.
Then descend fully.
The light flared. Across countless realities, the border between layers began to thin.
Earth, Citadel Observation Deck
Kaelen returned to the Citadel in silence. His coat fluttered in the wind. Lyra met him at the platform, eyes wide.
"You fought them."
"They weren't ready," Kaelen said softly. "They will be next time."
Lyra looked at him, fear in her voice. "Next time?"
Kaelen looked up at the stars. Several of them were flickering faintly. Not with natural light, but with the pulse of approaching Aetherion.
He whispered to himself, "Next time's already here."
The Forge's voice resonated deep in his mind, colder than ever.
"Then we prepare for war."
All across orbit, the auroras began to spiral the wrong way.
They didn't shimmer, they rotated, threading into a single filament that stretched from pole to pole. Every satellite that tried to photograph it went blind for a second; every pilot who looked at it saw a color that had no name.
From the Citadel's upper decks it looked like dawn coming from beneath the world.
Lyra whispered, "What did you do, Kaelen?"
He didn't answer. His cortex was already burning, a whisper of the Forge running behind his heartbeat.
"Pattern confirmed. The Vanguard is descending."
Space above the planet rippled like a coin striking water.
Out of the ripple stepped beings whose outlines refused to stay still.
Each one stood roughly human-tall, but their bodies were lattices of light, folded and refolded through themselves, faces appearing only as suggestions.
The moment they appeared, gravity hiccupped; ocean tides surged half a meter worldwide.
Kaelen felt their arrival like pressure behind his eyes. The Aetherion frequency hummed directly against his nerves.
"Seven entities," the Forge reported. "Commanders of observation class. Their presence is rewriting local constants, speed of light is fluctuating by three percent."
"Then I'll have to be faster," Kaelen murmured.
He launched from the Citadel's edge without waiting for clearance.
Sound broke around him; air condensed into a silver halo that trailed fire as he climbed.
The first Vanguard met him halfway down the sky.
It moved without moving, one instant meters away, the next an inch from his throat. Kaelen twisted, forearm meeting a limb that wasn't solid but intent. The impact rang like a bell through both dimensions.
The Forge fed calculations directly into his cortex.
"Counterphase. Match its frequency, not its motion."
Kaelen adapted. He stopped striking and began tuning.
Each gesture was a note, each step a correction.
By the third exchange the air itself sang, a harmonic that shattered clouds for kilometers.
He caught the entity's chest, if it had one, and forced its pattern apart.
Light scattered into spirals that drifted harmlessly into the upper atmosphere.
The remaining six descended together, forming a ring around him.
They spoke in one voice, layered and calm.
You unmake form. You are not permitted.
Kaelen's eyes gleamed faint gold. "Then make me stop."
He dropped straight down, dragging a column of compressed air with him. The Vanguard followed, their geometry stretching, interlocking, building a cage.
The Forge whispered fast.
"Field equation evolving, this is a containment algorithm."
Kaelen focused. The cage tightened, walls of shifting light folding inward.
For a fraction of a second he let them close.
Then he exhaled.
Aetherion surged outward, gold bleeding into silver, burning through every surface. The cage exploded in a perfect sphere of silence.
When the shockwave cleared, the sky was empty.
Far beyond Neptune, the Titans stirred. The vibration from Kaelen's battle reached them through the quantum void.
Ryn faced the others, voice like grinding stone.
"He holds the line alone."
One answered, "He cannot forever. The Vanguard will escalate."
Ryn's tone darkened. "Then so will we."
Across the fleet, massive engines awakened. Their hum rolled through the void like thunder preparing to travel faster than light.
"Prepare the Stellar Armaments. If the Fourth descends again, we meet them halfway."
Kaelen landed beside the Citadel's sea wall, steam rising from his skin. His heartbeat sounded mechanical in his ears, too regular to be human.
Lyra ran to meet him, eyes wide. "You did it again… you…"
He shook his head. "They'll be back. Stronger. They learn every time I move."
She hesitated, then said quietly, "So what do we do now?"
Kaelen looked up. The aurora still burned faintly, a scar across the stars.
"We stop waiting for them to come."
He turned toward the Forge's faint glow under his skin.
"We go to them."
The Forge's reply was almost proud.
"Trajectory computations ready when you are."
Kaelen's lips curved, just slightly.
"Then let's start rewriting the sky."