The world did not let him rest.
Not even for a breath.
The name it had whispered....his name....still clung to the air like a delicate frost, trembling as if unsure whether it should linger or vanish. Aurelianth swallowed hard, tasting moonlight and dust on his tongue. The soft hum beneath his feet, the one vibrating through sand and corrupted patches alike, would not stop.
click - THUMP
click - THUMP
click - THUMP
The synchronized heartbeat-mimicry hadn't faded. If anything, it had grown more confident...like a creature testing a new voice and finding pleasure in the imitation.
Aurelianth pressed a palm against his chest. His glowing veins pulsed faintly beneath translucent skin, each branch a silver river trembling in agitation. The runes along his left arm stretched into new shapes and then collapsed, spiraling into fresh patterns.
"Stop," he whispered.
The heartbeat didn't.
The world didn't hear his voice.
But the thing beneath the sea clearly did.
He took a shaky step backward.
The corrupted patch of sand slid forward again....slow, hungry, obedient to a force he couldn't yet understand. The blackened granules shifted like insects moving under fabric, dragging themselves toward his shadow.
Aurelianth stumbled. His leg twitched half a second after he commanded it. The body wasn't fully synced to him yet...like he was wearing skin that still thought it belonged to someone else.
He wasn't sure if he belonged here.
He wasn't sure if he belonged anywhere.
Another click vibrated up his spine.
Another tremor rippled through the Shadow Sea.
Aurelianth turned away from the devoured patch, instinct telling him to move before it reached his feet. He stepped onto sand that felt too warm pulsing with lifelike warmth..then too cold, then normal again.
Novaelum clearly hadn't finished deciding what temperature the ground should be.
He inhaled, slow and steady.
The air responded a second later, rushing into his lungs as if it remembered its job belatedly.
"I need… I need to get away from this place."
But what direction counted as "away" in a world that shaped and unshaped itself at will?
He scanned the moonlit beach.
The Shadow Sea extended endlessly to his right, waves glimmering with strange violet hues. To his left, jagged cliffs towered, carved with runes so old they hummed like bones refusing to forget.
Behind him…
Something moved.
Not a creature.
A silence.
A quiet too intentional to be natural.
Aurelianth's glowing veins brightened, reacting like a second heartbeat. He turned slowly.
At first, he saw nothing but sand and moonlight.
Then… shifting.
Not the terrain.
Not the light.
Something flickered.
A human -sized figure materialized for half a breath.
Skin shimmering like wet ink.
Eyes hollow.
A mouth too wide, trying to form a word.
Or a shape of one.
Then it vanished...folded like a reflection interrupted by a ripple.
Aurelianth staggered backward, breath caught in his throat.
"Wh....what was...?"
The figure flickered again, this time behind him, closer.
Then gone.
His chest tightened. "No… no, I can't....."
click
He froze.
The clicking sound came from directly behind his ear.
Too close.
Too intimate.
Aurelianth spun and the world lagged a split second so the shadowy figure snapped into existence before his vision caught up.
It stood inches away, its face an unfinished smear of features.
Its body shimmered like it was made of liquid ink desperately pretending to be flesh.
Its mouth moved, cracking open like wet clay breaking.
"…au… re…"
Aurelianth's knees weakened.
This thing was trying to pronounce his name.
Not the way the sea had whispered it.... beautiful, haunting, ancient....
No.
This was wrong.
Each sound broke something inside the creature's malformed throat.
He raised an arm instinctively. Runes blazed white-hot in response, spiraling down his wrist like a warning.
The creature reached toward him, fingers dripping shadow.
Not hostile.
Not passive.
Searching.
Hungry for completion.
"No.....don't....!"
His shout startled even him. The world reacted, glitching: the sand beneath him evaporated for a breath, replaced by stone, then sand again.
The creature paused.
Its head tilted, jerky and puppet-like.
Then the clicking heartbeat echoed.....
clickTHUMP
clickTHUMP
clickTHUMP
The creature… flinched.
Aurelianth saw it....the tiniest ripple of fear.
Fear.
From something not yet fully born.
Whatever commanded the clicking sound,
whatever lived beneath the sea,
whatever whispered his name....
Even incomplete creatures feared it.
The figure stumbled backward.
Its form peeled away from itself, splitting like ink spilled onto water.
Cracks of white light appeared across its body not from pain but from destabilization.
Aurelianth's veins pulsed wildly.
The creature's cracks widened.
"No....stop...." he whispered, reaching out. "I don't want....!"
But the creature's body fragmented.
Shattered.
Dissolved into a mist of black particles that drifted upward like ash caught in moonlight.
The mist whispered:
"…help…"
Then vanished.
Aurelianth fell to his knees.
He stared at his hands and at the runes twisting as if ashamed, at the veins glowing like trapped starlight. His breath was ragged.
"I didn't… I didn't kill it. I didn't mean to…"
He wasn't sure the world was listening.
He wasn't sure he wanted it to.
A new sound rose behind him.
Not a click.
Not a wave.
Not a creature.
Something gentler.
Footsteps.
Aurelianth stiffened.
He turned slowly, this time ready to face another malformed thing but what he saw was…
A lantern.
A simple lantern hanging from a curved wooden staff.
The light inside was not fire.
It was moonlight itself, captured and swirling inside glass like restless liquid.
The one holding the lantern was a person.
A real person.
A girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, her dark hair braided with strands of shimmering kelp. Her eyes glowed faintly under the moon...a sign she belonged to this region.
Her skin carried patterned markings like tide- lines carved into flesh.
She approached him carefully, the way one approaches a wounded creature or a curse that might bite.
"You…" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Your veins… your runes… your arrival…"
She bowed her head low.
Terrifyingly low.
"As the elders foretold," she whispered. "A Lumen-Born has come."
Aurelianth blinked. "I.....what?"
She looked up with reverence so pure it shook him.
"You are the child of prophecy," she said. "The one who will either anchor our world…"
Her voice softened.
"…or tear it apart."
Aurelianth stared at her.
At the corrupted sand.
At the sea that had spoken his name.
At the flicker of a creature that tried to mimic life.
Anchor the world.
Destroy the world.
He didn't know which he feared more.