CHAPTER FOUR
Yue gathered the small rocks floating around him, one by one, and gave each a gentle push toward the thin barrier ahead.
They passed through without resistance.
Interesting.
He turned his attention to a larger rock nearby — about twenty centimeters long and thirty wide. He tried pushing through it directly but couldn't. Instead he collected several of the smaller rocks and threw them at it in sequence, each impact nudging it slowly forward until it was drifting toward the barrier at a natural unhurried pace. Like debris. Like it belonged there.
He positioned himself carefully and waited.
The rock touched the barrier. The tip crossed first. Then slowly — centimeter by centimeter — it pushed through. When the rock was exactly half inside and half outside Yue moved. Quickly, cleanly, no hesitation.
He was through.
Finally.
He didn't stop to celebrate. He turned toward the planet and accelerated.
Inside Aethoria
A dark room. Thin lines of morning light cutting through the gaps in wooden shutters.
A figure stirred in the bed — slowly, reluctantly, the way someone wakes up when sleep has been restless. He lay still for a moment staring at the ceiling. Then pushed himself upright.
He crossed to the window and pushed it open.
Bright sunlight flooded in immediately. It caught the lines of old scars running across his arms and shoulders — marks of a life spent in places most people never went willingly. His face remained in shadow a moment longer as he squinted against the light and looked out at the city below.
He stood there quietly for a breath. Then two.
Then he let the curtain he'd been using as a blanket fall to the floor, turned away from the window, and began getting dressed. Each piece of gear went on with practiced efficiency — the kind of routine that needed no thought because it had been repeated a thousand times.
He opened the door and headed downstairs.
A table near the common room. Several figures already seated, cups in hand, mid conversation. One of them looked up and immediately grinned.
"Hey — Ashen! You're finally up!"
The others turned. A round of greetings followed, overlapping and casual, the easy warmth of people who had been through enough together to skip formalities.
And for the first time — his face came into the light.
Back to Yue
He was moving at full speed, the planet growing larger ahead of him with every passing second.
Almost there.
He didn't slow down. He hit the upper atmosphere like a shooting star — a brief flash of resistance, something almost physical pushing back against his soul — before the sensation faded and he was through, descending fast through layers of cloud.
The world revealed itself gradually. First the clouds. Then the green sprawl of forests stretching across the landscape below. Then, finally, the sharp edges of civilization — rooftops, roads, the geometric shapes of a city coming into focus.
He slowed.
The sun was sitting low on the horizon, just beginning to set. The city below was starting to glow as lights flickered on one by one across the streets and buildings.
Huh.
Yue drifted lower, taking it in properly for the first time.
What a sight.
It wasn't modern. Nothing like the cities he remembered from Earth or the advanced facilities of ARO. It reminded him of something from the late twentieth century — vehicles that ran on something other than conventional fuel, electric lights strung between buildings, machinery that hummed with a kind of energy he couldn't quite identify yet. Advanced but grounded. Familiar but distinctly not.
He moved closer, checking carefully whether anyone could sense or see him.
Nobody reacted. Nobody looked up.
Good.
He began exploring — staying alert, keeping his movements slow and deliberate, resisting the pull to drift too close to anyone.
Then he saw it.
A small crowd gathered around a street performer. Yue floated closer out of simple curiosity — and stopped.
Is that... magic?
Actual fire. Conjured from nothing. Shaped deliberately. Not a trick, not a mechanism — something alive and responsive to the performer's hands.
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That cannot be real.
He watched for another minute.
...That is absolutely real.
He turned slowly, looking across the street in every direction. People using magic casually. Everywhere. Like it was as ordinary as reaching into a pocket.
So it's actually a fantasy world. Like the ones from anime.
He did a slow full rotation taking it all in.
And then, rather than excitement, felt something closer to discomfort settle over him.
If magic is this common — if people here can sense things beyond normal perception — then staying invisible might not be as simple as I assumed. I need to be more careful. Much more careful.
He rose back into the sky without lingering and headed in the direction of the setting sun.
I can't see in the dark. I have bad memories with that. Better to stay in daylight.
At his speed that was easy enough — just keep moving west fast enough to stay ahead of the darkness. He kept altitude and watched the landscape shift beneath him as he traveled.
On the roads and in the wilder spaces between settlements he began spotting things that made him slow down repeatedly.
Creatures. Ones he recognized from a very specific cultural context.
Are those... goblins? Orcs?
He watched a group of them move through a forest clearing below. Several of them paused and looked upward — not directly at him, but in his general direction. Scanning.
Interesting. They can sense something even if they can't see me. Natural instinct probably. A connection to the world around them that most humans don't have.
He filed that away and kept moving.
Eventually another city came into view — smaller than the first, less developed, quieter. He descended and settled near a building on the outskirts, floating just above street level and observing.
Voices inside. Tense ones.
He drifted through the wall without thinking — then stopped himself.
Wait.
He looked around the interior. A few electronic devices on a shelf. Simple ones. He focused and reached toward the nearest — and passed through it like it wasn't there.
Hm.
He tried again. Same result.
He looked at his own form for a moment, thinking.
Back at ARO — the androids, the database, the ship systems — I could possess all of them. But out here everything I've tried just... doesn't work. What's different?
He looked at the devices again. Then at the walls. Then at his hands.
Electric current. That's what's different.
The ARO technology ran on sophisticated electrical systems — active current flowing through complex circuits. The devices here ran on something else. Magic integrated into mechanics. The underlying energy signature was completely foreign to him.
I can only use things that carry electrical current as a vessel. No current — I pass straight through. And here almost everything runs on magic instead.
He looked at the two men in the room having their tense conversation.
What about humans?
He tried. Passed through both of them like they weren't there.
No. Of course not. They're not machines.
He drifted back outside, the familiar weight of having no answers settling over him again.
If I could find a device with real electrical current I could gather information. Learn the language. But looking at what this civilization has built — magic and technology intertwined — I don't even know where to start.
He rose back into the air, trying to decide which direction to go next.
Then felt it.
That same poking sensation from when he'd first entered the atmosphere. Faint. Directional. Pulling at something deep in his soul without asking permission.
What is that?
He followed it before he consciously decided to. It led him toward the center of town — toward a public square with a stone fountain at its middle.
He came to a stop.
There was a man standing near the fountain. Scars visible on his arms. A relaxed posture that somehow also looked permanently ready for something. Dead calm eyes that didn't match how young the rest of him looked.
From the man's perspective — he looked up suddenly. Not at anything visible. Just at the air above the fountain.
Huh.
Something's there.
...No. Nothing. Must be my imagination.
Someone came running toward him from across the square, waving a piece of paper and clearly out of breath.
"Ashen!"
He shifted his gaze away from the sky.
From Yue's perspective
Is he... looking at me?
Yue went very still.
He can't see me. That's impossible.
But the way those eyes had moved — the exact angle, the exact direction —
Wait.
He looked properly. Not at the face. At something underneath. Something he could feel rather than see.
The signature hit him immediately.
...Brother?
He floated closer without making a sound. The man — Ashen — had already turned away to deal with whoever was running toward him. Yue watched from two meters away, studying every detail.
Those eyes. That posture. The way he just stood there looking at empty air like he knew something was there.
It has to be him.
But I need to be sure.
He tried possession instinctively. Passed through Ashen like air.
Right. Can't confirm that way.
He settled in and watched. He would observe. He would be patient. He had been patient for seven hundred million years — a few more days meant nothing.
The next several days were, objectively speaking, not Yue's finest hours.
He followed Ashen everywhere.
Everywhere.
He told himself it was necessary research. Careful observation. He was gathering data.
He was also absolutely, completely certain this was his brother and had been since the fountain — but admitting that felt like it would jinx something, so he kept the internal monologue going.
Ashen, meanwhile, started going to see a doctor.
Yue had no idea what was being said in those appointments. But Ashen came back from each one looking confused and slightly bothered, which Yue filed under concerning but unclear.
He also had no idea that he himself was the reason for those visits.
Why does he look unwell, Yue thought, watching Ashen stare blankly at his breakfast one morning. He seemed fine at first.
What Yue could not observe — because he couldn't understand a word of it — was Ashen describing to the doctor an inexplicable persistent chill that had started several days ago, a vague sensation of being watched, and two separate incidents of hearing something in the air that wasn't there.
The doctor had found nothing wrong.
Ashen had started checking over his shoulder.
Alright, Yue decided, on the fifth night. I can't keep doing this. I need to try something.
Ashen was alone in his room. Seated at a low table, methodically cleaning his blade with the practiced focus of someone who found the repetition calming. A gun sat beside him — recently acquired by the look of it, some kind of compact sonic model he kept picking up and setting back down between passes with the cloth.
Yue watched from across the room.
If I know him — and I do, even after all this time — he won't panic. He might pretend to. But he won't actually panic.
And if things go badly I can always pretend to be some kind of divine presence offering guidance. He would absolutely hate that. Which would at least confirm it's him.
He moved closer.
Ashen paused his cleaning. The familiar chill again — stronger this time. Different. More deliberate.
He set the cloth down slowly.
The room was very quiet.
Then — barely louder than a breath — something spoke directly beside his ear.
"Kai."
Ashen's eyes went wide.
Every trace of his carefully maintained composure vanished in an instant.
