Chapter One:

  “Hearing Her Call”

  John Graves blinked awake to the soft pulse of his neural alarm. No harsh buzz. No blinding tone. Just waves—gentle, rhythmic—threaded with music he couldn’t name. The window tint faded from indigo to rose gold, revealing a simulated sunrise behind orbital traffic and neon ads—too alive to ever really sleep.

  "Good morning, John," chimed Rita, the house AI, her voice warm and familiar.

  "You are twelve minutes ahead of schedule. City temperature is seventy-one degrees with mild haze. Estimated commute: seventeen minutes—or four, if you use the glide rails."

  John sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Neon shimmered across the ceiling, thrown by ad-drones threading through the early haze. Outside, Astralis stretched like a dream without end—spires, domes, and transit veils zipping overhead.

  He stood, stretching in the room’s low-gravity field—standard in Astralis apartments. Easy on the joints, terrible for motivation. It was a good ache—the kind that reminded him he was still alive, in a city where nothing felt real anymore.

  The walls shifted to match his mood: deep blues and brushed silver, calming tones. Last night’s Crystalball match was still paused on the holoscreen. He didn’t remember who won. Didn’t care. "Morning coffee lo-fi," John murmured, and the display shifted—soft visuals, ambient tones, no questions asked.

  In the kitchen, his smart-surface table adjusted height as he approached. Rita activated the auto-prep with a soft chime. Steam rose from his breakfast—a hybrid of traditional and synthetic: cultured rice, real eggs, coffee, juice.

  He sipped coffee while Rita adjusted the lighting and let the morning feed scroll across the mirrored wall display:

  "Oblivion Steps Expansion Announced." "New Transit Veins to Open by Cycle’s End." "Gameweaver Holdings Reveal Silent Acquisition of Vex Corp." "Public Neural Bandwidth Upgrade Planned for Lower Rifts."

  He set the cup down as Rita dimmed the display. Across the apartment, a soft blue light blinked. Not a warning. Just a reminder. He stared for a moment. His heart was steady. His mind wasn’t.

  The city called to him. It always had. But this morning, it felt different.

  He stood, pulled on his jacket—fabric woven with temp-reactive mesh and softly glowing seams—and stepped toward the door. The biometric scanner read him instantly.

  Astralis opened.

  And John stepped out into its glow.

  Astralis had its own heartbeat.

  John stepped into its morning rhythm. Commuters floated past in transit bubbles or strode through light-veils projected from the ad-halos above. The scent of flash-fried noodles mixed with floral synth-perfume—something uniquely Astralis: alive, hungry, engineered for just the right amount of awe.

  A pair of schoolkids zipped past him on glidersnaps, laughing. They vanished between two chrome-stacked vendors—one selling neon-tinted juice spheres, the other hawking modular pets, cats mostly, that shimmered with programmable fur patterns.

  John moved through the veins of Astralis like it was any other day. He passed a street preacher in a robe glowing with scripture, shouting about the Return of the Goddess. A few bystanders paused—not to listen, but to record. Just another spectacle, in a city built on them.

  "Don’t trust the ones who smile through static! The Dive remembers! The Realms are waiting!"

  He kept walking.

  Rita pinged softly in his earpiece. "Heads up. Minor transit disruption on Veil Line Seven. Rerouting you through Skywalk Omega."

  "Got it, thanks Rita."

  Skywalk Omega arched between two mega-spires like a glass artery. The moment he stepped onto it, the ambient city sounds dipped, replaced by a soft hum beneath his boots and the distant beat of a music drone overhead. Below, Astralis sprawled: a layered tangle of movement, light, and controlled chaos.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He glanced up and froze.

  There was someone standing on a higher bridge. Not moving. Cloaked. Face obscured.

  Then gone.

  Just like the dreams.

  He shook it off and kept walking—but the gnawing in his chest remained, like something beneath the city had awoken for the first time in centuries.

  The farther John walked, the quieter it felt.

  Not literally—Astralis never stopped talking, blinking, breathing.

  But something in the soundscape had gone hollow.

  Like background noise he’d only just realized was missing.

  He paused outside a stairwell that spiraled down into one of the city’s older levels—forgotten sections paved over by progress. A trio of repair drones hovered at the entrance, scanning rusted signage that no one could read anymore. One turned toward him, blinked a red sensor, then drifted back to its task.

  He didn’t know why he stopped. Only that his gut whispered: listen.

  He turned.

  A woman stood on the far side of the platform. Hooded. Barefoot. Her cloak moved like mist, and her dark hair floated gently as if underwater. Her face was mostly shadow—except for her eyes. They saw him.

  John blinked.

  She was gone.

  She didn’t walk away. She just… wasn’t there anymore.

  His heart thumped once, hard. He stared at the empty platform, trying to convince himself he hadn’t seen anything.

  But that hungry beast in his chest bit down harder.

  He kept walking, faster now.

  A mural caught his eye near the station entrance. It was an older piece, untouched by holo-overlays: a single figure standing at the center of a fragmented circle, surrounded by doorways, each painted with a different symbol. One of the doors was cracked open.

  The figure in the center had no face. Just blank skin, smooth and unsettling.

  John stared for a long time.

  The wind shifted. Colder now. And carried a sound that shouldn’t have been there: a bell. Low, deep, and distant.

  Temple bells.

  The kind he’d only ever heard in his dreams.

  John stood at the edge of the plaza, hands deep in his jacket pockets, pretending the chill in his spine was just the wind.

  Astralis sprawled around him in all its high-gloss, high-function glory. Transit beams sliced through the sky like brushstrokes. Overhead, ad-spheres whispered offers tailored to his neural profile. Rita pinged quietly in his ear to remind him about an unread message from work.

  He didn’t answer.

  Instead, he turned toward a walkway that shouldn’t have caught his eye. It led away from the crowds, winding between forgotten towers wrapped in ivytech—buildings the city had outgrown but hadn’t bothered to tear down.

  The world dimmed as he walked. Not darker, just… quieter. Like everything was leaning back to give him space.

  A flock of pigeons scattered from a ledge above, startled by something unseen.

  John didn’t flinch. He kept walking. He didn’t know why. Only that he had to.

  He reached an overlook. From here, he could see the older veins of Astralis—the parts that predated the neon. Whispers clung to the metal. Old cables. Rusted bones. Scars from lives long overwritten.

  And there, etched into the concrete barrier like a dare, was a single symbol:

  A circle with a line through it.

  He touched it. Not sure why. Not sure what he thought would happen, if anything.

  But something did happen.

  A low hum stirred—first in the air, then in his chest.

  Like an engine turning over deep in the city… or deeper still, inside him.

  Rita's voice buzzed through his earpiece, softer than usual. "John... your vitals just spiked. Are you—"

  "I’m fine," he whispered.

  But he wasn’t.

  Something was waking up.

  And it was calling him by name.

  The moment John touched the symbol, the wall made a sound like a breath being held too long.

  Then it exhaled.

  Concrete that should’ve been dead and silent shuddered, cracked, and peeled itself open like a wound. Cold air rolled out—dry and biting—and under it, a smell John didn’t recognize but somehow feared. Not rot. Not rust. Almost musty, like the city had a basement no one had been stupid enough to visit.

  He staggered back a step. His heart wasn’t pounding. It was clawing its way up his throat.

  "John…" Rita's voice came in, tight and distant. "That area doesn’t exist. There’s nothing—"

  Static. Then, silence.

  The silence that followed was worse than the static—like the world had stopped listening to him.

  The wall kept unfolding, slow, mechanical, inevitable. No alarms. No guards. Just a set of stairs leading down into the dark. The lights embedded in the steps pulsed blue, one after another, as if inviting him. Or warning him.

  He didn’t want to move.

  But his legs did.

  Down he went, following the breath of something he couldn’t name.

  The silence below was different. He could still feel Astralis far above, but it felt like a ghost now. Like he’d slipped beneath the surface of the world.

  At the bottom, the corridor opened into a circular chamber.

  She was waiting there.

  Cloaked. Hooded. The same woman he’d seen before. She was real. Radiating presence like heat.

  John froze. “Who are you?”

  She didn’t answer with words. She stepped aside.

  Behind her sat a sleek, chrome vehicle—streamlined, razor-sharp, its surface reflecting lights that didn’t exist. Angular and aggressive yet graceful, like a glimpse of a future no one was supposed to see.

  The woman spoke.

  "Her name is Realmweaver."

  "What is this?" he whispered.

  The woman tilted her head, smiled.

  Not cruelly. Not kindly. Like someone who knew the end of a story before it started.

  “Because you heard her call,” she said.

  The vehicle’s lights flared—welcoming him.

  John stepped forward, and the chamber woke around him.