Chapter 1: Still Skies, Severed Ties

  The ceiling fan executed its slow, wounded rotation. A wobble timed perfectly with the throb behind Core’s eyes. Twelve oh three PM blinked accusingly from the nightstand display, digits sharp and digital green against the gloom. Progress. He’d managed unconsciousness until noon. Gold star.

  He shifted, an archeological effort. The sheet, thin and smelling faintly sour, peeled away from skin that felt simultaneously clammy and dry. His bones ground together, tiny protests against the tyranny of gravity. Outside the grimy windowpanes, the world probably continued its frantic, pointless spinning. Here, inside Apartment 7G of the illustrious “Pharaoh’s Rest” Complex (a name dripping with ironic grandeur he couldn’t even summon the energy to appreciate anymore), time moved like sludge.

  Right then. Achievement unlocked: verticality.

  His feet hit the laminate floor. Cold. Definitely sticky with… something. He padded towards the kitchenette, a space defined by cramped counters and the lingering ghost of meals he barely remembered eating. Clothes, shed skins from previous days, formed soft sculptures on the lone chair. Data slates lay dark and accusing in a pile. A true monument to ambition’s slow decay.

  The fridge yielded two eggs, their shells faintly speckled, looking vaguely judgemental. Bread, stiff in its plastic shroud. Coffee granules scraped from the dusty bottom of a jar into a mug bearing a faded, offensively cheerful cartoon cat. Microwave hummed, heating water to a temperature best described as ‘disappointing’. He stirred the resulting brown liquid with a fork he pulled from the sink pile, rinsed half-heartedly under a sluggish tap. Bitter. Weak. Perfect.

  Hunger gnawed, a dull, persistent ache. Fine. Calories. He grabbed the pan—scratched Teflon, handle loose—splashed in too much oil, cranked the burner high. The oil spat angrily almost immediately. Eggs cracked directly in, one yolk rupturing on impact. He didn’t care. Fork attacked the mess, not whisking, just shredding, dragging whites through yolks, turning it into a battlefield slick with hot fat. Edges browned instantly, aggressively.

  Spice rack. He grabbed blindly. Paprika? Oregano? Something vaguely identified as “Italian seasoning” expired last year? Generous shakes rained down onto the sputtering eggs, dyeing them a mottled, unhealthy ochre-brown-green. The air thickened with the sharp scent of scorching herbs and hot oil. He scraped the congealing mass around the pan, ignoring the way it stuck, the way parts turned dark brown while others remained suspiciously wet. Texture was irrelevant. Cooked was cooked.

  Two slices of the stiff bread onto a chipped plate. The egg slop scraped on top, leaving streaks of seasoned oil behind. He leaned against the counter, fork in hand. Took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Rubber. Dust. Grease. Washed down with the lukewarm coffee. Plate abandoned on the counter next to the pan. Function complete.

  He found the crumpled cigarette pack, retrieved the last soldier. Lighter sparked on the third try. Habit. Ritual. Control, of a sort. He pushed open the groaning balcony door.

  The air outside wasn’t fresh, just… outside. Less stagnant. Below, the living half of Aethelburg City churned. Cars flowed like metallic blood cells through concrete arteries. Tiny figures hurried along sidewalks. Distant sirens wailed their eternal, ignored warnings. Predictable. Pointless.

  He leaned on the railing, the pitted metal cool against his forearms. Took a long drag. Exhaled grey smoke into the grey air. His gaze drifted, inevitably, towards the other half. The Silent Half. The Stillness.

  It began abruptly, a few blocks over. Skyscrapers stopped mid-reach, some unnervingly intact, others frozen mid-crumble. Streets locked in time, vehicles static, trees like brittle sculptures. A line drawn across reality, sharp and unforgiving. And the sky above it… different. Always different. Today, the usual overcast bruised into deep violets and greens that pulsed faintly, colours stolen from a dying nebula. Pinpricks of light burned within the unnatural clouds—too sharp, too cold for stars. Tears in the fabric. Or maybe just his retinas finally giving up.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Show’s getting ambitious, a dry thought flickered. He brought the cigarette to his lips. Noticed his hand had a tremor. Annoying.

  Then–

  It wasn’t a sound fading. It was a sound cutting out. The low drone of city life from the sector nearest the Stillness just… stopped. Like snipping a wire.

  Core blinked. Slowly. Watched the ash lengthen on his cigarette.

  The silence deepened. Became heavy. Palpable.

  The boundary shimmered. That faint line dividing life from stillness wasn’t stable. It buckled, like stressed glass. The bruised sky overhead seemed to press down, the fake stars burning brighter.

  Right on schedule, he thought, for what, he didn’t know. He flicked the ash meticulously over the railing. Felt a low thrum start in the metal, vibrating up his arm, humming in his teeth. The air crackled. Smelled sharp. Ozone. Dust. Old bones.

  It was moving. The boundary. Crawling forward, eating the next block. A building facade across the way went flat, light refusing to reflect. Frozen.

  Efficient.

  He didn’t run. The thought barely formed. Why bother? He watched, fascinated in a detached, morbid way. Watched a flock of pigeons take flight from a rooftop below, only for the lead bird to hit the advancing shimmer and just… stop. Wings half-spread. Frozen mid-air like a cheap taxidermy exhibit.

  Stuck.

  The thrum intensified. Reality near his balcony warped. The railing buckled, shrieking. Air shimmered like heat haze but felt ice-cold, raising gooseflesh. Something tore through the bruised sky directly above him—less a shape, more a violation of geometry, shadows folding wrong, angles screaming impossibilities—

  He might have flinched. Might have felt a needle of pure, animal panic lance through the apathy. Might have just been irritated by the sheer fucking drama of it all. He raised the cigarette for one last, defiant drag–

  SNAP.

  A soundless concussion. A shearing absence. Violent lightness where weight should be.

  The cigarette dropped. Forgotten. Spiraling down.

  His gaze followed it.

  Dropped it. The thought landed, smooth and clear, in the sudden roaring silence inside his skull.

  Slowly. Head disconnected. He looked down.

  Left arm.

  Gone.

  Just… gone. Below the shoulder. The torn edge of his t-shirt sleeve, already dark, soaking. The raw edge of flesh meeting… nothing? Or something shimmering, indistinct, where the severance was impossibly clean, yet ragged.

  Arm?

  Pain hadn’t registered. Just the vast, unbelievable gap.

  Then the balcony screamed its final protest, metal tearing, concrete giving way, and the world dissolved beneath his feet.

  Falling. Wind rushing. The distant, irrelevant chaos of the city below.

  He hit the alley pavement. Hard. Impact knocked the air from his lungs, sent starbursts behind his eyes. Pain flared then—a ragged, white-hot agony from his shoulder, his landing. He gasped, a raw, ugly sound.

  Got up. Stumbled. Driven by something older than thought.

  People were screaming now, running past him, away from the advancing Stillness, away from the impossible sky. He didn’t see them. Didn’t hear them.

  Just walked.

  Slowly. Mechanically. Away from the ruin of his building, away from the edge of the Silent Half, away from the place his arm used to be. One foot in front of the other. Eyes wide, maybe, but blank. Utterly blank.

  The adrenaline drained out like unplugging a sink. The pain surged. The shock hit like a physical blow. The world greyed out at the edges.

  Legs buckled. Pavement rushed up.

  Blackness.

  …

  Flicker.

  Cold. The sharp tang of antiseptic. A low, rhythmic beep.

  He surfaced through layers of drugged fog. White ceiling panels. Fluorescent light.

  Where…?

  A phantom itch bloomed where his left fingers should be. A deep, pulsing ache radiated from his shoulder. He tried to move the ghost-limb. Failed.

  His gaze drifted down. Slow. Heavy. Following the line of his shoulder beneath a thin, sterile sheet.

  It wasn’t empty space.

  It wasn’t a stump wrapped in bandages.

  It was metal.

  Sleek. Gunmetal grey. Segmented. Unfamiliar angles, complex joints that looked inhuman. Cold, intricate, alien technology seamlessly, impossibly, fused to his flesh just below the shoulder.

  His eyes—usually heavy-lidded, distant—widened. Just fractionally. Staring. Not processing. Just seeing.

  A machine. Attached.

  His arm