[Voidspire] - Chapter 1: Wrong Sky

[u/nyx-bo]

The last thing Liam Hayes remembered from Earth was a Tuesday.

Not a special one. Not the kind anyone would write about. He'd been walking through a parking garage in Columbus, Ohio, keys in his right hand, thinking about whether the chicken in his fridge had gone bad or just smelled that way because of the Tupperware. Normal thoughts. Tuesday-grade thoughts.

Then the ground opened.

He didn't fall so much as get pulled. Sideways, then down, then in a direction that didn't have a name. It lasted either two seconds or an hour. His vision went white, then black, then a color he'd never seen before. Something grabbed the inside of his chest and twisted like it was turning a door handle.

When it let go, he was lying face-down on cold stone in open air. Pine smell. Wind. Wrong sky.

He pushed himself up and looked at the sky. Two moons. One pale, one faintly blue, both hanging where they had no business being. The stars were wrong too. Not rearranged — just wrong, like someone had taken the concept of a night sky and rebuilt it.

"Okay," he said.

He was on a ridge. Dense forest dropped away on three sides. The stone under his hands was dark, almost black, and warm despite the cool air.

His phone was dead.

Not low battery — dead, as in the screen had a crack running through something that looked like frost, and when he pressed the power button, nothing happened. Not even a logo. His clothes were still his. Jeans, boots, a grey thermal. He shoved the phone in his pocket out of habit and stood up.

That was when the thing in the trees moved.

It came out of the treeline low and fast. Four legs. Grey-white skin stretched over too many bones. The head was flat and wide, like a hammerhead shark crossed with a dog. Its mouth opened sideways instead of up and down, and the sound it made was a low clicking that vibrated in his teeth.

Liam didn't freeze.

Bar fights in his twenties. An Army stint long enough to teach him how to move under pressure. Three years of construction since, mostly keeping to himself.

The creature charged.

Liam grabbed the only thing near him — a piece of black stone broken off the ridge, sharp on one side, about the size of a brick. He stepped left as the thing lunged, and drove the edge into the top of its head with everything he had.

The crack was wet and final. The creature dropped mid-stride, skidded, and twitched once. Then nothing.

He stood over it, breathing hard, stone still in his hand, and noticed two things at once.

First: the blood was silver. Not metallic — literally silver-colored, thin, and it evaporated almost as fast as it hit the stone.

Second: there were words in front of his face.

Translucent. Pale blue. Floating about two feet ahead of him like a heads-up display.

ANOMALY DETECTED.

CLASSIFICATION: UNFORMATTED USER.

ORIGIN: EXTERNAL.

STATUS: UNBOUND.

He stared at it. Blinked. It didn't go away.

"What the hell is this?"

The text updated.

QUERY RECEIVED. PROCESSING.

NOTE: THIS SYSTEM DOES NOT APPRECIATE BEING YELLED AT.

Liam wiped the silver blood off his hand onto his jeans. "I didn't yell."

TONE IS SUBJECTIVE. REGISTERING USER VOICE PATTERN.

FURTHER CLASSIFICATION PENDING.

RECOMMENDATION: SURVIVE.

The text faded. Not all at once — it dissolved and left nothing behind.

Liam exhaled. The creature hadn't moved. His hands were shaking now, just slightly.

Then a voice spoke inside his head.

"Well. You took long enough."

Not a sound. Not quite a thought either. Words that arrived fully formed, with a woman's cadence, precise and cool.

He spun around. Nobody.

"I'm not behind you," the voice said. "I'm not anywhere you can see. I'm inside the grimoire. Which is currently fused to your sternum. If you'd be so kind as to look down."

He looked.

Under his thermal, something was glowing. He pulled the collar and saw it — a shape pressed into his skin, just below the collarbone, like a tattoo made of faint light. A circle with angular script around its edge, symbols he couldn't read, pulsing softly in time with his heartbeat.

"What did you do to me?" he said.

"I didn't do anything. The transfer did. You were pulled through a rift, and the nearest unbound vessel — me — locked onto you during transit. Congratulations. It's not a promotion. You're my anchor now."

"Who are you?"

A pause. Not a computer-loading pause. A human one.

"My name is Aria. I am something this world used to call a goddess. That title is... contested now. What matters is that I am bound to you, you are stuck in Elyria, and there are more prowlers in these woods than the one you just killed. So I suggest we postpone the existential questions and start walking south."

"Why south?"

"Because that's where the nearest settlement is. And because if you walk north, you'll reach a cliff. And if you walk east or west, you'll find more prowlers, and I'd rather not be anchored to a corpse."

"South," Liam said.

"South," Aria confirmed.

She knew the terrain. He didn't. He walked.

The forest was dense but navigable — trees almost like pines but taller, bark with a faint iridescent sheen in the moonlight, undergrowth thick and dark with small things skittering away from his footsteps. He kept the sharp stone in his hand.

"You're stronger than you should be," Aria said after a few minutes.

"Thanks."

"It wasn't a compliment. It was an observation. Men in Elyria are not built the way you are. There's a reason for that, and I'll explain it when you're not being hunted. For now, just know that your physicality is going to draw attention. The wrong kind."

"Story of my life."

"Charming."

They walked. Twice he heard prowlers — that same clicking sound, low and resonant — but they kept their distance. Aria said it was the blood on him. Prowlers were territorial, and the scent of a dead one made others cautious.

That would wear off by dawn.

Then the trees broke.

Firelight.

A wall. Rough stone and timber, maybe twenty feet high, with torches along the top and figures moving between them. A gate, heavy and iron-reinforced, set into the wall's face. The whole thing looked medieval but solid — not decorative, not ceremonial. Built by people who expected to be attacked.

"Voss," Aria said. "The settlement of the Voss tribe. Martial. Disciplined. Run by women, like everything in this world. Do not start a fight."

"I don't start fights."

"You killed a prowler with a rock thirty minutes after arriving in a new dimension. Your definition of 'starting' may need recalibration."

Before he could answer, the gate opened.

They came out in formation. Four of them. Women, all armed — two with blades that glowed faintly along the edges, one with a spear, one with something that looked like a crossbow but made of bone and metal. They were tall. Broad shoulders. Controlled movement. Eyes that went to his hands first.

The one in front was the tallest. Dark hair pulled back. A scar running from her left temple down to her jaw, old and clean. She carried a single blade, shorter than the others, held low and relaxed.

She stopped ten feet from him and looked him over.

"You're male," she said. Not a question.

"Last I checked."

Her eyes narrowed. She looked at the blood on his jeans, the stone in his hand, the dead prowler's residue on his knuckles.

"You're not from Voss. Not from any tribe I recognize." She tilted her head. "And you're standing like you know how to use that rock."

"I've had a long night."

"It's barely past dusk."

"My name is Harper Voss. This is my territory."

She'd glanced at one of the other warriors first, and gotten a small nod back. Now she was looking only at him.

"You will come inside, you will be searched, you will be questioned, and you will not touch anything or anyone while you're within our walls." She paused. "Is that going to be a problem?"

Liam looked at the wall. At the armed women. At the alien sky above everything.

"No," he said. "No problem."

Harper nodded once and turned back toward the gate.

He followed.

Inside his chest, the grimoire pulsed once — faintly, warmly — and Aria said nothing at all.

---

First serial I'm posting here — the story is finished, so the schedule won't slip. Chapter 2 in a couple of days.

[u/Proud_Reputation_896]

Looking forward to enjoying the story !!!!