Strangers in a Silver Sea
Kael spun around, his heart still trying to beat its way out of his chest. The voice belonged to a girl. She stood a few paces away, her posture as straight and unyielding as a blade. Her long, dark hair was impeccably smooth, and her school uniform—his school's uniform—was pristine, as if she'd just stepped out of a catalog. He knew her. Everyone did.
Talia Voss. The heiress. The girl who moved through the hallways like a ghost, leaving a trail of whispers and awed silence in her wake. She never spoke to anyone. She never smiled. Her face was a masterpiece of composed indifference, a mask of ice that no one had ever seen crack.
And yet, here she was, in this impossible place, looking at him. Her eyes, a cool, piercing blue, held no shock, only a sharp, analytical assessment. She was studying him, the same way a scientist might study a new specimen.
Before he could process her presence, another voice, laced with equal parts panic and wonder, cut through the strange air.
"Okay, this is officially weird. I was taking a nap, and now I'm in some… sci-fi fever dream?"
A second girl stumbled into the clearing of silver grass. She was shorter, with a wild mane of fiery red hair that seemed to defy gravity. Her uniform was slightly rumpled, and her sharp, intelligent eyes darted around, taking in everything with a restless energy. Juno. He recognized her too—the girl in class who always had a sarcastic comment whispered under her breath and doodled in the margins of her notebook.
Unlike Talia, Juno's emotions were an open book. Her face was a canvas of confusion, her hands gesticulating wildly. "You guys too? Please tell me you see the sky. Please tell me I'm not having a mental breakdown alone."
Kael found his voice, though it came out as a dry croak. "...You guys too?" He looked from Juno's frantic energy to Talia's unsettling calm. "Talia? Juno? What… what is this?"
Talia's gaze swept over them both, her expression unchanging. "No. We weren't abducted." Her tone was flat, factual, devoid of any warmth or fear. It was the voice of someone stating the obvious. "We were… summoned."
Juno threw her hands up. "Summoned? By who? For what? A cosmic party? Because the decor is great, but the guest list is seriously lacking."
Kael watched, mesmerized and unnerved by the contrast between them. Juno was all noise and motion, a spark trying to ignite. Talia was stillness and silence, a deep, frozen lake. He felt like a pendulum swinging between them, his own shock and grief making him feel dull and heavy in comparison.
As if in response to Talia's statement, the air trembled. A sphere of light descended, pulsing with a warmth that felt alien after the coldness of his rooftop. Inside it swirled colors he couldn't name.
A voice resonated, the same one from the rooftop, but now shared between the three of them.
"Children of Earth. You stand chosen by the Beyond."
Juno yelped and took a step back. Kael flinched, his fists clenching instinctively. Talia merely tilted her head, her icy composure never wavering.
"Where there is destruction, I rise to heal. Where there is void, I breathe life. And you three—Kael, Talia, Juno—are bound to me now. Together, you will carry Astral Flow."
"Astral… Flow?" Kael echoed, the words feeling strange on his tongue.
Juno scowled, crossing her arms. "Wait, hold up. I didn't agree to any cosmic job offer. I just wanted to pass math class, not… carry space magic."
For the first time, a reaction flickered across Talia's face. It wasn't a smile. It was a faint, almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of her lips, a ghost of dry amusement that vanished as quickly as it appeared. Her eyes met Kael's for a fraction of a second, and in that look, he saw a silent, shared understanding of Juno's absurdity. It wasn't friendship. It was an alliance of circumstance.
" You don't get to choose," Talia said, her voice cutting through Juno's protest. She wasn't looking at Juno; she was looking at the sphere of light, her gaze unwavering. She had already accepted this new, impossible reality. For Kael, the world was still tilting. But in the midst of the chaos, two things were clear: Talia Voss was as cold and formidable as her reputation suggested, and she hadn't smiled once.
And the ground beneath their feet was beginning to quake.
Children of Earth Prime. You stand chosen by the Beyond. A corruption, a blight upon existence, seeks to devour all. You will carry my power—the Astral Flow of Creation—to stand against it."
Before they could process this, the ground tore open. From a fissure of pure, sickening blackness, twisted figures clawed their way out. They weren't shadows; they were wounds in reality, whispering promises of absolute, final nothingness. This was the Corruption. The sight of it made Kael's soul recoil.
As they panicked, their powers ignited. Kael's hands blazed with fire and water. Talia summoned blades of hard light. Juno's crystals sparked erratically. They were losing.
Suddenly, the air on the other side of the field screamed, not with sound, but with the violent release of energy. Three new figures materialized in a storm of crimson light and shifting shadows.
A tall, muscular boy with Kael's face—but harder, older, with a soldier's posture and a scar over his brow. Leo. A lanky boy in tactical gear,his eyes glowing with data streams, a holographic interface already forming over his forearm. Tobin. A pale,sharp-faced boy who moved with a silent, lethal grace, a scalpel-like dagger of black energy appearing in his hand. Calyx.
Their power was the absolute opposite of Kael's team. It was pure, focused annihilation. Leo shattered Corrupted with concussive blasts of force. Tobin's code-like energy unraveled them. Calyx's touch dissolved them into motes of fading data.
The leader, Leo, locked eyes with Kael across the battlefield. His voice was a hard-edged echo, laced with a gravity Kael didn't possess.
"We are the Chosen of Tranceeds. The Force of Necessary End. It seems we share an enemy."
The two teams stood facing each other, the silver field between them, allies by cosmic decree but strangers by nature. The Beyond and the Tranceeds, creation and destruction, had each chosen their champions.
The war for everything had begun. And it started with two trios of teenagers, staring each other down across a field of starlight