Chapter 4 — A World That Chose Its Chains
The Ash Plains lived up to their name.
They were not plains in the natural sense—no rolling grass, no soil shaped by wind and rain. The ground was layered in gray and black sediment, compressed ash from centuries of Sky Omens. Every step released faint clouds that clung to skin and cloth like regret.
Ryuuji wrapped his face and kept moving.
He had been walking for two days.
Sleep came only in fragments, haunted by memories that weren't his—cities collapsing not from attack, but from agreement. People voting to forget. Priests sealing knowledge beneath stone and ceremony.
This land had been the execution ground of progress.
By the third day, he saw banners.
Tall poles driven into the ash, each bearing a sigil of a split eye crossed by a horizontal line.
The Aurelian Concord.
Ryuuji stopped.
So Kareth hadn't been alone after all.
The Concord did not worship the Sky.
They contracted with it.
Their belief was simple, terrifying, and honest:
The Sky was not divine—it was inevitable.
And inevitability could be negotiated.
Their cities were taller than Kareth's, their structures reinforced with strange alloys and anchored with counter-symbols carved deep into the ground. They pushed limits carefully, deliberately—always stopping one step before punishment.
To the Stillness-followers, they were heretics.
To the Sky, they were useful.
Ryuuji crossed into Concord territory at dawn.
No bells rang.
No ash fell.
That alone told him everything.
He was intercepted before reaching the outer city.
Six soldiers in pale bronze armor emerged from behind ash-dunes, weapons raised—but not aimed. Their helmets bore lenses of tinted crystal, humming faintly.
"State your name," one said.
Ryuuji hesitated.
Names had weight now.
"…Ryuuji Valis."
The crystals flared.
The soldiers stiffened.
One of them whispered, "He's marked."
They did not attack.
They knelt.
Not in reverence.
In assessment.
"Escort him," the leader ordered. "Alive.Untethered."
Untethered.
Ryuuji didn't like that word.
The city of Helior rose from the plains like a scar that refused to heal.
It was angular, asymmetrical, built in layers that shifted the eye away from verticality while still reaching high. Wind turbines spun silently. Light panels glowed without flame.
People walked openly, talking, arguing—even laughing.
No one looked at the Sky.
That, more than anything, unsettled Ryuuji.
He was led into a council chamber carved into the city's core. The walls were inscribed with moving diagrams—flowing equations, symbols reacting to unseen forces.
At the center sat a woman in dark red robes, her hair bound with metallic rings.
She looked… tired.
"Ryuuji Valis," she said. "Welcome to Helior."
"I'm not welcome," Ryuuji replied.
She smiled faintly.
"No," she agreed. "You're valuable."
Her name was Arch-Contractor Lyss Aurelion.
She explained without preamble.
"The Sky is not a god," she said. "It is a regulatory construct. A system imposed to prevent humanity from exceeding a defined threshold."
Ryuuji felt the mark on his arm stir.
"You knew," he said.
"We suspected," Lyss replied. "For centuries. We test the limits, measure the response, adapt."
"And the ash?" Ryuuji asked. "The deaths?"
Lyss's eyes hardened.
"Acceptable losses."
The words echoed Rohlan's earlier tone.
Different belief.
Same cruelty.
"You profit from Omens," Ryuuji said.
"We survive because of them," Lyss corrected. "The Sky needs enforcement. We help it refine where punishment falls."
Silence stretched.
Then she leaned forward.
"And now you appear—someone who does not trigger correction immediately."
Ryuuji clenched his fists.
"I'm not a tool."
Lyss tilted her head.
"No," she said softly. "You're a variable."
That night, Ryuuji was given a room with walls lined in suppression sigils—not to imprison him, but to protect the city.
Sleep did not come.
Near midnight, the air shifted.
Someone sat at the edge of his bed.
Ryuuji jolted upright.
A man with hollow eyes and skin etched with dozens of faint symbols looked back at him.
"You're late," the man said.
"Who are you?" Ryuuji whispered.
The man smiled—a broken, crooked thing.
"A mistake," he said. "Just like you."
The mark on Ryuuji's arm burned violently.
The man leaned closer.
"They called me a Rememberer too," he whispered. "Once."
Ryuuji's heart dropped.
"What happened to you?"
The man's smile widened.
"I chose the wrong side."
The walls began to hum.
Somewhere deep beneath Helior, something ancient stirred.
And above the city—
The Sky shifted.
Not in anger.
In interest.
End of Chapter 4