Chapter Text
The morning sun had barely cleared the horizon when the arguments began, echoing through the rafters of the small, stone-walled cottage. The golden light fractured through the small windowpanes, casting long, geometric shadows across the worn floorboards, but the peaceful ambiance was entirely ignored.
"Uhgggg! Why can’t you go get your supplies yourself?!" Wemmbu groaned, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation, nearly knocking over a wooden stool in the process."Because I’m busy and you’re not," said Eggchan, feigning annoyance while lazily preening a stray wing feather.
He didn’t look up, his fingers meticulously smoothing down the soft, pale plumage, but the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth entirely betrayed his amusement. He loved pushing Wemmbu's buttons, mostly because the younger of the two's dramatic reactions were the best entertainment the quiet valley had to offer.
With a dramatic sigh that could rival a seasoned stage actor playing a tragic hero, Wemmbu snatched the crumpled parchment shopping list from the center table and headed out the door, letting it slam shut with a loud thud.
The trek to the village market was usually a tedious chore, a dusty walk that Wemmbu dreaded, but today the air was crisp, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth. The cobblestone streets of the nearby settlement were surprisingly clear for a market morning.
Wemmbu entered the bustling hub with little to no issues, weaving gracefully through the colorful stalls of shouting merchants, vibrant textile displays, and aromatic spice carts that made him sneeze twice.
He easily acquired the writing supplies on the list, bartering briefly with an elderly merchant who knew Eggchan well. He secured three heavy ceramic bottles of dark, permanent ink, tightly corked and sealed with wax, and five completely blank, leather-bound books with thick, parchment pages. He didn’t bother looking for quills; he knew Eggchan preferred to make them himself, meticulously sharpening the sturdiest of his own naturally shed feathers to ensure the perfect ink flow.
Balancing the heavy, fragrant stack of books in his arms, Wemmbu began the long walk back to the house. The town noises faded behind him, replaced by a quiet, dirt-path serenity. The birds chirped rhythmically in the overhanging canopy.
Then, the air went dead silent.The birds stopped mid-song. The wind ceased to ruffle the leaves. It was an unnatural, suffocating quiet.
Without a sound or a tremor, the solid ground beneath his feet simply vanished. There was no cracking of stone, no crumbling of dirt—the earth just ceased to exist, opening up into a jagged, pitch-black void that defied all laws of nature.
The heavy books slipped from his grip, scattering into the darkness below like stones dropped into an bottomless well. Panic spiking wildly, Wemmbu instinctively flared his wings, the feathers catching the air as he tried to fly upward toward the receding light.
But the physics of the world seemed to break entirely. A massive, crushing gravitational pull wrapped around his ankles like heavy iron chains, dragging him downward with terrifying velocity. The sky above shrunk into a tiny, mocking square of blue before disappearing entirely into the absolute black. He screamed, but the void swallowed the sound whole.
Somewhere in the Far Lands, miles away from the quiet village, a completely different scene was unfolding in a rugged, untamed biome. Flamefrags was deep in his element, sweat glistening on his brow as he practiced his combat abilities in the clearing outside his fortified base.
The afternoon heat was oppressive, but he welcomed the strain. Outside his base, a sturdy wooden armor stand equipped with iron plates served as his opponent. Flamefrags moved gracefully around it, his boots kicking up dust as he executed a flawless sequence of strikes.
His blade cut through the air with lethal precision, the steel humming a deadly tune. He stepped back, drawing a deep, ragged breath to reset his stance, preparing for another volley, when a chillingly similar instance occurred.
A pit below Flame spawned out of nowhere, cutting clean through the solid bedrock beneath his base—a depth that should have been impossible to penetrate."What the—!" Flame gasped, his boots losing friction and slipping instantly over the edge of the sudden, impossible chasm.
Reflexes kicking in from years of survival training, he lunged forward, desperately trying to hold onto the patch of grass at the very edge of the abyss.
His fingernails dug deep into the dirt, tearing the roots, the friction burning his skin."Lomedy! Lomedy, help!" he roared, his voice straining against a sudden, unnatural wind that began howling from the depths, pulling at his clothes like a physical hand.But there was no answer.
The base was empty, and his cries echoed uselessly against the canyon walls. The dirt crumbled beneath his fingertips, the dry earth offering no leverage. To no avail, his grip failed. His fingers slipped from the edge, and Flamefrags fell into the abyss all the same, swallowed by the silent, hungry dark that seemed to actively erase his existence from the surface world.
Back at Eggchan and Wemmbu’s house, the afternoon shadows had grown long and distorted, stretching across the valley like dark fingers.
Eggchan pushed the heavy wooden door open, his chest tight with a growing, icy sense of unease. He had just spent a couple of hours scouring the village, retracing the path to the market, and asking every merchant he knew. No one had seen the boy since the morning market. He had found no dropped items, no signs of a struggle, just a dead end.
Stepping into the main room, Eggchan froze.The house was exactly hiw he left it, except for a single, unfamiliar object sitting dead center on the wooden dining table where they usually shared their meals.
Eggchan approached slowly, his blue eyes narrowing into thin slits. It was a book. He knew for a fact that he didn’t write this book, nor did it match any of the historical or magical volumes they kept on their crowded shelves. It radiated a faint, unsettling energy—a low, rhythmic pulse that made the fine hairs on his arms stand up.
He cautiously approached, the floorboards creaking softly under his boots, and carefully opened the heavy leather cover.Inside, written in an elegant, flowing script that seemed to shimmer and shift on the ancient parchment, was a poem:
Dear Eggchan,I know you fear for Wemmbu’s sake,
And worry for the path he’d take.
But do not fret,
for he is near,
Safe in my hands,
so do not fear.
Who I may be matters the least,
Whether a friend or nameless beast.
What matters is the part you play,
To help your friend along the way.
To join his side and set him free,
Just sign your name where all can see.
Write at the bottom of this page,
And step onto a brand new stage.
Eggchan stared at the final lines, his breath catching in his throat. His mind raced at a thousand miles an hour, analyzing the syntax, searching for hidden magical runes embedded in the ink, evaluating the exact nature of the threat.
It was a classic trap—an obvious, undeniable lure designed to capture him just as they had captured Wemmbu.Yet, despite knowing this was an open snare, the cold, heavy reality of the situation pressed heavily on his chest. The small, fragile chance that Wemmbu was in serious danger and genuinely needed his help entirely outweighed the logical, calculating part of his brain.
He couldn’t risk his friend’s life for the sake of his own caution. If he stayed behind to investigate, he might lose the only link to where Wemmbu had been taken.
Stepping forward, the celestial seraphim reached into his breast pocket and drew a self-made quill, its tip perfectly carved. At the bottom of the page, with a steady, unhesitating hand that defied the panic in his chest, he signed his name in bold, elegant strokes.
The moment the final stroke of ink dried, he gently placed the quill down and stepped back. A sudden, jarring sensation washed over him, vibrating through his very core. Eggchan feels weirdly lightheaded, his vision blurring violently at the edges as the familiar wooden room around him began to dissolve into a thick, swirling grey mist. His feet lost contact with the solid floor, barely noticing that he is falling forward into nothingness.
The walls of his home vanished into thin air, replaced by an infinite, echoing void that stretched out for eternity in every direction. Where the feeling of hitting the ground is, the seraphim does not know, for the gravity here is entirely broken, the wind whistles past his ears in reverse, and the terrifying fall is constant, plunging him deeper into the unknown alongside the missing pieces of his world.