The sky looked like it had been sandpapered raw.
A dull orange sun hung behind a veil of dust, and the air shimmered with heat that never ended. The wind dragged the scent of rust and burned oil through the skeleton of what had once been a city.
Ethan Vale balanced on the broken edge of a highway ramp, staring down at the graveyard below—cars fused into melted rivers of metal, towers leaning like drunks after the world's longest night. He was twenty, maybe twenty-one, but the ruins had aged him into something harder than his years. His coat was patched with duct tape, his boots held together by stubbornness, and his face was half-hidden beneath a scarf the color of soot.
He adjusted the strap of his father's old backpack and whispered, half to himself, "Morning, world. Still ugly as hell."
The only answer was the wind whining through the holes of a collapsed billboard that once sold paradise—THE NEW AXIS AWAITS YOU!—letters now eaten by rust.
He'd heard about the Axis his whole life: the clean world, the reborn civilization somewhere beyond the fractures. People said if you could bring something valuable enough from the Ruined World, you might earn passage there. Others said the Axis was a myth—propaganda whispered to keep scavengers moving. Ethan didn't care which was true. All he needed was something that could sell.
He checked his wrist scanner: battery 12 percent. Oxygen mask filters 47 percent. Ammo… one clip. The rest of his pockets were full of wire scraps, burned circuit boards, and wishful thinking.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Real retirement fund, Vale."
Below the ramp, movement caught his eye—a group of Scavs rooting through a wreck. They weren't the mindless kind yet; they still moved with that twitchy desperation of half-humans trying not to cross the line. One of them glanced up at him, then turned away. Good. They weren't suicidal today.
Ethan slid down the ramp's slope, boots crunching over gravel and bone dust. The heat pressed close, turning every breath into a drag through sandpaper. He passed what used to be a plaza; vines with veins of faint blue light crawled up shattered statues, feeding on the radiation.
Something glimmered near the fountain's cracked basin—a shimmer too clean, too precise to be glass. He froze.
Gold.
At first he thought it was just a reflection, but then the glint pulsed, like a slow heartbeat. The air above it warped, humming faintly. He stepped closer, hand unconsciously resting on his pistol.
The puddle was small, no bigger than a bucket, yet it glowed with an inner life that made his chest tighten. Real Aurum. The kind people killed for. The kind that could buy a seat to the Axis.
He crouched, staring at it. "You're either my ticket out… or the last dumb thing I ever touch."
The wind died. The world went silent except for the faint hum of the gold. He could almost feel it watching him.
He extended a gloved hand, hesitated. His father's voice drifted through memory—You're smart, Ethan. Don't let hunger make you stupid.
He smirked. "Too late, old man."
His fingers brushed the surface.
Pain hit like lightning through his arm. The gold wasn't liquid—it was alive, writhing up his glove, searing through fabric into skin. He screamed, falling backward, clutching his wrist as the veins beneath his flesh burned bright gold. For a heartbeat, the world dissolved into blinding white.
Images slammed into his skull: towers of light, men harvesting suns, a voice that wasn't human whispering in an ancient tongue. Then, just as suddenly, silence.
He gasped, eyes wide, sweat freezing on his skin. The gold puddle had gone still again. His glove was gone, his skin unburned but glowing faintly from within.
"What the hell…"
A hiss broke the air. Shadows darted between ruins. Scabs. The real ones. Skin gray, eyes black, limbs too long. They'd smelled his pain.
Ethan raised his pistol and fired. The first Scab's skull burst, spraying dark fluid that steamed on the ground. The others shrieked and charged. He ran, boots pounding over debris, heart a drum in his ears.
The alley twisted between fallen towers, sunlight slashing through cracks. He fired again—missed. One creature leapt, claws grazing his shoulder. He smashed the butt of his gun into its face and kept running.
The hum returned, louder this time, coming from inside him. His vision sharpened; the world slowed. When the next Scab lunged, he sidestepped with impossible speed and drove his knife under its jaw. The creature spasmed, died.
He stared at his hands, shaking. "That… wasn't me."
The ground trembled. A deeper growl rolled through the ruins—a pack approaching. Too many.
He spun toward the plaza, searching for an escape—and froze. The air above the gold was rippling like water, forming a vertical wave of light. Through it, he saw something impossible: clean streets, glass towers, a blue sky.
A gate.
He didn't think; he ran for it.
A roar behind him, claws scraping concrete. He dove forward just as a Scab's hand brushed his ankle. The world twisted. Cold replaced heat. The sound of wind died, replaced by the soft hum of electricity.
He slammed onto smooth metal flooring. The light here was sterile, white. He blinked, disoriented. Everything smelled of ozone and antiseptic.
Footsteps echoed.
"Don't move," a woman's voice commanded.
He looked up. A figure stood at the end of the corridor—tall, wearing a white coat threaded with luminous veins of circuitry. A weapon—sleek, black, humming with blue energy—was trained on him.
Ethan groaned. "Hell of a welcome committee."
The woman approached cautiously. Her eyes were gray, cool, evaluating. She was maybe thirty, maybe timeless, the kind of person who carried exhaustion like jewelry.
"You're contaminated," she said.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Pretty sure that's mutual."
She ignored the quip, scanning him with a wrist device. Her expression changed—just a flicker of disbelief. "Impossible. The radiation should've killed you."
Ethan looked at his glowing veins. "Guess I'm just lucky."
She lowered the weapon slightly. "What's your name?"
"Ethan Vale. Professional idiot. You?"
"Dr. Gail Rhyse," she replied. "And you've just broken half a dozen containment laws by existing."
"Add it to my résumé."
Gail exhaled, not amused but maybe intrigued. "Where did you come from?"
"The other side," he said, nodding toward the gate. It still shimmered faintly behind him. "I was scavenging. Found some… living gold. Next thing I know, I'm here."
Her gaze sharpened. "You touched it?"
He lifted his hand. "Wouldn't recommend it."
She studied the golden glow beneath his skin, whispering more to herself than to him. "Aurum assimilation without cellular decay… The Protocol was right."
"English, please?"
She met his eyes. "You're not supposed to exist, Mr. Vale. The Aurum isn't just metal—it's code. Conscious energy. It rewrites DNA. No one survives contact."
"Lucky me again."
The gate behind him flickered violently. Alarm lights burst red across the corridor. Gail swore under her breath.
"What's happening?" Ethan demanded.
"The fracture's destabilizing." She grabbed his wrist. "We have to move. Now."
He yanked free. "Hold on—what fracture? What even is this place?"
"This," she said, motioning to the sterile hall around them, "is the New Axis. And that," she pointed to the collapsing gate, "is the reason half our scientists are dead."
Something cracked—metal screamed as pressure ripped through the chamber. A surge of gold light spilled from the gate, devouring walls.
"Run!" she shouted.
They sprinted down the corridor. Behind them, the light chased like a tidal wave. Ethan's lungs burned; the hum in his chest pulsed in rhythm with the energy. He felt it answering him, tugging him faster.
They burst through a security door as the explosion hit. The blast hurled them across another chamber. Ethan rolled, slammed into a console, groaned.
Gail was already up, typing furiously on a holographic panel. "We need containment field Delta!"
The AI voice responded, calm and cold: Containment Delta offline. Power reserves depleted.
She cursed. "Of course."
Ethan staggered beside her. "You got an exit plan that doesn't end in barbecue?"
"Follow me."
They raced through a maze of labs, past shattered tanks and floating shards of data-glass. Inside one tank, something stirred—a humanoid shape, golden veins pulsing under translucent skin. Ethan slowed, staring.
"What the hell are you people doing here?"
Gail didn't look back. "Trying to fix what we broke."
"Yeah, you're doing great."
They burst onto a balcony overlooking an immense underground dome. Below, rows of containment pods stretched like tombs, each glowing faintly gold. Machines hummed, draining light from the air itself.
"This is insane," Ethan breathed.
Gail's voice was flat. "This is survival."
The tremor from the explosion reached them. Alarms screamed. The pods below began to crack. One by one, golden mist seeped out.
Ethan backed away. "I think your survival plan's got a leak."
She shot him a glare, then activated a beacon on her wrist. A small aircraft—sleek, insect-like—descended to the balcony.
"Get in!"
They jumped inside. The canopy sealed, and the craft shot upward through a vertical tunnel. The ground below erupted in a swirl of gold.
Ethan looked through the canopy as the facility disappeared beneath molten light. "You gonna tell me what just tried to eat us?"
"The Aurum Core," Gail said, breathing hard. "It's a sentient energy mass. We've been mining it for decades. Your world calls it gold. Ours calls it the root of creation."
"Creation? That thing's trying to end it."
Her hands trembled slightly on the controls. "Maybe that's the same thing."
He studied her profile—the tight jaw, the tired eyes. "You sound like someone who's seen this before."
"I built it," she said softly.
Silence. Only the hum of engines and the distant thunder of collapsing metal.
Ethan leaned back, head spinning. His arm still glowed faintly, the light pulsing with his heartbeat. He felt alive and terrified at once, as if something inside him was awake and waiting.
"Why didn't it kill me?" he asked finally.
Gail hesitated. "Because it recognized you."
"Recognized me? Lady, I'm nobody."
"Not anymore," she murmured.
They broke through a cloud layer into open air. The sight stole his breath: a city suspended above the clouds, towers of white metal curving like glass petals toward a blue-violet sky. Airships glided between spires. The Axis.
"Holy—" He couldn't even finish.
Gail glanced at him. "Welcome to the other side."
Thanks — let's continue right where the last word left off, same rhythm, no recap.
Ethan stared out the canopy as the city unfolded beneath him like a hallucination made of order. The towers were bone-white, reflecting sunlight so pure it hurt to look at. Between them stretched bridges of transparent glass, humming faintly with power. The air itself felt too clean, too deliberate.
"Is this what's left of humanity?" he whispered.
Gail didn't answer right away. She was watching the horizon, fingers moving over the craft's controls with muscle memory. "This is what we built after the Fall," she said finally. "When the surface burned, the brightest minds gathered here and swore they'd never touch the earth again."
He gave a short, humorless laugh. "Yeah, well. You touched it again."
She cut him a look—half irritation, half reluctant agreement. "Curiosity is a disease we never cured."
The craft descended toward a landing ring encircling one of the smaller towers. As they passed lower, Ethan saw people on the platforms—humans, but different. Pale skin, flawless. Their movements too graceful, their eyes a little too clear. Everyone wore the same gray uniform marked with an angular gold symbol. No one spoke.
When they landed, the platform flooded with security drones. Gail stepped out first, raising her ID bracelet. A blue halo scanned her body and turned green. Then the drones turned toward Ethan, lenses narrowing.
He raised his hands. "Hey, I come in peace. Mostly."
Gail gestured sharply. "He's with me. Genetic anomaly, level six."
The drones paused, then retracted their weapons. Ethan lowered his arms slowly. "Anomaly, huh? That your polite word for 'guy who shouldn't be alive'?"
"Yes," she said, already walking.
He sighed and followed. The interior of the tower was all white corridors and soft light that followed them as they moved. Everything hummed, alive in a way the ruins never were. People stared as they passed; some whispered, some looked away quickly.
"Popular already," he muttered.
"They've never seen contamination this close."
He rubbed his glowing wrist. "You keep saying that like I'm radioactive."
"You are," she said simply. "But not in the way they understand."
They entered a circular room filled with floating holographic screens. A man waited there, tall, sharp-faced, his hair silver not from age but design. His coat was identical to Gail's but trimmed in black.
"Doctor Rhyse," he said, voice smooth and cold. "You were declared missing in the field six months ago."
Gail straightened. "Field research in the Ruined World took longer than expected, Director."
His gaze shifted to Ethan. "And what is this?"
Ethan tried a grin. "Just your friendly neighborhood trespasser."
The Director ignored him. "He's infected."
"Assimilated," Gail corrected. "He touched raw Aurum and survived. Look at his vitals."
She projected data into the air. Golden streams pulsed across a holographic body scan, showing energy coiled through Ethan's veins like living metal.
The Director's eyes widened a fraction. "Unstable, yet alive…" He turned to Ethan. "You realize what this means?"
"I realize I'm standing in a room full of people who might dissect me," Ethan said.
"Only if you make yourself useless."
Gail stepped between them. "He's proof the Aurum can merge with human biology. We can study the interface, maybe control the evolution."
Ethan frowned. "Control what evolution?"
Neither answered. That silence told him enough.
He crossed his arms. "So you people play god, break the world, then hide in the clouds pretending you fixed it. Typical."
Gail's expression tightened. "You don't understand—"
"You're right. I don't. But I do know I'm not your lab rat."
The Director's voice sharpened. "You don't have a choice, Mr. Vale. Your biology now belongs to the Axis Authority."
Ethan's veins flared gold, brighter, reacting to his anger. The room lights flickered. Screens warped. He felt the hum inside his bones again, deeper this time, answering his pulse.
"I don't belong to anyone," he said.
Security drones dropped from the ceiling, weapons primed. Gail moved quickly, grabbing his wrist. "Ethan! Stop—breathe. The energy's responding to your adrenaline."
He forced a breath, fighting the surge. The glow dimmed. The drones steadied.
The Director watched, calculating. "Remarkable," he murmured. "You may be uncontrollable, but you're valuable."
Gail glared. "We need containment, not exploitation."
He smiled thinly. "Containment is exploitation, Doctor. It's just slower."
The room's main screen lit up with a map—two worlds mirrored: the shining Axis above, the scorched Ruined World below. Between them pulsed a thin golden thread.
"The fracture is widening," the Director said. "If it merges completely, both realms will collapse into entropy. We believe this… hybrid"—he nodded toward Ethan—"is the key to stabilizing it."
Ethan stared at the map. "You mean you want to throw me back into the fire."
"Essentially."
He laughed, a dry, incredulous sound. "You people really have a talent for suicide missions."
Gail stepped closer, her voice low. "Ethan, if the fracture keeps growing, both worlds die. Not just the ruins—this city, too. Everyone."
He met her eyes. For the first time he saw fear there—not the clinical kind, but the human kind.
"Fine," he said finally. "But we do this my way."
The Director raised an eyebrow. "And what is your way?"
"Simple," Ethan said. "I'm not dying for free."
Hours later, he stood on a balcony of the tower, staring at the endless sea of clouds. The sun was setting, painting the white world gold. The irony made him snort.
Gail joined him silently, holding two cups of something steaming. She handed him one. "Synthetic coffee. Closest thing we have."
He sipped. Bitter, chemical, but warm. "Tastes like regret."
"That's how you know it's real."
They stood there in uneasy peace.
"Why'd you really bring me here?" he asked. "Not the official answer—the real one."
She looked down into her cup. "Because I built the gate you fell through. I opened the first fracture."
He turned to her. "You caused the split?"
"Not alone. The Aurum project was meant to draw limitless energy from the sub-quantum field. Instead, it tore reality apart. The Axis rose from what we could save. The surface became… everything else."
He let out a slow breath. "So you made heaven and hell in one experiment."
She nodded once. "And you crawled out of hell carrying its heart."
He studied the faint golden glow beneath his skin. "Feels less like a heart, more like a ticking bomb."
"Maybe both," she said.
Silence settled again, broken only by the wind humming against the balcony glass.
"Do you regret it?" he asked quietly.
Her answer was a whisper. "Every day."
He believed her.
Below them, the city lights brightened as night fell—thousands of tiny suns in perfect lines, burning away the stars.
Ethan finished the drink, set the cup on the railing. "What happens now?"
"Now we test your limits," she said. "See how much of the Aurum your body can channel without breaking."
"Sounds painful."
"It will be."
He smiled crookedly. "Story of my life."
The next days blurred into laboratories and bright lights. Electrodes, scanners, needles drawing blood that shimmered gold before turning red again. Machines hummed while Gail and her team spoke in equations. Ethan learned to breathe through the pain when his veins lit up like molten wire.
Sometimes he dreamed of the Ruined World—the smell of dust, the warmth of sunlight filtered through ash. In the dreams he heard whispers in the gold, voices that weren't human: Remember the promise. Remember the fire.
He'd wake sweating, the hum in his chest louder.
One night, alarms blared. He stumbled out of his bunk to find Gail in the corridor, tablet in hand.
"What now?"
"Power surge in the lower grid," she said. "Something's leaking from containment."
They ran. The elevator dropped into the tower's belly where the labs trembled under flickering lights. At the end of the corridor, a containment door was half-melted, gold light seeping through the cracks.
Inside, a pod had burst open. The humanoid figure he'd seen earlier was gone. The walls dripped with liquid Aurum.
"Tell me that's normal," he said.
"It's not."
The gold pooled, rippled—and then rose. It formed a shape: human, featureless, glowing from within. It tilted its head like a child learning to see.
Gail whispered, "It's awake."
Ethan raised his pistol. "Then let's put it back to sleep."
The figure moved. Faster than thought. Ethan fired—bullets dissolved in the light. The creature's hand struck him in the chest, throwing him across the room. He hit the wall hard enough to crack it. Pain flared—but so did something else.
The hum roared alive. Gold light burst from his veins. He stood, teeth bared, every nerve on fire. The air vibrated around him, bending.
The creature lunged again. Ethan met it halfway. When their hands collided, the world flashed white. The force threw Gail to the floor.
Two voices screamed—one human, one ancient. The creature's body shattered into motes of gold that swirled, then sank into Ethan's skin. He collapsed, gasping.
Gail crawled to him. "Ethan—Ethan, stay with me!"
He opened his eyes. For a heartbeat they were pure gold. "It wanted… to come home," he murmured. Then darkness took him.
He woke hours later in a med-pod, feeling like his blood was singing. Gail sat beside the glass, exhaustion in every line of her face.
"You fused with it," she said. "Your vitals dropped to nothing for three minutes, then stabilized. The energy signature doubled."
He rubbed his face. "So I absorbed a light monster. Great. What's next, wings?"
She didn't smile. "Maybe."
He blinked. "You're not joking."
"No. Whatever the Aurum is, it's evolving through you. And now the Director wants to accelerate the process."
He groaned. "Let me guess—by throwing me back into the fracture."
Her silence confirmed it.
He swung his legs off the pod. "Then we leave."
"Leave?" she echoed. "There's nowhere to go."
"There's always somewhere," he said. "If the gold connects both worlds, I can use it."
She looked at him, torn between reason and instinct. "You don't know what's on the other side anymore."
He grinned, tired but fierce. "That's what makes it fun."
She almost smiled back. Almost. "You really are impossible."
"Yeah," he said. "That's why I'm still breathing."
They moved through the silent corridors at dawn. The Axis city was waking above them, unaware that beneath its perfect streets walked two fugitives. Gail led him to a service hangar where smaller craft slept in rows.
"You sure about this?" she asked.
"No," he admitted. "But I'm done letting other people decide what I'm worth."
She keyed a code. The hangar doors opened, revealing the horizon—half-gold, half-gray, the fracture's faint shimmer visible like a wound in the sky.
Ethan stepped toward the light. The hum in his chest deepened, warm, eager.
Gail's voice stopped him. "Ethan."
He turned.
"Whatever you find out there," she said softly, "don't lose the part that's still human."
He met her eyes, smiled. "That's the only part worth keeping."
Then he jumped.
The wind caught him, the world spinning. Gold light burst from his body, wrapping him in a cocoon of fire. For a heartbeat he saw both worlds—the Axis gleaming above, the Ruined World waiting below. Between them, endless possibility.
He fell through the fracture, through himself, through everything.
When he hit the ground, the dust rose around him like smoke. He stood slowly, the gold fading from his skin, leaving faint scars that shimmered when the sun touched them.
The city ruins stretched out before him again, unchanged yet different. He felt the hum of life beneath the ash, faint but real.
Ethan Vale smiled to the dead horizon.
"Round two," he said. "Let's make it count."
And somewhere far above, in the towers of the Axis, Gail Rhyse watched the monitors flicker with golden static and whispered, "Don't die, idiot."
The static pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
Then the screen went dark.