Gaius didn’t remember falling asleep.
But suddenly, he was standing.
The world around him was not his room. Not Nexus Prime. Not anywhere real.
It was what remained of a city that once thought itself eternal.
Charred towers jutted from the ground like broken teeth. Roads cracked open into canyons of green fire. Ruined spires twisted into the clouds, their metal bones creaking in the wind like forgotten hymns. Ash fell slowly, unnaturally—drifting sideways in patterns that mimicked breathing.
There were no stars. Only a sky stained black and green, pulsing with a rhythm that didn’t belong to time.
And across that fractured skyline… something moved.
A cloaked figure, walking calmly across the shattered ground.
Its armor was blackened steel, not forged but grown—jagged, ribbed, laced with faint spiral etchings. Its horned helmet bent unevenly, one side twisted downward like a malformed crown. From its eye sockets leaked green resonance—not glowing, but *bleeding*, slow and steady, as if the helmet itself wept corruption.
It smiled.
A mouth of too many teeth, curved in amusement—not joy.
When it reached Gaius, it knelt.
And spoke.
> “Oh great Champion…
>
> The time of change has come.”
Its voice was a whisper carved into iron.
The creature raised one armored hand, revealing something small, ancient, and pulsing.
The Hollow Seed.
> “Plant this in our king…
>
> So may paradise bloom.”
Gaius didn’t move. At first.
But his hand lifted—almost on its own—as if obeying something he hadn’t heard yet.
Just before he touched it… he hesitated.
The demon watched.
Its smile widened.
It began to laugh.
The sound was hollow and endless, as if echoing through every ruin, every failure, every forgotten name the city ever buried.
And still—
—the seed appeared in his hand anyway.
It burned. Not with heat, but with memory.
His veins lit up like circuits. His vision blurred. The sky above folded inward. Towers fell sideways. The air screamed. Everything collapsed into spirals spirals spirals—
---
He woke.
Sweat clung to him like ash.
His breathing ragged. Cold. Slow.
He looked down at his palm.
There, seared into the skin—faint but unmistakable:
A spiral.
Still warm.
Still waiting.
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