Chapter 3

Aster woke up around 2 p.m., feeling more rested than he had in *years*. The bed was the perfect balance of softness and support, the kind of comfort he'd never had access to before. The noise-canceling and light-blocking windows had worked their magic, and he had unknowingly slept for almost twelve hours. For most, that might have been nothing, but for Aster—who had been surviving on a mere four hours of sleep a night since he was seventeen—it felt like he’d gotten nearly three full nights of rest.

He slowly rolled out of bed, stretching the kinks from his back. The warm sun outside didn’t reach him, but he could still sense the day drifting by. There was no sense of urgency. No pressing need to rush.

His stomach growled, reminding him of the other, more immediate problem: hunger. His body had become so accustomed to neglecting itself, to feeding on scraps when it could, that the sudden emptiness felt foreign.

With an absent-minded groan, he shuffled toward the kitchen, his bare feet hitting the cold floors. He was still trying to piece together everything that had happened the day before, but one thing was certain—this house, this strange place he’d woken up in, was... different. Somehow, it felt like the first real safe space in his life.

Ignoring the yellow page still stuck to the fridge, Aster opened the cupboard, his eyes lighting up as he spotted three full bags of coffee beans. He smiled a little. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed the simple things—how much he’d missed living.

After a few moments of eager fumbling with the barista station, he had everything set up. He wasn’t a stranger to coffee; he’d worked as a barista twice before in his life. The smell of the freshly ground beans hit him instantly, filling the space with an intoxicating scent that brought a rush of nostalgia.

He steamed the milk, drizzled in honey, and with the first sip, a wave of warmth flooded his senses. The rich, velvety taste of the coffee hit his tongue, and the creamy mouthfeel of the milk soothed his nerves. It was a taste of normalcy, a taste of life he hadn’t experienced in so long.

His stomach growled again, this time reminding him he wasn’t just thirsty. Aster had eaten nothing proper for at least a month. He hadn’t even bothered to eat after yesterday’s bizarre events. He hadn’t had time, or the energy, to care.

Moving to the fridge, he purposely ignored the list again, focusing instead on the food. Opening the door, he found it stocked with everything a person could want—meats, vegetables, eggs, cheese, fruits. His mouth watered as he grabbed a few ingredients and started cooking himself a feast.

For the next hour, he lost himself in the rhythm of cooking—pancakes, eggs, bacon, fresh scones from the oven, all paired with more coffee. The satisfaction of eating good food after so long filled him with an unfamiliar kind of peace. By the time he was done, the house smelled like a perfect Sunday morning, even though it was well past midday.

Sitting back, he felt an odd sense of fullness—not just from the food, but from the strange comfort of being cared for, even if it was by someone he couldn’t yet explain.

He absently scanned the room, still enjoying the warmth in his stomach, when his gaze fell on the yellow page again. He sighed heavily, realizing he could no longer avoid it. No more excuses.

“What the hell,” he muttered. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

He picked up the list from the fridge, his fingers brushing against the cool paper. There was no message this time, no hidden note. Just a simple list, along with a set of instructions that seemed... odd.

Aster snorted under his breath as he read the first few lines. “Blessed by the full moon... oh, *fantastic*. That’s not cringey at all.”

He skimmed through the process. It wasn’t too complex. If he could cook and bake, he could follow these instructions. And if he was being honest, he'd cooked all sorts of strange things over the years. He had helped his foster mother cook up her own concoctions, often for clients who would’ve paid a pretty penny for the substances. Chemistry wasn’t unfamiliar to him.

He sighed, scanning the list of ingredients. The first group made sense—psychedelics, including DMT, salvia, and psilocybin. The second group was filled with crystals and rare stones. And then there was the final section he referred to as Random.

Aster read through the final group again, shaking his head. Dassie fur? Seashells? He almost laughed out loud, but that just felt like an easy escape. “What the hell does any of this mean?”

He read through the list two more times, hoping something would click, but it didn’t. Everything about this felt... too random, too out of place. The idea of collecting all these ingredients felt like something straight out of a fantasy novel.

Pushing his chair back, Aster groaned. “It’s a recipe,” he muttered, standing up and stretching his arms above his head. “I don’t need to understand it. I just need to follow it.”

But before he could leave the kitchen, his eyes caught another detail on the fridge. A padded envelope, stuck to the side with a magnet. His heart skipped a beat as he stepped toward it.

Reaching out, he pulled it off the fridge, his hands trembling slightly. Tearing it open, he half-expected more instructions or some cryptic clue about what to do next. Instead, inside was a single sheet of paper.

Aster unfolded it, and his breath hitched. It wasn’t a note or a list. No, it was something much more tangible.

It was the deed to the house, made out in his name.

Alongside it, a bank card and a pair of car keys.

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A rusted-out beetle sputtered and wheezed as it rolled into the McDonald's parking lot, trailing a cloud of smoke behind it. The car came to a jarring stop, and a girl in her late twenties swung the door open with a loud squeak of the rusted hinges.

She stepped out, her bare feet slapping against the pavement as she made her way toward Aster. Her appearance was striking—barefoot and in a white dress that was clearly well-worn and stained with dirt. A woven backpack, adorned with colorful tribal designs, hung from her shoulder, and more tribal trinkets were fastened around her wrists and ankles. Her hair was tangled and filthy, hanging in wild, unkempt waves, and she looked like she hadn’t seen a proper shower in days.

“Did you get the apple pie?” she asked, cutting straight to the chase without even so much as a greeting.

Aster raised an eyebrow, a little thrown off. He had met this woman through one of the members of his foster mother’s crowd, and to say she was ‘eccentric’ was an understatement. When he had first met her, he’d been surprised to learn that she considered herself a witch—one who believed she could source anything from sacred herbs to mystical crystals. Despite the absurdity of it all, Aster had told her the truth: he was crafting an elixir after being shown a vision by a mysterious man. She had nodded sagely, as if this kind of thing happened all the time, like it wasn’t the first time someone asked her for such a request.

Aster, not really expecting much, reached for the brown bag resting on his car’s bonnet. But before he could hand it to her, Ocean grabbed the bag from him with surprising speed and ripped it open. She immediately found the apple pies, peeled off the cardboard wrapper, and shoved one into her mouth.

Aster winced, expecting the worst.

Then came the inevitable.

Ocean gasped, flailed her arms, and started frantically sucking air through her mouth. Her eyes bulged, and she finally spat the pie out, dropping it onto the pavement. “You could have told me you just got it!” she shrieked dramatically. “Are you trying to burn me to death?”

Aster blinked, still taken aback. “I didn’t get a word in before you ripped the pie out of my hand...” he began, but decided against arguing. Their interaction was weird enough already. “Did you get all the ingredients on the list?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand.

Ocean paused for a beat, licking her lips after her brief apple-pie-induced meltdown. She looked almost offended for a moment before responding. “I did,” she said, then hesitated, her eyes narrowing. “But... man. A lot of the things you wanted are pretty strong. They could really mess you up. I’m happy to take your money and go on my merry way, but I don’t want to end up reading about you in the papers because you ended up in a psych ward. Can’t I interest you in the recipe for one of my love potions instead?”

Aster could almost feel his eye twitching. When he first met her, he had been intrigued by her claims of being connected to the Astral Realm. But after some probing questions, it became clear that she was more into cosplaying witchcraft than anything remotely supernatural. Her "love potion" was just a concoction of ecstasy mixed with kombucha brewed under a full moon—definitely not what Aster was looking for.

“Just the materials are fine, thanks,” Aster replied, cutting her off before she could begin another round of her lecture about lunar deities and space landings.

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Ocean shrugged, biting into the now-cool apple pie with a satisfied grunt. "Sheesh, it’s your funeral, man," she muttered before handing him a turquoise plastic Checkers shopping bag filled with the materials. Aster sifted through it quickly to make sure everything was accounted for, then pulled out a roll of hundred-rand bills and handed her the agreed-upon payment.

"Enjoy the stars," she called, offering a lazy wave as she turned to head back to her car.

With a loud squeal, the door of the beetle slammed shut, and the engine sputtered back to life, releasing another cloud of black smoke. The jarring sound of Janis Joplin blared from the speakers as Ocean lit a cigarette, waving again through the open window. She didn’t look before merging into oncoming traffic, almost causing two cars to collide.

Aster watched, incredulously, as she sped off, the sound of Joplin fading into the distance. He shook his head, muttering to himself, “I better make sure this doesn’t turn me into her. Her brain’s mashed potatoes.”

He felt an uncomfortable shiver crawl up his spine as he climbed into his own car. Ocean was a living warning. The very thing he could become if he didn’t keep his mind tethered to reality—if he didn’t keep himself grounded while chasing this wild, dangerous path laid out by the mysterious figure from his hallucinations. She had danced too far in her search of the mystical, and now she was a ghost of herself, living proof of the madness that could come from dabbling in things that shouldn’t be messed with.

Aster’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, and for a brief moment, he thought about throwing the whole damn thing away. The list. The recipe. The elixir.

But then he remembered that vision—the way the man’s words had crawled into his mind. He’d promised answers. And right now, Aster couldn’t afford to back out.

As he started the engine, he told himself that as long as he kept his feet on the ground, there was no way he’d end up like Ocean. She might’ve been off her rocker, but he still had some sense left. Right?

_________________________________________________________________________________

Aster wiped his hands on his pants, exhaling a heavy breath as he stepped back and surveyed his work. The electrolysis tank sat before him, humming gently—a Frankenstein’s monster of wires, crystals, and brass components. It looked like something out of a mad scientist’s fever dream. Hours of meticulous work had gone into this—following the cryptic, half-coherent instructions that often made his head spin. But now it was done. Or at least, as done as it could be. He had double-checked everything: the precise methods for extracting and emulsifying the materials, the exact frequencies to activate the crystals, even the bizarre rituals that made his skin crawl just thinking about them—like the chanting, which still made him want to laugh and gag at the same time. But there it was, humming away, the tank glowing with a soft, otherworldly blue light that flickered in the small, dim room.

He sat down for a moment, running a hand through his hair, his mind racing. The instructions were a mess—half science, half spiritual gibberish, and wholly inconsistent. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but there was no denying the results. Some ingredients had seemed laughably absurd—dassie fur, for example—which had to be burned to ash and added to the solution. But the water had turned from a dull yellow to a vivid, almost unnatural blue. And it wasn’t any chemical reaction he was familiar with. Whatever the hell it was, it had worked.

Aster glanced at the brass wire in the center of the tank, now bathed in the electromagnetic fields generated by the four carefully placed crystals. The instructions had been clear about this: the elixir—whatever the hell it was—would crystallize over the wire in the next twelve hours. He had no idea what would come next. None. But still, here he was, watching the machine hum away, wondering if he’d finally crossed the line into something far beyond his understanding.

The strange coincidences still rattled around his mind like loose change in his pocket: the house that had appeared out of nowhere, the key exactly where he’d been told it would be, the increasingly elaborate process that had brought him here. It felt like some cosmic joke, or maybe a test— or a twisted game. But Aster couldn’t allow himself to believe it. It had to be some elaborate con, a hallucination, or just a byproduct of his worn-out brain. He wasn’t the type to blindly accept the strange happenings that had brought him here. But the tangible results were getting harder to ignore.

Aster shook his head, trying to clear the fog. He didn’t have time for these thoughts right now. He had a damn recipe to follow, and he’d followed it to the letter. The chanting was done, the materials were emulsified, and the electrolysis tank was working just as it was supposed to. He would just have to waite for the next 12 Hours as the machine forms the elixir.

With a sigh, he moved away from where he had been inspecting the crystal next to the tank. Looking the process over once more, he nods in satisfaction before turning off the lights and closing the door.

Moving to the living room, he settles onto the couch as he felt the weight of exhaustion settle on his shoulders like a physical burden. The past few nights had been a blur of work, anxiety, and way too little sleep. But now, with the machine running, he could finally allow himself to rest—if only for a little while. He thought about checking the tank one more time, but the instructions had been clear: wait—it would take twelve hours for the process to finish. There was nothing he could do but let it play out.

He collapsed onto the couch, his mind still buzzing with a thousand thoughts, but his body was too worn out to entertain them. He flipped on the TV, choosing something mindless to drown out the noise in his head. The soft flicker of the screen cast an eerie glow across the dark room. Aster closed his eyes, letting the hum of the TV fade into the background. It wasn’t long before his breathing slowed, the tension in his body began to loosen, and he drifted off into a light, uneasy sleep, unaware of the strange energy that was silently building around the electrolysis tank in the other room.

As he slept, the air around the crystals began to crackle, the atmosphere thickening with an unseen force. The hum of the machine continued, almost imperceptible, as the process carried on without him. The vibrations in the room were subtle at first, nothing that would catch his attention if he weren’t already on edge. But they were there—building, pulsing, feeding into the growing mystery that surrounded him.

The night passed. The transformation in the tank unfolded quietly, like something alive, working on its own time, beyond the realm of Aster’s understanding. But for now, he was lost in the comfort of sleep, unaware of what was quietly unfolding in the room next door. Whatever was happening next, he would be ready—or so he thought.

_________________________________________________________________________________

The shrill beep of the alarm jolted Aster awake, and he was on his feet instantly, his body alert, his mind sharp despite the lingering fog of exhaustion. The TV was still playing softly in the background, but the twelve hours were up. He had no time to waste. His hands moved instinctively to start the coffee, the rich smell of brewing beans already grounding him, helping him focus.

He moved quickly to the garage where the tank was set up, the hum of the electrolysis machine still faintly vibrating through the air. The moment he laid eyes on it, he could tell something had changed. The solution that had once been a vibrant blue had cleared, the liquid now almost perfectly transparent. But that wasn’t what caught his attention. It was the small, glowing crystal—sitting right in the center of the brass wire. It was no bigger than his pinky nail, but it seemed to pulse with a faint, almost imperceptible glow. The light in the room made it hard to be sure, but that faint shimmer was enough to make his heart race.

Aster didn’t care if it was glowing or not. He moved to the tank, his fingers gently taking hold of the wire, pulling it free. He leaned in close to examine the crystal. It was square—an odd shape, though not impossible. Square crystals weren’t unheard of, just rare, especially with crystals that had grown naturally. But what really took him by surprise was the growth pattern. It wasn’t the sharp, spear-like form he was familiar with. Instead, it had an intricate, spiraling stair-step pattern, almost like a miniature staircase. It reminded him of Bismuth, but it was different. It was... otherworldly.

For a moment, he simply stared at it, slack-jawed. He couldn’t help it. This was it. This tiny crystal. It was the ticket to another world, another life. Whether it was magical or just part of an elaborate trick, Aster couldn’t deny that this was proof—something tangible, something real. His hands trembled slightly as he held it, the weight of what he was about to do settling into him. He was on the precipice of something huge, something beyond anything he could’ve imagined. He was about to cross into the unknown, and no matter how insane the instructions had been, he was going to follow through.

With the crystal now in hand, he knew the next step was upon him. The instructions had been clear. He needed to go to the attic, where a ritual circle awaited him. A quick search of the house had revealed the latch to the attic, hidden away behind an old, dusty bookshelf. Aster had climbed up, his heart pounding with every step as he found himself in a dimly lit attic space. There, in the center of the floor, was a brass circle, etched with strange, esoteric symbols. The symbols seemed to shift in the low light, their meaning eluding him, but he followed the instructions with exact precision, placing the necessary items in their designated spots. Crystals, totems, and offerings—the ritual was bizarre, but Aster didn’t hesitate.

Candles were placed around the room, their flames flickering gently as he completed the final touches. He could almost feel the air growing heavier, thicker with some unseen energy, but he shook it off. He had done everything the instructions said to do. Now, it was time to take the crystal.

His body was as ready as it was going to get. The instructions had mentioned it—he had to be in the right state of mind, steady and centered. Aster took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart. This wasn’t the time to panic. This wasn’t the time for second-guessing.

He pulled out a glass contraption, looking at it briefly before shaking his head. The glass piece looked ridiculous, like something a junkie would use. But Aster wasn’t some desperate addict looking for a quick high. No, this—*this*—was part of something bigger. He had to remind himself that. As he prepared himself to follow through, a part of him couldn’t help but feel like he was spiraling. This path, this madness—was it really the right thing? Or was he simply on the edge of losing his mind completely?

Aster squatted down in the center of the brass circle, his legs folded beneath him, and assumed a meditative posture. The instructions had said to steady his mind, focus, and prepare. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, his chest rising and falling in rhythm. He needed to keep it together. He had to focus. There was no turning back now.

He held the crystal over the glass, eyeing it carefully before placing it inside. The sharp scent of the lighter fuel filled the air as Aster struck the flint. The flame flickered to life, and he bent low, bringing it to the underside of the crystal. The heat started to build, and almost immediately, the surface of the crystal began to melt. A thick, bright blue smoke began to curl and rise from it, filling the air with an electric charge.

Aster inhaled deeply, the smoke swirling over his tongue, sliding down his throat, and filling his lungs. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. The taste was bizarre—a strange combination of licorice and grapefruit, sharp and sweet, but with an undeniable bitterness underneath. The smoke felt electric, buzzing like a live wire as it entered his chest. He took another pull, watching as the crystal slowly disappeared, its essence dissolving into the air around him.

He held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment, pushing every ounce of willpower into keeping calm, to maintain control. But the sensation was overwhelming. The energy coursing through him—he could feel it in his fingertips, in his skin, in his very bones. His heart raced, his breath quickened, but he held it in, holding the smoke deep in his lungs for what felt like an eternity. The moment he released it, the violent cough wracked his body, and the room spun out of focus.

The last thing Aster remembered was the sensation of falling into blackness. The world around him seemed to melt away, the edges of reality fraying as his consciousness slipped beyond the veil.

Then... nothing.