Chapter 4
Aster’s eyelids fluttered open, the world around him coming back into focus slowly, as though he were wading through thick fog. He could feel a gentle pressure on his shoulders, someone shaking him. The disorientation was immediate—his head felt clouded, and his body was heavy, as if weighed down by a thousand invisible hands. But through the haze, he saw it. The face of the man from his visions, now very real, staring down at him with cyan eyes wide with concern.
“You made it!” The man’s voice was filled with relief, the words rushing out before he could contain them. “I wasn’t sure if you'd go through with it!”
The man let out a loud, breathy laugh, looking skyward as though to release a burden that had been pressing on his chest. The sound filled the air with lightness as if the tension that had surrounded him was evaporating all at once.
Aster’s mind was still foggy, the edges of his vision dim and unfocused. But as he stared into the man’s eyes, his heart stuttered. There was something oddly comforting about the way the man looked at him—a sense of connection, of being seen.
After a moment of shared silence, the man seemed to collect himself, and his expression grew serious again. His gaze fixed on Aster, the immediacy returning as quickly as it had disappeared.
“Sorry about that,” the man said, his voice softer now. “I haven’t been around people in a while... seemed to have lost some of my manners and social grace.”
He extended his hand to Aster.
“Matter,” he said, his voice warm and welcoming despite the strange nature of the situation.
Aster blinked, still reeling from the strangeness of it all. There was hesitation in his eyes, his mind still working to process what was happening. He had just crossed into this surreal new reality, and now this man, Matter, was standing before him, his hand outstretched. Aster found himself shaking it without even thinking, though confusion clouded his expression. What was going on?
“Aster,” Aster finally managed to say, the words tasting strange on his tongue.
Matter grinned, his cyan eyes glinting with something that might have been amusement—or something else entirely. He gave Aster’s hand another firm shake before letting go.
“I’m sure you have loads of questions,” Matter continued, his tone now turning more businesslike. “And I’m here to answer them to the best of my ability.”
Aster couldn’t hold back anymore. The questions were pounding against the walls of his mind, his thoughts like a whirlwind as he struggled to catch his breath. He felt the weight of the moment—his reality had been shattered. Everything he thought he knew had just been turned upside down.
“What is the Astral Realm?” he blurted, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. “Why is this happening?”
Matter didn’t flinch, didn’t seem caught off guard by the suddenness of the question. Instead, he paused for a moment, his gaze turning inward as if carefully considering his answer.
“The question about the Astral Realm,” Matter began, his voice calm and measured, “is both a simple answer and an impossibly complex one.”
He turned toward an open window, indicating for Aster to follow. Without thinking, Aster stood up, his body feeling strangely weightless all of a sudden. But as he moved, he stopped mid-step, sensing something behind him, he turned back coming face to face with his own still form in the middle of a large golden dome seemingly created by the brass metal circle he had been sitting in before taking the elixir. He looks at his hands, expecting some spectral glimmer, but finds it perfectly real and solid.
His heart stuttered again. What was happening?
He turned back quickly, racing to catch up with Matter, who was already out the window and heading further up the roof. But Aster's thoughts were in disarray, the confusion growing by the second, ‘Was I a ghost?’
When he finally caught up, he stood at the edge of the roof, his breath coming in short gasps. ‘Do I even have lungs anymore?’ Aster thinks momentarily. Matter was waiting for him, hands tucked into his pockets, his gaze fixed on the city below them.
For a moment, Aster stood there, trying to catch his breath, but his thoughts were interrupted by the view. The city stretched out before him, sprawling into infinity. The sky above was a writhing mass of colours—swirling, shifting hues that Aster couldn’t even name. The clouds, in every imaginable colour, seemed to dance, weaving in and out of each other like living things.
And below that sky, the city itself appeared to be alive. The buildings pulsed with light, glowing in hues Aster couldn’t name. Between the towers, enormous glowing trees stretched, their roots and branches entwined in the urban sprawl, as if nature itself was reclaiming the city with strange beasts moving in between the giant foliage.
Suddenly, a massive insect—roughly the size of a Great Dane—whizzed by, so fast that it nearly gave Aster a heart attack. Before he could fully comprehend what had just happened, it’s followed by a massive, birdlike creature appearing out of nowhere, the size of a mid sizes sedan, its wings beating the air as it closed in on the insect.
Aster froze, watching in stunned silence as the bird—a creature that seemed to have the body of Pterodactyl and the face of wolf—swooped down, its powerful jaw latching onto the insect. The bird—only referred to as such because of the bright orange feathers covering it’s body —didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the two humans standing mere meters away from it. It calmly began to feast, tearing into its prey as if the world around it didn’t matter.
“This is the Astral Plane,” Matter said suddenly, his voice cutting through Aster’s stunned silence. He gestured to the vast world around them, as if presenting it like a map. “A plane of existence that borders and overlaps our own. This section,” he waved his hand across the expanse between the earth and the clouds, “is called the Astral Cradle, the largest overlap between the Material Plane”—he looks at Aster—“what you would refer to as your world, and the Astral Plane.”
“Everything in the Astral Plane, everything you see, is layered over our world. It’s like a veil. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, unless…” He let the sentence hang for a moment, his eyes locking onto Aster’s with a certain weight. “Unless you let go.”
Aster frowned, confusion deepening. “Let go? Let go of what?”
Matter’s gaze softened. “Your barrier. Your Human Bio-Field
Aster’s breath caught. “Bio-Field?”
“Yes,” Matter said, his tone becoming a little more serious. “The barrier is a golden orb that surrounds every living being in the Material Plane. It shields you, keeps your spirit bound to your physical form. The only way to access the Astral Plane is to let that barrier dissolve and to allow your spirit to escape from the material body.”
Aster looked down at himself, feeling the odd sensation of his body not quite feeling like itself, ‘so this is my spirit, my real body was still in lotus position in the attic on the material plane’
He tilted his head slightly towards where they came from in the attic, “You dissolved the barrier when you took the elixir. That allowed your spirit to slip free. To step into this world.”
Aster glanced around again. The swirling colors, the mist, the glowing city—it all felt so real. Aster couldn’t understand how two realities could both exist simultaneously.
Not allowing Aster to further try and make sense of it, Matter continues.
Pointing at the multi-coloured clouds above them. “That is the Astral Storm,” he said, his voice soft. “The border between the Astral Cradle and the Astral Archipelago. It’s made up of the collective conscious of human thought, and it’s what made our feathered little friend over there.” He gestured vaguely toward the distant creature, the enormous, bird-like figure. “An amalgamation of human psyche, emotions, and psychic energy taken form from the vast raw potential our conscious minds have on the Astral Plane.”
Aster followed his gaze, watching the creature as it finished its meal and started cleaning itself lazily on the opposite roof. He still couldn’t quite process how something so strange could come from human thought and feeling.
“The Astral Archipelago is a chain of floating islands,” Matter continued, “that start appearing from around 10 kilometers above the Cradle’s surface. These islands span the entirety of the globe, and their collective surface area surpasses the Material Plane’s land mass by about three times.” He looked at Aster with a quiet intensity. “This is where the majority of the Aware make their home—vast cities, kingdoms, and other pockets of the Aware have grown here over thousands of years.”
Aster opened his mouth to ask who the Aware were, but before he could get a word out, Matter raised a hand, stalling his question with a sharp glance. Aster fell silent, and Matter continued speaking.
“Following the Astral Archipelago,” Matter went on, “past its highest point, we reach the Astral Caverns. A vast network of caves running through 1,000 kilometres of solid rock. These caverns are so expansive that they contain caves the size of entire countries. The Aware have explored these caverns for thousands of years and have mapped the right paths to navigate through them. These paths lead to the rawest, wildest part of the Astral Plane—the Astral Wilds.”
Matter paused, looking at Aster, his cyan eyes probing, as if waiting for something. Aster opened his mouth, but then shut it again. He tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. His mind scrambled, his thoughts a blur, as if he were struggling to breathe underwater. It felt like too much—too many worlds, too many questions, too much to grasp all at once.
“So… all of this,” Aster finally murmured, “isn’t another world, but a type of reality overlapping our own?”
Matter nodded, his expression softening but his eyes still intense. “Yes. Exactly.”
Aster hesitated for a moment before continuing. “On this plane, human thought somehow has some kind of impact on it, causing these coloured mists and those clouds.” He points at the storm above him. He thought back to the alley, the mist that had emanated from him, filled with the emotions of despair, acceptance, and death. A chill ran down his spine as he realized that his own psyche must have produced those energies, through the strange sense of relief he'd felt upon anticipating his death. He shivered at the thought. “To be more precise, the clouds are born from our emotions and thoughts,” he corrected himself.
His mind shifted to the strange forests he’d glimpsed growing between the city. “And somehow, those energies take shape, becoming something that…” He glanced at where bird-wolf creature was still cleaning itself “Somehow feeds these creatures, allowing a type of ecosystem to evolve around it?”
Matter’s eyes widened with excitement. “That’s exactly it! Well, sort of,” he corrected himself. “Humans—specifically human consciousness—have the ability to generate these clouds, which we refer to as Psychic Aether. This ‘essence’ is a very polluted form of a special Aether found in the rest of Astral Plane, starting from the Archipelago and beyond, called Elemental Aether.”
Matter continued, explaining with fervour. “All Astral life forms are made up of these essences. Every form of consciousness interacts with these essences, absorbing them, making use of their nature to grow and strengthen. That process is called Cultivation. All life forms are in a constant state of Cultivation, growing, strengthening, and surviving. Each stage of growth allows them to move higher and higher through the Astral strata, with the strongest being able to reach the Astral Wilds.”
Aster imagined life forms growing, evolving, and shifting across layers of the Astral Plane. Stopping himself before he lost concentration on what Matter was saying, quickly rather deciding to file all of that away for later, thinking, ‘I’m in a magical world filled with magical things. No point in trying to understand it all at once—better to gather more information and make sense of it later.’
“Who are the Aware?” Aster ventured, his curiosity piqued by this new term. Matter seemed all too pleased that Aster was grasping the concepts he was laying out.
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“The Aware are the people who have discovered the Astral Plane and crossed over,” Matter explained, his voice almost reverent. “The Astral Plane was, for the longest time, only accessible to our ancestors in the past, called the Forgotten. They were a primitive people around fifty thousand years ago who were able to cross over in their dreams. Over time, they figured out the recipe for the elixir and were able to cross over permanently, showing others the way.”
He looked at Aster, his eyes gleaming. “Those who followed them are called the Aware. It’s a broad group of people from all around the world who, over thousands of years, carved out a civilization on the Astral Plane. And by knowing about it, you yourself can count yourself as part of the Aware.”
Happy with the explanation Aster goes on to the questions that have been nagging him the most “How do you know my father and what is this parasite you mentioned” he asked, the words finally tumbling out after what felt like an eternity of internal hesitation.
Matter’s gaze shifted away for a moment, his eyes clouding as if he were lost in memories. He seemed to be taking a deep breath before he finally turned back to Aster, his expression darkening with an emotion Aster couldn’t quite place. There was sorrow, regret, something heavy in his gaze as he spoke again.
“I met your father in Galamad,” Matter said, the name heavy on his tongue. He paused when he saw Aster’s confused look. “Galamad… It’s an Astral school, located in the Astral Archipelago. It represents the South African branch of a vast Astral network that trains and teaches Initiates, like you, in the ways of the Astral Plane. If everything goes correctly, it will be the next step in your journey.”
Aster opened his mouth to ask a question, but Matter’s intense gaze silenced him, making him hold back. There was a weight in the air, an unspoken understanding.
Matter continued, his voice softer now. “Your father and I didn’t like each other at first. We were both too similar, too stubborn, to see eye to eye. But after we met your mother, everything changed. She became the stabilizing force between us, a peacekeeper. We had to learn to get along, for her sake. To keep her from being torn between us.”
Aster listened intently, the tension between his ribs growing. His mind raced, trying to piece this together, but Matter kept speaking.
“The three of us excelled in our studies,” he said, “and we grew close, very close. We became prominent figures in the Astral Caverns. That’s when your father and mother’s families started talking about marriage, to unite the two powerful families under a single heir.” Matter’s gaze flickered toward Aster, his meaning clear. “That heir, Aster, is you.”
Aster’s heart skipped a beat. Me? The thought echoed in his mind as he processed what he had just heard. He wasn’t just some random kid thrown into this world—he was part of something much bigger.
But Matter wasn’t finished. He looked down for a moment, the weight of the next part of the story seeming to press on him.
“Unfortunately,” Matter said, his voice turning grim, “this union angered the Mesha family. They stood in opposition to the marriage of the two families, and in their spite, they cursed the unborn child—cursed you—by sending a creature from another plane. A very dangerous parasite called a Void Wyrm to infect you soon after birth”
Aster's stomach dropped, unable to stop himself, he blurted out. “A what?”
Matter’s face grew more serious, his eyes meeting Aster’s with a certain weight. “A Void Wyrm,” he repeats, his tone steady but heavy with the enormity of the words. “It’s an entity from a plane bordering the Astral Plane. A creature of unimaginable destruction. It is not something easily dealt with.”
Aster’s mind swirled with the implications of what he was hearing. A parasite. A Void Wyrm. His own family had been cursed.
Matter paused, sensing Aster’s confusion. “This is where things become quite complicated to explain,” he said, his voice tinged with the weight of experience. Aster, however, wasn’t about to let that go.
“Complicated?” Aster snorted in disbelief. “I’m pretty sure this is already complicated enough.” He shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. "A curse, a Void Wyrm, and I'm supposed to just accept your word on this?"
Matter smiled faintly, as if amused by Aster’s reaction, but there was no humour in his expression. “Explaining how the Void Wyrm works with your current understanding,” he said, “would be akin to me trying to explain the history of the oil industry to a primitive to make him understand why a car ran out of gas.”
Matter sighed, seemingly conceding to the fact that he was going to have to explain this to Aster. “Alright, alright,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll try. You won’t be able to navigate the Astral Plane without understanding this part anyway, so here goes.”
He took a deep breath before continuing. “As I mentioned before, the Forgotten were the first to gain access to the Astral Plane, but they found themselves in a wild, unforgiving space. A place they had to visit every single night, no matter how dangerous. Many of them didn’t make it.” Matter’s voice grew sombre. “But those who did, well… they struggled. The creatures, the flora, the entire plane was hostile to them. It was a curse, in many ways, they were forced to live with”
Aster, his mouth slightly agape, watched Matter intently as the older man went on.
“Until they discovered Faith,” Matter continued, his tone changing slightly, “Now, Faith, unlike the psychic essence we release into the Astral Plane, manifests differently. It’s pure, undiluted energy—raw power. It can be used in a variety of ways, and it gave the Forgotten the edge they needed to survive on the Astral Plane. It was a discovery on the same scale as the discovery of fire on the Material Plane.” He paused, watching Aster’s reaction. “Faith became the force that allowed them to finally stand a chance.”
Aster’s mind was whirring, trying to piece this all together.
Matter noticed Aster’s stunned silence and continued. “The Forgotten soon learned that Faith could be collected from others—specifically, from other tribe members—through the right channels. They made use of constructs, ancient figures they’d found, and used those figures to focus the Faith of their people into a funnel that they would be able to collect and use. This was the beginning of what we now call religion. It was the foundation upon which everything that came after was built.”
Aster was about to open his mouth to speak, but Matter raised a hand, answering him before he could ask.
“Yes, those religions, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. Big printing presses on the Astral Plane churning out Faith on mass scale” he said, causing Aster to stare wide-eyed with awe as he continued without missing a beat.
“With the strength of Faith behind them the Forgotten quickly conquers the Astral Cradle, entering the Archipelago and seeing for the first time the true vastness of The Astral Planes. Knowing their numbers stretched thin, they decide to incorporate specially chosen Unaware into the Astral Plane, creating the Aware as we still referred to this day” Matter explained, his eyes distant, recounting something long past.
“Now, with the growth of their numbers, civilization began to take shape on both the Astral Plane and the Material Plane. As with all civilizations, commerce was established. At first, people bartered—traded goods and services—but over time, that changed. Currency became the new standard of exchange. And that, Aster, is when something unexpected happened.”
Matter stopped for a moment, watching Aster carefully, almost as if weighing his words. “For currency to hold value,” he continued, “Faith is required. The faith people had in for example a gold coin’s value, would appear on the Astral Plane in the same way that Faith had been generated by the people through religion. That’s when merchants within the Aware realized that Faith wasn’t just something you could generate from beliefs or prayers—it was something that could be harvested from the very fabric of the Material Plane itself.”
Aster’s brow furrowed. “Wait—so by us believing something had value, that value would result in Faith on the Astral Plane?”
Matter nodded. “Exactly. They discovered that the value of currency was tied to an equivalent exchange of Faith. But what happened next is… complicated.”
Aster waited for the rest, his mind already spinning. Matter’s gaze grew even more intense.
“Within a day of using the faith contained in that coin,” Matter explained, “Fate would intervene on the Material plane to make that you’d either lose the coin through chance, or you’d find that Fate would redirect your destiny itself so that you couldn’t receive that coin’s value in the future. It was a way for the Astral Plane to ‘balance the books.’ But it was also the first time in history the Astral Plane directly affected the Material Plane. The very act of using Faith in the Astral Plane would cause Fate to affect the Material Plane.”
Aster was reeling from all of this. “So… my bank account for example has an equivalent worth on the Astral Plane called faith?” he asked, trying to wrap his mind around it. Seeing Matter nod he continues "So if I was to use some of it on the Astral Plane, Fate would intervene in my life for me to somehow lose what I had spent?"
"Yes," Matter replied with a grim nod. “Everything that has value will be effected by it, your new house for example. You wouldn’t know this but as soon as it appeared in your name, a water leak had sprung up which has slowly been spreading and reducing the value of your property. This is caused by the parasite residing inside of you, the Void Wyrm, which has been feeding of off that energy”
Aster’s eyes widened, his heart pounding in his chest. “The Void Wyrm… is connected to my Fate?”
Matter’s voice grew darker. “Yes. The Void Wyrm, that was transplanted inside of you as an infant, feeds off that energy,” Matter continued, his tone heavy with the weight of the explanation. “It uses the cosmic scales of Fate to steer you along certain paths, causing your good fate to unravel. This dissipates into the same energy that Faith generates, allowing the Void Wyrm to feed and grow inside of you. Because material wealth and money are linked to that very same energy system, it becomes the easiest available energy source, and the Void Wyrm starts with that. It will start by first bringing ruin to its victim’s fortunes, worsening their luck, bit by bit from there, until all possible good fate is completely eaten away, cancers and other possible misfortune make quick work of the victim from there. At that point, just before the Material Death of your physical form, the creature bursts forth and wreaks havoc, terrorizing both the Material and Astral Plane.”
Aster’s face went white. He struggled to process the gravity of the situation, but the horrifying implications slowly began to dawn on him. ‘Was my constant bad luck caused by the parasite?’
Matter nodded somberly, finishing the thought for him. “Yes, the parasite is relentless, especially since it was implanted in you so young. It first drained your family’s wealth over a decade. I’m sure you remember how you had to keep moving to smaller and smaller homes?”
Aster’s eyes glazed over as he thought back to his childhood—each new house growing smaller, each move a reminder of something he couldn’t fully understand at the time. He felt a lump in his throat, realizing with sudden clarity how much his parents must have suffered because of him. His chest tightened, and tears began to well up in his eyes. His breath quickened, and his mouth felt dry as he awaited the next part.
“Followed,” Matter said quietly, his voice breaking, “by the death of every single member of both your family’s bloodlines, next was your mother, and then, finally, your father.”
Matter’s words were barely a whisper by the end, and Aster could see the pain in his eyes.
Clearing his throat and wiping his eyes, Matter rushed through the last part of his explanation, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Your father made me promise on his deathbed to continue protecting you and help save you from this fate. The Wyrm was relentless after their passing, steering you into the worst outcomes again and again, it took all my energy to save you from the very worst of them. All I could do was steer the creature to points of luck that I could weave throughout your life to keep the creature fed and prolong the inevitable. The Wyrm will feed through the Faith contained in your home and your bank account within the next year. But we don’t have that long, the creature will burst forth on your twenty-first birthday, even if you have faith left or not. You are coming of age and this occasion has profound meaning on the Astral Plane, this is the period when the Spirit has matured enough to allow the crossover. This is also a feast for the creature It will not pass up on. I’m here to attempt to integrate this creature into your Astral Vessel through a complex ritual surgery before that happens. If everything goes well, it will become part of you, and you’ll gain power over it. This will help you escape your fate and even allow you to take up the mantle and inheritance left to you by your family on the Astral Plane.”
Aster stared at him, wide-eyed, his expression a mixture of disbelief and confusion. Matter’s sudden, abrupt finish left him feeling as though he’d been run through a whirlwind pitch for a timeshare. The rushed conclusion left a bitter taste in his mouth, and without thinking, his mind went to his usual skeptical roots.
“Are you trying to steal my organs?” Aster blurted out, suspicion rising sharply in his voice.
Matter, not expecting this reaction, nearly fell off the roof in surprise. “How the hell did you get that from everything I just told you?!” he asked, genuinely flabbergasted.
Aster shrugged his shoulders apologetically, his gaze still sharp. “I can’t explain away the Astral Plane,” he said, pausing to glance at the orange wolf-bird lazily grooming itself, “that seems real enough. But you can’t expect me to believe that both my parents’ deaths and my lifelong string of bad luck were caused by a single entity that you somehow have the cure for by doing surgery on me. That’s a black market organ trafficking pitch if I’ve ever heard one. Thanks for showing me this magical place, but I’ll be on my way from here.”
Aster stood up, ready to leave, but before he could take a step, Matter muttered something under his breath, just loud enough for Aster to hear, “Don’t freak out,” as he reached forward and touched Aster’s chest.
In an instant, Aster was no longer standing in the quiet, ethereal landscape. Instead, he found himself face to face with a colossal creature—a beast the size of a medium-sized mountain. Its body was covered in thick, plate-like armor made of chitin. Hundreds of legs ran down its segmented body, and its head was a grotesque blend of dragon, centipede, and larva features. The mandibles clicked as they moved, and Aster could feel the chill of its many eyes—a mass of multilensed orbs—glaring at him with an intelligence that felt cold, alien, and terrifying, as though it was staring directly into his very soul.
A suffocating, hungry energy radiated off the creature, and Aster's breath caught in his throat as a wave of recognition washed over him. This feeling—it had been with him his whole life. Aster suddenly knew implicitly that this was the thing responsible for all of his misfortune, for the slow unraveling of his life. This was the thing that had poisoned everything, from his parents' fall to ruin, to their eventual deaths, to the endless suffering he'd endured throughout his life. He knew it, in his very core. This Void Wyrm was why his life had never worked out.
His stomach churned, but instead of the fear or panic that Matter had expected to see, raw, unbridled rage and hatred surged within him. He could feel his entire being burning with fury as the realization settled in. This creature had murdered everyone who could have ever cared for him. His parents were dead because of it. His entire life had been a product of its malicious influence.
Aster’s fists clenched at his sides, his teeth gritting, his heart pounding. He had lived with this shadow for so long, unknowingly, but now, in the presence of the creature itself, all of that anger, that grief, bubbled to the surface like a poisonous tide. He was seething. His mind was a whirlwind of violent thoughts, but just as quickly, a memory of his father flickered through his mind. Despite the overwhelming fury, Aster knew that his father had wanted something different for him—that there was a way to end this, to rise above it, to reclaim what was taken.
In an instant, Aster was yanked back, and the overwhelming presence of the Void Wyrm was gone. He looked across at Matter, who was giving him a look that screamed “I told you so,” as if he’d expected exactly this reaction.
Aster exhaled slowly, trying to regain his composure. He couldn’t deny the truth anymore. "Okay, fine, I believe you," he relented, the fight draining out of him for the moment. He sat back down, his gaze steady but focused. “What do you need me to do?”