Beyond The System-Chapter 264: Cosmic Shrinking

Two thoughts occurred to me—no, three now.

Would Bristle be okay on his own? Hopefully he wouldn’t get upset waking up alone… if he even woke by the time I was back.

Second: calling that a sandstorm was about as understated as it got.

And third: I am never asking Harua for anything again.

If beaks could hold a maniacal grin, hers would be the standard. The real giveaway wasn’t the curve of her mouth, but her eyes. Those wide, gleaming ovals that were utterly unbothered by the chaos she was dragging me toward. Even from a distance, I could feel the storm’s pulse.

A low, thrumming roar that swallowed every other sound.

Grains of sand bit into my skin as we flew closer, sharp and relentless. They were being pulled upward, spun by the current that howled beneath, and soon, around us. The air stung my lungs each time I tried to breathe, and I had to channel my technique to filter it before it began to truly burn at me.

But Harua didn’t even flinch.

She tilted her head into the wind, eyes half-lidded with something that looked disturbingly like bliss.

Being swallowed whole by it felt like being devoured by something vast working to digest me.

I had thought sound had already vanished, but I was wrong. Now everything that might have resonated was crushed into raw vibration. Breathing was harder still, each gasp tearing ragged through my chest as the air burned hotter.

Needles of heat pierced my flesh, blistering into me until the world blurred into a whirling inferno of gold and orange.

Harua surged onward without hesitation, folding her wings tight and diving straight through the chaos. I tried to shout for her to slow down so we could plan, think, but opening my mouth was nearly impossible, the storm forcing itself into every space.

She turned once, and even through the blur, I saw that even she was being pulled—wings shuddering, body dragged by forces beyond control.

Yet unlike me, she seemed to belong here. The sand refused to bite her. The wind only brushed past her like a stiff breeze.

Her talons unlatched from my shoulders.

For a single suspended heartbeat, we hovered side by side, eyes meeting through the storm’s light. The glow in hers softened. And then, she was gone. Torn away.

The wind howled through me. My body spun, flipped, twisted faster than thought until direction lost all meaning. I reached out with my senses, desperate to anchor myself with Spiritual Sense, but even that was shredded and scattered into the maelstrom I was beginning to realize was anything but natural.

L—Luna?! I shouted, or thought I did, knowing she couldn’t be faring any better.

Y—yeah! I’m here! Her voice strained through the storm, thorns biting deep into my wrist as her vines wrapped tight.

Then a savage current slammed into us, like the storm itself had grown intent on killing us. The pressure didn’t relent, but built layer upon layer, faster, heavier, and more merciless. My skin burned raw as it scraped away, my eyes forced shut against the flaying wind.

Wyrem’s voice roared through my mind. Form a barrier—now! This is too much exposure at once!

It felt like battling something alive, each current hammering from a different angle, colliding, reshaping, exploding into the next. I braced through the third blast, gathering every thread of energy in my body, forcing it outward, shaping a wall of power—

CRASH!

My head reeled. The barrier shattered instantly, gone before a heartbeat could pass. Even my strongest detonations couldn’t have produced destruction that absolute.

How is this supposed to help?

With the Water and Fire Essences, I’d been exposed in steady increments in measured doses of change. But this wasn’t that.

This was raw annihilation.

S–something’s coming, Luna warned, each word laced with pain.

Suddenly, everything shifted. The pull that had dragged me in circles no longer felt uniform. It started to twist and lurch, defying even the admittedly limited understanding I had of how storms were supposed to behave.

The currents changed, pulling in every direction at once, threatening to tear me apart.

The roar deepened until even the voices in my head began to muffle beneath it.

Just when I thought this torment might never end, something brushed my nose. A faint, soft, almost tender feeling. Against every primal instinct, my eyes forced open.

It was just a flash. Like a bolt of lightning. But it was too controlled. Too alive.

A streak of feathers that cut through the orange blur.

Harua.

But she wasn’t flying, rather… it was like she was stepping. Walking.

Another flash and I saw more clearly.

Gliding through the raging currents, not passing through them but catching them, using them, moving from one unseen foothold to another. With wings drawn tight, she climbed inward and upward, defying the storm.

For a moment, the sight steadied me. My thoughts sharpened just enough to recall the nature of all this. A carrier, the invisible network binding all things.

A flow. That’s what Harua is using.

Luna’s voice flickered faintly through the gale. I… I’m struggling to hold—

Let’s stop fighting, I told her, dissolving even my Sensory Veil.

You’re sure? she asked, hesitant, her words trembling with wind and fear.

I drew the deepest breath the storm allowed. I know you won’t gain an Essence from this, but I think it’s important for both of us.

Her vines slackened, loosening their grip and sliding down my arm until they fluttered helplessly in the gale.

Next was the pain.

I felt my skin flay open.

A leaf tore away.

We both grunted.

Thorns ripped free, and nails peeled from their beds.

I could feel Wyrem’s apprehension within me, an obvious desire to tell us to stop growing, but he stayed still—understanding that this was needed.

The wind didn’t relent. But with each strike, each searing blast, something subtle began to change within us. I think Luna moved first with just a slight shift, but I followed almost at once.

Maybe she could feel it better since she could see. Maybe I could have used Beast Force to imitate her sight, but that felt wrong. This had to come from us.

One movement. A single twist of my torso and suddenly, there was a pocket of stillness, a fragile moment where we could breathe.

Then the next wave hit us harder, and the calm shattered before it could be fully experienced.

Did you feel it? Luna’s voice carried a flicker of exhilaration beneath the strain.

I didn’t answer, but she already knew.

Another one!

I stepped forward—or maybe the wind carried me—and felt nothing striking me, no resistance, just pure, seamless motion. I turned back and glimpsed the gales colliding, overlapping, their crash birthing distorted sound.

Ripples, Luna murmured, echoing the thought that had just passed through me.

But we were beyond them now. Not part of the disturbance, but within the flow itself. For a few fleeting moments, we were carried, connected, moving as one with the storm instead of against it.

It repeated again and again. Enduring pain, recovering, then yielding—each cycle drawing us deeper into harmony. The storm raged louder, yet somehow it grew quieter.

I closed my eyes.

My body moved without orders—shoulders easing, arms loosening, and breath aligning to a rhythm that I couldn’t hear, but feel.

Memories surfaced with each successive step.

The cafeteria’s chatter, its strange aroma, and the tasteless burger bun.

The first cry that broke after the first tear in space. The fear that followed as the portal multiplied, expanded.

The nausea of spatial travel.

The illusion world surfaced. Where I’d gained Wyrem, met Janus, and killed Ramus.

The islands where I live now came after.

Then the hub of worlds where I’d fought Kris.

The endless field of magical plants at the Engineer’s home.

That white void where I was sent after my death.

Finally, this desert.

Each memory followed the last, carried by a single thread that drew everything together. Friends, enemies, the people I’d met, befriended… killed—they all moved through me in quick images.

When they stopped, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

The storm was gone, and in its place, the tapestry of endless nothing. Then a familiar flash, creating a harmony of chaos.

I had seen it before, but now I was watching from a different angle. Not witnessing the fast-track creation, but instead, what came in between.

A massive bird shifting in verdant colors unfolded from the light. Countless radiant threads, almost illusory, spilled from its feathers as its wings spread and it flew. They spilled in every direction, vanishing into nothing as they sank into the forming world.

At one point, as time sped, a large rift tore in space, but the threads reached it in a moment, stitching it shut.

Soon came the calming of chaos. A cry from a serpent that balanced the worlds. The spheres of fire and water came next, life breathing through them. In every one, threads wove in, many of them spreading to each microcosm of life.

The bird flew on and on, shrinking with distance and time from something vast until it was no larger than my palm.

I only knew because it landed on my hand, staring at me with emerald light, recognition clear.

“I am the weaver of connections.” It tilted its head with the words, and the universe seemed to curve with it. “With them, I carry all burdens, hopes, and changes.”