Its skin was silver, like a polished sword. Golden hair forged in fire, brushed back into a loose bun, giving the two obsidian horns that sprouted from its temples ample room. Whatever the creature was, it towered over Aiden as if he were back to being a miner.
The simple white robes that adorned its gigantic frame felt out of place—mundane compared to the regal appearance of gold and silver that adorned its physique.
"I hath awaited thee, last fragment," the silver giant uttered in a booming tone. "Time for explanations I hath not, for mine presence shall be marked by those who linger in the Beyond."
“Maker protect me!” Aiden took a step back.
The creature blinked in confusion before bursting into laughter. “Surely thou jest; why wouldst a hunter shield its prey? Commit not the same folly twice, last fragment.”
“I am named Asthagon, Keeper of the Sixfold Corridor, The One Who Watches, The Third Heir of Creation.” The giant gave an almost imperceptible nod. “It is well to meet thee once more, old friend.”
Asthagon guarded a doorless, dark corridor.
No bricks formed the obsidian floor, though swirling, interconnecting spirals and intricate carved lines adorned the walls surrounding Aiden. There was no light other than the creature’s burning eyes, but that proved no impediment for one capable of seeing in the dark.
“I… hmm, don’t think we’ve met before?” Aiden could not make sense of Asthagon’s ancient tongue.
“This is the first time we meet, last fragment, but it is also the sixth.” Asthagon opened his arms wide, his voice thundering as though it were the heavens themselves. “I have known thee since the beginning of creation, when the stars first did shine in the vastness of the void. We hath discoursed upon this matter countless times, as a written bond that may not escape the prison of Karma—”
“What in the abyss are you babbling about?” The words slipped from his mouth unbidden, as if a force compelled him to speak his mind. “Stop with the damn riddles!”
“What sayest thou?” Asthagon blurted out in surprise.
His mouth hung open with unsaid words. Confusion. Surprise. Excitement. Sadness. Aiden saw a variety of emotions flitting through Asthagon’s sculpted face, but they changed faster than reason.
Asthagon gazed at Aiden—through him. A warm veil wafted past. “Apologies, last fragment. It seems I misread the flow of time. Do you understand me now?”
Aiden nodded. “You’re finally making sense. Hm… I didn’t mean to say that.”
“The Sixfold Corridor compels its visitor to speak truthfully, old friend. This is not a place for falsehoods.” Asthagon brushed his hand against the wall with intimate care. “A beautiful creation from a master long gone.”
A shiver ran through his silver skin. Asthagon fell to his knee with a grunt, pain etched plainly on his face.
“The call of the Abyss is strong, old friend. Even in this place, I cannot fight its pull.” When Asthagon raised his head, there was no fear in his eyes. “My job is fulfilled. He might have killed me, but Korvax’s hope will live.”
“You know my father?” Aiden grabbed Asthagon by the shoulder but let go with a wince. The silver skin’s cold aura almost froze his hand solid. “Are you alright?”
“The usurpers’ bonds on my soul are deeply rooted. He will not rest until I have vanished from this realm.” Asthagon punched the ground, lifting himself with visible effort. The cracks in the black stone mended as if nothing had happened.
“With my last shred of power,” Asthagon touched his index finger to Aiden’s forehead, “I bind you to the Sixfold Corridor.”
A foreign presence entered Aiden’s body, disappearing without a trace into the deepest confines of his soul. He could have dodged the hand, avoided the painful touch, but ‌Aiden decided to trust the silver-skinned giant.
“Walk your path, Aiden.” The giant’s body became translucent. “Rely not on your physical senses, for the flesh can never reach the truth. Rely not on knowledge, as the mind cannot understand eternity.”
“What… who are you really?” Aiden spoke in a hurry. “I don’t… understand anything that’s going on.”
Asthagon regarded him with a soft smile. “I am many things—was many things, once—but only one of them truly matters now.” He placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “I am a friend.”
He vanished as the last words left his lips. Only the Sixfold Corridor remained.
The walk down the unguarded tunnel proved insufficient to take Aiden's mind away from the absurdity of the previous events. Helvan did not disclose much about the Warpcrystal, only that it would lead to a place called the Sixfold Corridor—the root of Sovran power.
More like the origin of even more questions.
The silver-skinned creature, Asthagon, implied his presence here was abnormal, yet Aiden wondered if the elderly man knew about him. Probably. There's a lot he's hiding. His words carried the riddled tone of someone treading dangerously close to breaking a binding vow—every sentence crafted to produce answers while avoiding the consequences of backlash.
Aiden understood what he needed to do, more than ever. Get stronger. The weak had no right to live in a world where the strong ruled with an iron fist. Empyreans wielded miracles with their bare hands, spoke to their minds, robbed their bodies of free will with but a whisper. It was impossible to oppose that when your greatest weapon was an empty stomach.
It was no wonder his district never thought to revolt. What could they accomplish but a certain massacre? Aiden was surprised others had tried at all.
During the weeks of excruciating training, he had learned to reign in his fear, to accept the pain, and let it sharpen into a weapon. Pain had molded him into what he had become, but it was not nearly enough to put him on equal footing with trained warriors.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Dyad Vessel made that gap smaller, but the Providence had limits.
I need more. Power to create blades out of thin air, a way to disappear between steps like Helvan did, a body capable of soaring into the air like Corvanis had. The meager power he had accumulated paled to the arcane might of a Heightened Sovran, of an Empyrean.
Aiden walked with the determination to find the source of their power, ignoring the statues of heroes immortalized in their glorious moments that adorned each side of the corridor. If it took eternity to find it, then he would walk forever.
Hours passed as he dived deeper into the endless corridor, perhaps it took no longer than a minute—Aiden had no way of knowing. Time behaved oddly in the Sixfold Corridor. His body did not tire, nor did hunger or thirst shave away at his sanity. His thoughts remained untouched by fatigue, unshackled by the chains of bodily needs.
Time isn't passing. It was a guess, but Aiden felt confident in his assertion.
The idea sounded outlandish at first, but it made more sense the more he pondered it. If time held no sway over his life, he could walk in the corridors forever, lost without a measure of time—alone with his thoughts.
No wonder Helvan had warned him about it.
“Don’t rely on your senses?” Aiden said to himself.
Asthagon had used his last moments to give him advice. Aiden did not know the man for long, but trusted his words. It had to mean something. He closed his eyes, threading the empty halls without the aid of his sight.
Aiden did not stumble or falter. It was as if something deeper than his five senses guided him, something which he could not place a finger on. He walked without stopping until he felt a tug inside his heart.
Opening his eyes, he saw a door carved into the wall at his side. It was black as obsidian, dark like the color the Warpcrystal had assumed when rested against Helvan’s palm. With a touch, he knew the eternity of wandering would end. A path to power. A mere acknowledgment was enough to undo the boundary between the strength hidden behind the door and him.
He walked away without another glance.
Don’t trust the mind, hm? He believed Asthagon’s words, took them to heart. Aiden refused to open the door unless that little piece of himself, the one deeper than flesh and mind, accepted it.
Years passed, or perhaps not a moment had gone by—Aiden stopped caring. He had long ago ceased thinking. Only one goal filled his mind, and he would not stop, need not rest, before that was done. A door that resonated with his truth.
With his soul.
When Aiden opened his eyes once more, he stood in front of a white door. It whispered its promises to him as the black one had, but his soul remained unshaken. Its aura conveyed a deep sense of familiarity and potential, something strong enough to rival most Empyreans.
It pleaded its might, asserting to him its unparalleled power. Its aura eclipsed the obsidian door. No. Aiden strode past it with a sigh, trying not to contemplate the possibility of being wrong.
Numerous other doors manifested in the time he spent in the Sixfold Corridor. Purple followed by golden, then green. None of them resonated with his soul, yet he knew any of them would open before him.
One left. The Sixfold Corridor had its name for a reason. It did not hold an infinite number of doorways, even though its length was endless. It held six doors.
Aiden had no way of telling if other people faced so many choices. Is it… normal? It might be part of a test, for all he understood. If some doors were fake, their paths leading to nothingness, then this place was twisted beyond comprehension.
A last door manifested itself in front of him. It was red, with rectangular inlays that pulsed like the blood of a living being. The door itself seemed to be made of blood, reminding Aiden of Overseer Travor’s hovering sphere. But the material on it was far too concentrated. It almost looked like a precious gem, a ruby.
The aura it emanated was the weakest he had felt. It promised power—less grand than the obsidian or white doors—but it guarded the same secrets that enabled the miraculous healing of broken bones that Myra flaunted as her own, or the magic Travor used to track him down.
Did I… make a mistake? Aiden thought to himself, falling to his knees. He felt tired suddenly, despite the corridor’s mysterious properties. I shouldn’t have trusted Asthagon.
Aiden tried to convince himself of that, but his heart beat with a vigor he had never experienced before. Deeper than his flesh, something called to him, urging him to open the door. It was the weakest among all others, but it resonated with him to an inexplicable degree.
His skull throbbed at the mere thought of not choosing the door. Inside his chest, a hunger burst into existence. It spoke to him, its intention clear even though it could not form words.
“Shut up already,” Aiden chuckled bitterly. “I know, I know. That’s the one.”
His heart roared. The memory of the beast under the red moon resonated with his soul. After an untold amount of time spent wandering in the corridor, the presence inside him had become a reassuring comfort—something Aiden had grown to rely on, all based on the words of a stranger.
He raised his hand, wishing he were making the right choice, knowing that he had never had any choice at all. Within himself, there was only truth—lies were a construct of the mind—and at that moment, Aiden did not think. He simply reached out and touched the crimson door.
The world twisted upon itself as the crimson door opened without a sound. Light assaulted Aiden’s eyes with a ferocious crimson intensity that yearned for the taste of fresh blood. With renewed resolve, he walked through the portal into another world.
***
Looking up, he stumbled, for there was not a ceiling above his head. Nothing constrained the endless horizon. That’s the sky, Aiden remembered the word from the caustic memory, the half-real, half-dream impression passed down to him by the creatures whose heart somehow beat on his chest.
Endless and uncaged by the prison of stone. Aiden gazed upon freedom for the first time in his life and understood the weight of the shackles that bound his people.
A sky was not needed for life, neither were the pink clouds that floated unhurriedly on the vast canvas stretching above the dark soil below. It was not necessary, yet he felt a keen pain from being robbed of it.
The sources of light were hard to look at—three burning orbs of crimson fire suspended on the horizon. Tears trickled silently down his face. It’s not fair. Their world was a cruel place, yet nobody tried to change it. It was disheartening to think they lived in the confines of a cave, when somewhere else—a place he had known for minutes—shone with the radiance of perfection and freedom.
Why? Aiden did not understand why the people of the Haven would settle for caves. But I’ll find out.
Something trickled inside his lungs, diving into his blood, reaching every corner of his body—a living energy that never quite mixed with his flesh. It reached deeper than what was material, seeking the source of what made Aiden himself.
The soul.
Aiden followed the hexion, as Helvan had called it, navigating its path until he stood in a place of pure darkness. Nothing existed within it, nothing but himself. But from the emptiness, the first rays of light burst into life as the red energy arrived. It settled at the center of his being like the burning spheres of light that illuminated the strange crimson world outside.
The once immaterial sphere tentatively assumed a shade of darker red. It spun with graceful rotation, gaining color until it resembled a ruby. It was small, frail, but it emanated a power Aiden had never felt before.
With nothing but a nudge of his will, he approached the precious jewel. Magic. The key to Empyrean power. Aiden brushed a hand against its surface, feeling the call of home—of the Haven. The ruby shone brighter, rotating faster, creating an unseen vortex that drew him in with relentless force.
Aiden closed his eyes and embraced the pull.