Aster keeps walking, attempting to keep his mind busy. That’s the trick, apparently. Not that it ever seemed to stop it. A technique given to him from a woman with two degrees and a life structure that doesn’t need to explain itself as if global debt were personally responsible for her stubbed toe. He needed to keep the wheels turning so they don’t catch on the wrong track.

  He could already feel it rising—that quiet pressure just out of sight. Like a missed call from your mom at 2 a.m. Probably nothing—but you don’t check. Not out of fear, of course. According to his psychologist, there isn’t a call. No mom either. Just his brain playing tricks with the lights off.

  Because nothing screams “mental wellness” quite like deliberately pretending your mom doesn’t exist.

  Not that she does currently—she’s been dead for most of his life—but that’s beside the point. It’s a metaphor. It’s about the universe dialling his mind at 2 a.m. with a debt collection scam and the sinking certainty that somehow, someway, the bill really is in his name. Better to keep the thoughts noisy, tangled up in movement. Best not to look. Better to keep walking.

  The city at midday is a furnace with opinions. The sun hammering the concrete as if it owes it money, and the heat emanates from the asphalt in waves that whisper insults in a voice that sounds suspiciously like his high school gym teacher. Sweat pools behind his neck, under his collar, and down his spine. It doesn’t end there, though, but he’s not about to mention the serious case of swamp ass he’s currently dealing with. Smoke from a corner braai curls into the air, mingling with exhaust fumes and something faintly metallic—rust, maybe. Or blood. Hard to say, really, since every street corner smells like compound interest and predatory loans, seasoned lightly with the burnt plastic of failed ambitions. The man flipping boerewors behind the grill does so with the slow, patient gravity of a pastor or a saint—or maybe just the patience of someone who’s given up entirely. Either way, the meat gets cooked. Minibus taxis play God with the road, carving through traffic in divine chaos. Horns blare. Passengers shout. Basslines slam through panel gaps with the kind of sonic pressure that could induce premature aging.

  Aster keeps walking like someone who’s memorized the script for life but refuses to act in it. Hands deep in pockets. Head on a swivel. Eyes half-lidded with the practiced look of: Yes, I’m late. No, I won’t explain.

  Movement is safety.

  Movement is denial.

  Movement means he’s not available for introspection, deep reflection, or—God forbid—hope.

  He doesn’t have a destination.

  Just movement.

  Just don’t stop.

  Don’t check the mental voicemail.

  That creeping static? Probably nothing.

  Definitely nothing.

  Behind Aster, the world shudders.

  Not with thunder or tremor, but with the whisper of something waking beneath skin.

  The kind of shiver that lives just behind the teeth—like the first brush of fever or the reminder of debt. The kind of shift that doesn’t tear reality, just… loosens it. A quiet pucker in the membrane. A soft click of perception slipping slightly off-centre.

  And just like that, the Astral surfaces.

  It doesn’t explode into being—it simply is, in the way rust exists on metal before you notice it. The other reality, the realer one, blinks into awareness beneath the polite collective hallucination of city, nation, and nine-to-five. It isn’t new. It isn’t hidden. It has always been there, squatting in the crawlspace of reality, gnawing at the insulation of the human soul.

  Matter moves through the Astral like it was built for him—untouched by the world it shadows, yet intimately familiar with the Material plane it stretches through, like cancer through flesh.

  It consisted of the same structure. Same Streets. Same buildings. But wrong.

  Not wrong like a mistake—wrong like a metaphor that’s grown teeth.

  On the surface, the city roars—a beast of heat and steel and thudding bass.

  But beneath that... it writhes.

  Not metaphor. Metaphor made literal.

  This city—this other world sitting underneath the real one—stretches beneath our reality, painted in shades the brain refuses to parse. Here, buildings lean under the weight of forgotten grief. The walls pitted with psychic mildew—not mold precisely, but something that feels like it. Guilt in spore form. Regret stratified in the concrete. Billboards blink advertisements that no longer sell anything but hunger. Logos fossilize into emotion, flickering like religious relics of a consumerist pantheon.

  And the Mist.

  Matter steps through it without slowing. It pours through the gutters like breath held too long. A madness of shifting colors. Thick. Viscous. A rolling sea of deep purples, bruised blues, and searing oranges—too many to name—all in constant motion, waist-high in places. Not smoke. Not fog. It is the exhale of minds too overwhelmed to hold their shape. Psychic runoff. The leftovers of feeling, scraped from the subconscious of billions and pooled into instinctual slop. The detritus of unprocessed thought.

  Not alive.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Not yet.

  But it wants to be.

  Matter keeps moving, the Mist nothing more than an afterthought.

  Above him, the sky knots into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of multi-coloured clouds shifting endlessly through different shades.

  The Astral Storm covered the sky like a global ulcer, thick with clouds of psychic aether churning in slow chaos—a system of thought devouring itself endlessly, ringing the Earth like a planetary marketing campaign from hell. Tornadoes form at random intervals, ravenous and unbidden, sucking the Mist upward in pulsing, ecstatic slurps. Raw emotion hurled skyward to be recycled, blended, churned, rebranded. Anxiety into rage. Lust into hate. Despair into momentum.

  A weather system made of insanity.

  Lightning forks through the clouds in hues no sane spectrum would claim—ultraviolet gashes, radioactive blooms slashing across the sky. The flashes illuminate winged shapes drifting through the storm, their forms wavering, indistinct, shifting like shadows refusing to be pinned down, impossibly large even from so far away. Creatures, maybe. Or ideas with biology. Or prayers that never got answered and rotted into whales.

  Matter walks through it all.

  Unbothered.

  Unmoved.

  Untouched.

  His presence is a needle in a balloon, repelling the Mist on instinct.

  The flora parts from his cloak like oil from heat. Tendrils of semi-plant life peel back into the cracks of buildings, their petals folding inward with twitching motion—nervous systems of instinct, not intelligence. They open again only after he passes, eager feelers extending to filter the Mist like coral. Some curl-like hands in prayer. Others blink, blind and wet, with eyelid-like sheaths that shiver with too-human speed. Their roots hiss softly in the moist stone, slurping the residue of collective pain like nectar.

  Matter doesn’t look at them twice.

  All his attention focused on the target ahead of him, following him with the grim patience of someone who has done so for years.

  He doesn’t need to see Aster’s face to know it’s him. His gait, the way he carries weight like it belongs to someone else, the flicker of entropy that follows him like a second shadow—every detail is familiar.

  Walking alongside Aster through this Astral swamp.

  As if the Mist isn’t curling around their calves like curious smoke.

  As if the sidewalk flora hasn’t grown jaws.

  People move through it all like unaware gods.

  Untouchable. Oblivious. Holy in their ignorance.

  Coffee in hand. Phones out. Earbuds in. Every step carries them through the blistering midday as if they walk alone in all the world.

  Which, in a way, they do.

  The real world—the one with roads and rent and recycling bins—is where they live.

  The Astral Plane, layered like a shadow clinging to every edge, is where their presence drifts, encased and protected.

  Two worlds. Same space. Different truths.

  Each human spirit wraps tight in a golden field, a sacred firewall humming with ancient code. Not magic. Not technology. Something older—a failsafe built into the soul by something that decided humanity isn’t ready for the full patch notes of reality.

  The biofield doesn’t just block the Astral make-up—it unravels it on contact. A living anathema. Wherever they walk, the Astral flinches away, recoils, seethes.

  The Mist parts from them like boiling water from wax.

  Creatures dart aside. Flora folds in on itself, reacting with genetic muscle memory passed down by generations that have learned what happens if you touch the golden things.

  The Astral seethes around them.

  They aren’t aware of it.

  But the Astral is deeply, obsessively aware of them.

  It is a realm of reaction, and they are the storm it keeps rebuilding itself around.

  But the Astral doesn’t sleep.

  And evolution is never patient.

  So, over time, many creatures have learned not just to avoid them—but to feed off them.

  Matter sees one.

  It flits through the air like a dragonfly built from chrome and regret. Wings buzz with ambient suggestion. Its body flickers with shifting sigils—Samsung, Apple, Woolworths, Pornhub, Shell—emblems melted into its carapace, cycling like a corrupted UI.

  An Adgnat.

  ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  [ASTRAL SCAN – ENTITY IDENTIFIED]

  ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  CREATURE: AD GNAT

  Classification: Psychic Parasite / Broadcast Leech

  Typing: Static Aether + Compulsion Mist

  Threat Level: F– (Lesser Nuisance with Corporate Sponsorship)

  DESCRIPTION:

  Tiny, near-invisible psychic pests designed to bypass weak biofields and implant commercial compulsions directly into the subconscious. Most victims don’t notice—they just suddenly really need a drink, a new app, or validation from a retail experience.

  An intrusive thought designed by marketers and bred for insecurity.

  GLYPHS:

  ? Suggestive Static (Passive) – Emits low-frequency ads into nearby thoughts.

  ? Targeted Despairvertising – Latches onto emotional gaps and implants a branded solution.

  ? Algorithmic Stalk – Mimics the target’s inner voice to sell fabricated desires.

  ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  Common, yes—but insidious in that slow-drip capitalism sort of way. Less venom, more algorithm.

  It skims the heads of the crowd, trailing glittery pheromones of impulse.

  It dives, landing on a young woman’s shoulder. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t feel it. Her eyes are buried in her feed, her thumb endlessly scrolling, stopping only to like an ad disguised as content. The gnat’s needle tongue extends, elegant and quick. It doesn’t pierce skin—it pierces reality, slipping through the shield like a handshake from a trusted friend.

  The biofield shivers.

  Corporate sigils flare—ghostlike and fleeting—across her aura, like static over old VHS tape.

  A faint whine of low-frequency suggestion warps around her.

  Then, nothing. The Adgnat lifts off, wings humming with self-satisfaction.

  In her head, a seed takes root.

  An urge. An idea. A purchase she will make and think was her own.

  Matter does not intervene.

  The gnats are everywhere.

  Persistent, yes. Dangerous to some. But mostly, they’re noise.

  His eyes are trained only on his charge.

  The flicker in Aster’s biofield has worsened—dimmer now, thinner.

  Matter doesn’t even sigh anymore.

  He gave up on that a lifetime ago.