When he finally catches up to Matter, they’re standing on the roof, the night air weirdly cool but not cold, like dream-weather. Aster’s breath comes in ragged pulls.

  He’s about to ask something stupid, like, Do I even have lungs here?

  And then he sees it.

  The city.

  It’s the same nightmare he’d stumbled through with his sanity hanging by a shoelace only a few days ago. Except now he can finally appreciate the entirety of it.

  The city stretches out like a fever map, alive in a way nothing should be. Buildings throb under their own architecture, windows pulse like pores, a thousand surfaces flexing muscle memory. Trees burst out of the urban sprawl, roots smashing through tar like it’s wet paper. Their luminescent leaves drip colour into the skyline, as if someone’s painted the world in wet dreams and psychosis.

  Aster tries not to focus too closely on the creatures prowling through it all. He refuses, forcing himself not to invite old panic to pull up a stool and start talking.

  Above, the sky churns like wet oil in a flamethrower. Hues make his brain itch trying to name them—colours too green to be blue and too pink to be orange. The clouds fold and unfold in time with some unseen pulse.

  “I thought it was a brain tumour, or sleep deprivation, or—” he gestures at nothing—the air, the sky full of magic nonsense—“this. What is this, Matter? Because I swear to god, if you tell me I’m still hallucinating—”

  “You’re not,” Matter says. “Or—perhaps more accurately: the hallucinations you saw were the first leaks as your shield started thinning. Enough to let the edges bleed through.”

  Aster’s about to ask what the hell that means when something the size of a German Shepherd suddenly zips overhead with a mechanical whine—an insect, but built like a fighter jet. Before his brain can fully panic, a bigger shape lunges from the sky: a beast with the wingspan of a sedan and the body of a prehistoric nightmare.

  It snatches the bug mid-air with a crunch.

  Aster flinches so hard he almost falls off the roof.

  The creature, feathers blazing orange, beak jagged and dripping, tears into its prey like it’s shelling peanuts, totally ignoring the humans watching from ten feet away.

  Aster’s eyes stay locked on the horizon, where the sky churns thick with human thought.

  “So it’s real,” he says flatly. “All of it. The mantis thing, the wasps, the eels…”

  Matter doesn’t even blink.

  “Yes, it’s all real. It’s what we refer to as the Astral Plane,” Matter says, as if they haven’t just watched an orange death-bird devour a biomechanical dragonfly.

  Aster doesn’t respond. Can’t. His brain is trying to crawl out of his skull.

  Matter continues, gestures calm. “It overlaps with your world. Think of it like… layers. This one’s called the Astral Cradle—the biggest overlap and the thinnest point of convergence between here and your world,” his eyes flick to Aster, “referred to as the Material Plane.”

  Aster finally manages a sound. “So… you’re telling me this”—he flings an arm at the psychedelic apocalypse—“is just hanging over reality at all times?”

  Matter nods. “Like skin over muscle.”

  “And people can’t see it because…?”

  “They’re shielded. Their Bio-Fields keep their astral perception sealed.”

  Aster frowns. “Their what?”

  “Your barrier, the golden field that surrounds you and keeps you safe,” Matter says. “We call it a Bio-Field. It’s a complex function of your biology, but just imagine it for now as the thing that keeps your spirit glued to your body—the reason normal people don’t get to see all this.”

  Aster blinks. “You’re telling me no one can see this because they’re shielded by a magic soul condom?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Matter doesn’t flinch. “Essentially, yes.”

  “Oh, good.”

  Matter’s face stays serious. “You dissolved yours when you smoked the crystal.”

  Aster’s mouth goes dry. He looks down at himself—still solid, still breathing, but somehow different.

  He turns his head again, staring at the city pulsing like a heartbeat, arms crossed as if it’ll stop the dread crawling across his skin.

  “Jesus,” he mutters. “And here I thought my life couldn’t get more complicated.”

  A quiet silence settles, punctuated only by the wet sound of the vulture-thing swallowing its prey.

  “And this place,” Aster says slowly, “is full of things like that?” He points at the monster still tearing apart its catch like it’s Sunday brunch.

  “Yes,” Matter says. “And much worse.”

  Aster swallows hard, but Matter doesn’t give him time to breathe.

  “That creature is a scavenger,” he continues. “One of the lower tiers. It feeds on Lower Aether forms like that insect—nothing sentient. Most of the creatures found on the Astral Cradle are lower-tier lifeforms, nothing above standard F.” He quickly explains, “Lesser F tier is the weakest of the creatures of the Astral Plane.” His gaze shifts toward the roiling storm covering the sky. “Limited to Psychic Aether until it’s able to cross the Astral Storm.”

  Aster stares. “So… there’s a ranking system. For monsters.”

  “There’s a ranking system for everything here,” Matter says, voice flattening into something heavier. “From the F-tier bottom feeders to the S-tier titans that can decimate continents. The Cradle is the shallowest end of the pool—but even here, everything is competing. Feeding. Evolving. Struggling to reach the next rung.”

  He points upward, finger steady as a compass needle, toward the coloured madness roiling across the sky.

  “Only when they cross that—the Astral Storm—do they gain access to higher Aether. Access to true power.”

  Aster follows Matter’s hand, swallowing hard. The clouds churn in colours that make his head ache just looking at them, too many shades crashing into each other like waves. It isn’t weather up there. It’s… something else.

  Matter’s voice presses on.

  “The border between the Astral Cradle,” his hand sweeps low, over the breathing city pulsing beneath their feet, “and the Astral Archipelago. That storm is made from the Material Plane’s collective conscious thought—every fear, every dream, every violent impulse, and quiet hope. All of it manifests in this plane as a form of energy we call Psychic Aether. The buildup of that Aether forms the mist, which over time is drawn up into the storm or clings long enough to the bottom to manifest and form a consciousness, resulting in the creation of our feathered little friend over there. A survival instinct made manifest—a self-forming consciousness moulding itself in an attempt to reach the storm as a predator instead of prey.”

  Aster’s mouth goes dry. He follows Matter’s gaze just as the massive, orange-feathered, wolf-faced, vulture-like thing, wearing its finished meal’s viscera like battle paint, finishes ripping apart its insect prey and starts grooming itself, casual as a housecat.

  His brain short-circuits.

  “You’re telling me that thing is made from… people’s feelings?” he manages, voice half hoarse, half hysterical. “So that bird-thing is… what? Someone’s panic attack that grew feathers?”

  Matter’s lips twitch. Not quite a smile. Not quite not.

  “Yes. An amalgamation,” he says. “Of thought, emotion, and psychic energy. It’s what happens when enough emotion—rage, hunger, survival instinct—gloms together and decides to evolve into something with teeth.”

  Aster lets out a thin laugh because, really, what else is left?