Johannesburg is loud in a way the Astral Plane never has the audacity to be.

  Aster moves through its streets like a ghost reluctantly reinserted into the land of the living. It takes him twenty minutes to walk from the quiet suburb where Matter’s house still pretends it isn’t a tomb—twenty minutes of stillness, of cracked sidewalks and clipped hedges and late-morning joggers nodding politely at the boy who, a week ago, ran like a lunatic, fending off things no one else could see with a broken street sign and a rusted gate chain.

  He hopes, in the back of his mind, that they won’t phone the HOA and have him evicted.

  And then—city.

  The shift is immediate. The air thickens with car exhaust and the competing scents of fried samosas, roasting maize, and something that might’ve once been meat. Taxi horns bleat like aggravated geese, street vendors shout over each other, and someone somewhere has very strong opinions about their baby mama on speakerphone.

  It’s jarring. And, honestly, comforting in a masochistic sort of way. The Astral Plane had been too vast, too beautiful—like being gifted a universe only to be told it came with monthly instalments and complimentary schizophrenia. Johannesburg, by contrast, doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is: messy, overheated capitalism with a side of body odor.

  Aster moves with the flow—or tries to. The crowd pulses around him like blood through an artery, all of it alive and uncaring. He should feel lost in it, but the truth is, he feels... full. Overloaded. Every thought he’s tried to suppress during breakfast has decided now is the time for a reunion tour.

  Matter. The ritual. The council. The Void Wyrm.

  The memory of crossing over—of colors too intense to be named and landscapes that bend the rules of physics and sanity alike—still clings to the edges of his vision like afterburn. He didn’t imagine it. He knows that now. But the realness of it makes Matter’s absence all the sharper. The man taught him so little, and yet somehow left behind a crater.

  Aster has questions. Dozens of them. About his parents. About the infection. About why any of this happened to him. And every single one of them is now trapped in the corpse of someone who died keeping a promise Aster hadn’t even known existed.

  He barely notices the streets thinning as he reaches the edge of the business district, the tower blocks like jagged teeth against the morning sky. He crosses through a busy intersection on autopilot, bumping shoulders with strangers who don’t care that he might’ve hosted a planetary extinction event. He envies them.

  Galamad is next. And with it, answers. Maybe.

  Because nothing says “welcome to cosmic horror” like a structured academic curriculum.

  But beneath the ambition and the curiosity, that quiet parasite of doubt gnaws at him. Will he ever learn to control what’s been bound inside him? Or will he just become the cage that eventually breaks?

  His thoughts spiral. So does the street. And then, just as his mind teeters toward something dangerously introspective, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up like a dog sensing lightning.

  Someone is watching him.

  He turns sharply. Nothing. Just the usual crowd. Pedestrians. Street noise. Nobody staring.

  But the feeling remains—heavy, focused, hungry.

  It isn’t the Wyrm Eaters; he can rely on the Parasyte in his chest to start squirming if they’re around. It’s something else. Something from the Material Plane...

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He picks up the pace, weaving through bodies, trying to act casual. Paranoia is a normal state for him, but this isn’t paranoia. This is instinct. This is wrong.

  A glint in the corner of his eye—a dark alley, forgotten by the city, yawning open between two buildings.

  His heart skips once.

  And that’s the last thing he knows.

  A blur of motion—impossibly fast. The feeling of something clamping over his head, his vision vanishing in an instant.

  Darkness.

  No sound. No street. Just black.

  He doesn’t scream. Doesn’t even have the chance.

  One second he’s walking. The next, he’s yanked through some unseen hole in space and thrown—hard—into something cold, narrow, and metal.

  The impact knocks the breath from his lungs. A second later, the trunk slams shut above him with a finality that makes the air itself flinch.

  And in that darkness—no stars, no council, no lectures or scrolls—just the tight, breathless knowledge:

  He’s survived gods.

  He’s survived rituals.

  He’s survived grief.

  But he has not, apparently, survived Johannesburg.

  Not yet.

  The bag comes off his head in one violent jerk.

  Aster flinches as light punches his retinas before he simply squints—because acknowledging reality means acknowledging who’s smirking at him like a crocodile in loafers.

  “Frikkie,” Aster mutters flatly, blinking away the stars in his vision.

  Of course, it’s him. I was starting to worry this day might end with a shred of dignity.

  Sergeant Frikkie—the once-decorated cop turned crime-scented fungus—sits across from him like a man who hasn’t spent the last decade converting police brutality into a full-time hustle. His hands are folded politely on the table, as if they haven’t broken at least three ribs and a few spirits in the last week alone. The room smells like sweat, damp concrete, and cheap cologne worn as war paint. Frikkie always carries himself like Johannesburg owes him a medal for surviving its rot—conveniently forgetting that he’s become one of its most infectious parts.

  “Well, well,” Frikkie drawls, arms spread like they’re old friends meeting at a braai. “Look who decided to skip a payment.”

  Aster’s head throbs as he tries to sit up. “Fifteen thousand,” he mutters. “I missed one payment. Not a war crime.”

  Frikkie tutts like a disappointed uncle. “A payment’s a promise, Aster. And you don’t break promises to me.”

  He leans forward, meaty elbows sinking into his knees, his smile all teeth and zero warmth. “Especially not when you’re living in a three-point-six million rand house registered in your name.”

  Aster blinks. “You checked the title?”

  “Of course I did,” Frikkie says. “Imagine my surprise. You, with property. Fancy car. Cooped up for days on end doing god knows what. And here I thought you were just another little street rat dodging my ledger.”

  The number in Aster’s head balloons before Frikkie even says it.

  “Your balance,” Frikkie continues, “has been adjusted. Interest, reassessment, and a convenience fee for my time and the two goons it took to stuff your limp body in a car.”

  Aster stares at him. “How much?”

  Frikkie grins. “R1.8 million.”

  Aster stiffens. “You just added six hundred thousand for a week late?! That’s not interest. That’s armed robbery.”

  Frikkie shrugs. “Welcome to the economy.”

  Aster opens his mouth—to explain, to negotiate, maybe to offer a tasteful bribe—but a knock at the door interrupts him.

  Frikkie doesn’t even turn. “Bring her in.”

  Aster clenches his jaw, trying to gather his thoughts. He has enough. Barely. Matter left him just over two million in cash and stocks before he’d need to touch his house and car. Paying Frikkie off now would clean his account, cripple his cultivation budget, and leave him crawling for every spiritual crumb until the next loan came knocking.

  But he’d be free. Clean slate.