Chapter 16 - First Contact

Kleo stood just beyond the crackling embrace of her hastily conjured barrier, observing the creature through its shimmering veil.

The barrier pulsed between them—a field of softly breathing Kull magic, radiant and resolute, alive with sigils that swam like luminous plankton in starlit depths. Kleo had woven it instinctively, a reflexive line etched in magic, meant to stay the creature’s advance.

It was intended to repel, to bind.

It did neither.

She studied the creature. The very essence of its presence resonated as distinctly feminine yet utterly alien.

Taller than any man, its slender, elongated form was encased in an organic carapace that shimmered with deep violet and obsidian iridescence. The skin exposed between the armor-like plates was slick and dark, textured like the pearlescent interior of a deep-sea shell. Not wet, precisely, but imbued with an ancient breath and a vitality that held no warmth.

Her limbs stretched beyond human proportion; her fingers possessed two extra articulations, culminating in curved, blackened claws that clicked softly with each subtle flex. The bones within her arms and legs shifted with a delicate asymmetry, lending her movements an unsettling elegance—almost graceful, yet perpetually a fraction out of sync, as if the very laws of gravity yielded differently in her vicinity.

Her head was narrow and elongated, framed by two backward-swept horns that spiraled like polished night-stone. A thin mane of wiry, translucent tendrils cascaded down her back, drifting with a weightless languor. Her eyes—if they could be called such—were clusters of luminous opalescent points, faintly throbbing like a hidden heartbeat beneath the skin. There were no irises, no pupils, just the suggestion of sight, as though she perceived the world between moments, reading the subtle currents of the air, sensing echoes of memory within the stone.

“Kullo’s scion…

Ascendant daughter…

You carry her… essence.

She was meant to tread this path herself. I felt the whisper of her soul’s passing, a fleeting memory.

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And now… you.”

Her speech defied mortal articulation. When she opened her mouth, her voice emerged as a simultaneous whisper and vibration—like ancient glass singing under stress. Her archaic tongue was guttural and fragmented, more raw sensation than structured form, the skeletal remains of a language Rugr struggled to piece together.

Her thoughts arrived with vast pauses, like echoes traversing unimaginable distances. Yet, behind those luminous points, intelligence flickered. Fractured, undeniably. Weary with epochs, certainly. But brilliant—in a way that dwarfed Kleo, casting her as a child standing at the precipice of forgotten ages.

She touched the edge of Kleo’s ward—once only.

Like dragging a finger through undisturbed water, a ripple expanded outward. The magic yielded, parting like unwinding silk. Not torn asunder. Not shattered. Simply… opened. The intricate weave rewritten by an older, more knowing hand.

Kleo flinched. The weight of Rugr shifted protectively behind her.

Then—with a deliberate slowness—the creature pressed her palm flat against the shimmering surface, and the barrier reformed. The disrupted weave knitted itself whole—seamless, yet bearing the imprint of a foreign design—like cloth returned from a stranger’s loom.

A silent declaration.

I possess the means to depart… yet I linger.

Kleo pressed her hand gently against the barrier. The Kull magic rippled beneath her fingertips, like oil on polished glass. Then—softer still—it began to pulse in response, a captured breath beneath her palm.

The creature’s elongated head tilted infinitesimally. One long, curved finger tapped a point near the apex of the barrier. The magic recoiled under its touch—trembled with unseen force—and then yielded again, the surface swirling like molten glass. The light within that point expanded outward into a rectangular frame, a window into the impossible.

The field grew translucent, revealing a moving image beyond—a scene painted in hues that defied earthly palettes.

A memory: a stone room with a portal, bathed in half-light, a shimmering aperture at its heart. The creature stood before it, flanked by two others of her kin. A silent flare erupted—felt in the bone rather than heard—as the aperture fractured and collapsed. The others vanished, leaving her stranded in the echoing silence. Alone.

Another touch. The image shifted and reformed.

This was a vision of her origin: a fractured sky striated with bands of color that flowed like viscous, inky currents. Strange flora with spiraling trunks swayed in an alien wind, their shadows coiling unnaturally across the ochre ground. In the distance rose spires of bone-white, their surfaces riddled with perforations like ancient flutes—a beautiful and profoundly unsettling landscape.

A third image coalesced.

The portal again—with Kleo now standing beside it.

The unspoken implication resonated with chilling clarity:

Empower it. Open the way. Release me to my home.

A plea conveyed without utterance, a demand imbued with ancient patience rather than brute force.