Season 1 • Chapter 1: The Worldstone's Arrival
Aega's breaths came in ragged gasps as he leaned against the cold metal wall of the abandoned subway station. The flickering overhead lamp painted his gaunt face in harsh relief—sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, lips cracked from fever. He pressed a trembling hand to his chest, where a dull ache pulsed like a hidden drum. One month. That was all the doctors had given him after the final scan. Thirty days to live.
He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back to the night it began. The small, dimly lit room. The syringe. The last time he'd chased that numbness.
He'd been a junkie once—a needle in his vein bringing momentary peace from the cancer that devoured him from within. But the chemotherapy had come too late, and the drugs only hollowed him out faster. His veins were scarred, his liver struggling, and his lungs scarred from years of smoke and chemical residue. Soon, the disease would claim him.
When the craving for relief had grown unbearable, Aega had fled the sterile, fluorescent hospital and stumbled into the cavernous ruins beneath the city. He hadn't planned to die here. He only wanted one last hit of oblivion. He secured an unmarked vial of glowing liquid—an illicit concoction whispered to grant visions beyond normal sight. His last vice.
He found a cracked concrete bench, sat down, and injected the fluid. The burn was instantaneous, but instead of darkness, his senses flared. Colors inverted. The world tilted on its axis. He heard a distant pulse, like a heartbeat not his own, thudding from within.
Then he saw it.
A small, ovoid stone—no larger than a human fist—hovering inches above his chest. It glowed with a faint inner light, veins of iridescent blue coursing across its surface like living rivers. Aega's heart hammered as the stone drew closer, settling itself gently against his skin through the tattered fabric of his shirt. He felt warmth at the point of contact, then a subtle shift, as if the stone had burrowed beneath his ribs and become one with his body.
He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the echoing tunnels. The stone's light pulsed once, twice, then steadied. The pain receded, leaving a curious emptiness—and a tiny, persistent voice in the back of his mind:
"You are the vessel. Tend the spark. Let life grow."
Aega staggered to his feet, clutching at the worldstone against his chest. He sprinted up the rusted stairwell, scrambling into the night atop the city streets. His ragged breaths slowed as the drug's effects eased, but the stone's presence was unmistakable—warm, alive, thrumming in time with his own heartbeat.
Back in his cramped apartment, he collapsed onto the threadbare mattress. The lamp beside him shuddered and went out, plunging the room into darkness. Aega lay still, pondering the impossible: he, a dying man with nothing to lose, had become host to an alien artifact.
Morning light filtered weakly through a grimy window. Aega awoke to a strange sensation: something small, something moving under his skin. He sat up, half-expecting to see the stone glowing through his chest, but instead his entire body felt… alive. Energized. He flexed his fingers, felt warmth in his limbs—a stark contrast to the relentless ache he'd grown used to.
He pressed a finger to the spot beneath his collarbone, where the worldstone had lodged itself. The warmth was soothing, almost comforting. He closed his eyes and concentrated, recalling the words he'd heard in the darkness: tend the spark, let life grow. What did they mean?
A sudden ripple of motion coursed through his arm—like tiny tremors in muscle fiber. Aega gasped and peeled back the sleeve of his tattered shirt. Beneath the skin of his forearm, he saw… a colony. Not insects or worms, but thousands of microscopic humanoid shapes clustering along a network of pulsing veins. They stood no more than a fraction of a millimeter tall, their bodies glowing faintly the same color as the worldstone's veins.
Aega's breath caught in his throat. Each tiny figure looked like a miniature person, complete with arms, legs, and a head, though their features were too small to discern. They shuffled and spoke in a whispering chorus—a sound so soft it was more felt than heard.
…"He awakens."
…"We are born."
…"Argaterra lives."
He recognized one word: Argaterra. The hidden name of this nascent world—his own body.
His mind reeled. These micro-humanoids had emerged from the worldstone, and now they lived within him. They looked to him as their creator, their world-builder. He recalled the doctors' warnings about his failing organs: his lungs were riddled with scar tissue, his liver battered, his neurons weary. And yet, here was new life—thriving where nothing had grown before.
Aega swallowed against the lump in his throat. He wasn't strong. He didn't know how to fight. But within him, a civilization had just been born. Perhaps, through them, he could find purpose—or even, miraculously, a way to survive longer than thirty days.
He closed his eyes and reached inward, letting the warmth of the stone guide him. Around his veins, he felt the tremors of a thousand tiny steps seeking direction. He whispered, voice thick with wonder, "Grow. Thrive. Build."
And somewhere deep within, Argaterra responded in a thousand soft voices, promising to endure.
That night, as Aega drifted into a fitful sleep, he wondered if he would awake in one month—or if Argaterra would outlast his own fleeting spark of life. Either way, he was no longer alone. A hidden cosmos now pulsed within him, and his final days had just become the beginning of something far greater.