Beneath the Crimson Sky

The sky had bled for years.

It wasn’t always this way, or so the old ones said. Once, the sun rose golden and warm. Clouds were white and soft as feathers. Rain fell clear, not black and acidic. But those days were gone—swallowed by the flames that turned the heavens crimson and the earth to ash.

Kaelen had never known any other world.

He walked the cracked earth, boots crunching over bones and glass. The air smelled of iron and smoke, even this far from the ruins of the cities. His mask hissed as it filtered toxins from the air. Above, the sky glowed red, swirling with dust and faint streaks of lightning.

Every step carried him farther from home.

Not that there was much of a home left. His village had been dying for years—water poisoned, crops withered. People whispered about the storms getting stronger, about the creatures that roamed in the darkness. About the Crimson Core.

Some said it was a machine. Others called it a wound in the earth itself.

Kaelen only knew one thing: if he didn’t find it, his people wouldn’t survive.

By the third day, the desert was trying to kill him.

The heat scorched his skin through layers of cloth. Razor-edged winds tore at his coat. He passed the husks of vehicles buried in the sand, their metal frames twisted and blackened. The dead stared up at him with empty sockets, their mouths open in silent screams.

He didn’t stop.

At night, Kaelen lit no fire. He crouched in the shadow of a jagged rock formation, watching the sky flicker. Strange lights danced in the clouds—blue, green, and violet streaks like veins pulsing in a sick body.

The stories came back to him.

"It was greed that broke the world," his grandmother had said. "They dug too deep, built too high. And the earth bled."

Kaelen didn’t know if he believed her. But the crimson sky didn’t lie.

Somewhere beneath it, the truth waited.

On the fifth day, he found the first sign.

A massive fissure split the ground ahead, wide enough to swallow a city. Heat poured from it, and the edges glowed faintly red. He could hear it—a low hum, deep in the earth, like a heartbeat.

Kaelen dropped to his knees and peered into the abyss.

Far below, something moved.

It wasn’t human.

The creature came at dusk.

Kaelen had set up a crude shelter near the fissure when he heard it—heavy footsteps crunching over rock, the sound too deliberate to be the wind. He slipped his knife from its sheath and pressed his back to the stone wall.

It appeared in the dying light: tall, skeletal, its skin stretched thin over a twisted frame. Eyes glowed white in the shadows. Its claws scraped the rock as it sniffed the air.

Kaelen didn’t breathe.

The creature paused. Its head turned sharply, and for a moment, he swore it looked right at him.

Then it spoke.

“Why do you come, human?”

The voice was wrong—too many tones layered over each other, as if a dozen throats spoke at once.

Kaelen tightened his grip on the knife. “I came for the Core.”

“Many come. None return.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

The creature stepped closer. Its skin shimmered faintly, as if it wasn’t entirely real.

Kaelen’s heart pounded. “Are you going to stop me?”

The creature tilted its head. “No. The Core will stop you.”

And then it melted into the shadows, vanishing like smoke.

The descent began at dawn.

Kaelen climbed down the fissure with makeshift ropes, the air growing hotter and heavier the deeper he went. The hum became a roar. Walls of stone pulsed faintly, veins of molten light twisting like arteries.

It felt alive.

By the time he reached the bottom, sweat soaked his clothes, and his skin felt burned.

And there it was.

The Crimson Core.

A sphere the size of a cathedral floated above the ground, tethered to the earth by massive tendrils of glowing metal and flesh. It pulsed slowly, like a sleeping heart. Every beat sent ripples of red light through the cavern.

Kaelen stared, transfixed.

So this was the wound in the world.

“You seek to heal what cannot be healed.”

The voice echoed all around him.

Kaelen turned. The creature from before stood in the shadows, its eyes like cold stars.

“Why?” Kaelen demanded. “Why can’t it be healed?”

“Because your kind made it so. You burned the sky, poisoned the earth, and then you left your machines to feast on what was left. The Core is their hunger made manifest.”

Kaelen shook his head. “There has to be a way. My people—”

“Your people are already dead. You just haven’t realized it.”

“Then let me try!” Kaelen shouted. “If there’s even a chance—”

The creature was silent for a long moment.

“There is a chance. One chance.”

Kaelen gritted his teeth. “What is it?”

“The Core needs a heart. Yours.”

He froze.

“Sacrifice yourself. Bind your life to the wound. Only then can the earth begin to heal.”

Kaelen’s hands trembled. He thought of his grandmother, of the children in the village wasting away. He thought of the crimson sky.

And he stepped forward.

As he pressed his hand to the Core, searing pain shot through his body. His skin burned, his blood turned to fire. He screamed as the Core’s tendrils wrapped around him, pulling him into its pulsing heart.

The last thing he saw was the sky far above, streaked with red.

And then—

Light.

White, pure, and blinding.

When Kaelen opened his eyes, he wasn’t Kaelen anymore.

He was the Core.

And for the first time in centuries, the sky began to change.

The red faded to gold.