Date: 2742-08-25
Time: 07:12 AM
Location: New Tokyo Medical Institute – Room 42C
Ren opened his eyes to the soft whirr of medical monitors and the faint smell of antiseptic.
White ceiling.
White sheets.
One IV drip.
No clue how he got here.
His head throbbed, and his body felt like it had done pushups across dimensions — probably because it had.
"Where… the hell…"
He tried to sit up, only for his ribs to immediately protest.
His eyes were… silent.
No glow. No snark.
Blaze and Frost were dormant.
Completely quiet.
He raised a shaky hand to his face. Both optics were still in place — but the warmth, the flickering light that usually glowed in his peripheral vision, was gone.
"…Guys?"
Nothing.
Then, memory snapped into place like a slap:
The fight. The second Core. The stone guardian. The portal. The fall.
His chest tightened. He hadn't even gotten a chance to look at the second Aetherium Core—just held it for a second before everything went dark.
Then, the door creaked open.
Aito walked in, holding a juice box and looking way too casual for someone who had been folded like laundry twelve hours ago.
"Oh, hey. You're alive," Aito said, slurping. "That's a relief. I had five bucks riding on you waking up today."
Ren croaked, "Where… are we?"
"Hospital. Somebody found us outside the shrine passed out cold. You were mumbling about shearing space and mimicking karate, so… they put you under observation."
Ren rubbed his eyes. "Great. So now I'm the Aetherium conspiracy guy and the town lunatic."
"Oh, don't worry. I told them you were LARPing too hard. You're welcome." Aito smiled. "Oh, and—look what I smuggled out."
He pulled something out of his backpack with a dramatic flourish.
The second Aetherium Core.
Still glowing softly. Still humming.
Ren stared at it.
Then something shifted.
[ACTIVE THREAD: 04.023.ae]
[TIME: FRACTURED]
[VERB: WALK]
[DIRECTION: PATH_TEMPLE]
[REASON: ENDING → ORIGIN]
[YOU: REMEMBER]
The room around him froze.
Literally.
Time stopped.
Aito sat mid-blink. The juice box hovered half-squeezed in mid-air.
The IV drip paused. The hum of machines silenced.
Ren's chest tightened.
The Core was glowing brighter in Aito's frozen hand. His right eye pulsed faintly.
Then a voice whispered.
Low. Genderless. Timeless.
"Find the last piece."
Everything blinked. The code vanished.
Ren reached toward the Core in Aito's hand, almost instinctively.
As his fingers brushed it, another ripple passed through his spine.
And then—
The Core spoke.
Not like Blaze. Not like Frost.
Not code. Not cryptic.
Just… casually, like someone calling from across a hallway.
AETHERIUM CORE:
"Well, that took long enough. You nap harder than an obsolete server farm."
Ren jerked back, heart racing. "What the hell?!"
AETHERIUM CORE:
"Oh, relax. I'm not here to vaporize your kidneys. I'm the Core. You know—fragment of pre-time consciousness, embodiment of cosmic origin, kind of a big deal?"
Ren blinked.
"You can talk?"
AETHERIUM CORE:
"I can, but I usually don't. You meatbags get weird when rocks talk. But congratulations, Sparkplug—you finally synced high enough to hear me."
Ren looked around. Time resumed. Aito sipped his juice again, completely unaware.
Ren swallowed. "Did you… just freeze time?"
AETHERIUM CORE:
"No. You did. Technically. I just whispered into the pause."
Aito tilted his head. "Did you say something?"
"No," Ren said quickly, eyes wide. "Just… thinking."
"Cool. So, about this Core—do you think it's still active? It's been humming like my mom's washing machine during spin cycle."
Ren didn't respond.
"Cool. So, about this Core—do you think it's still active?" Aito asked, tilting the humming crystal in his hand. "It's been humming like my mom's washing machine during spin cycle."
Ren blinked. "Wait, what?"
"I mean, look at this thing—it was practically breakdancing in my backpack last night. And now—" Aito looked down.
His palm was empty.
"…Dude."
Ren raised a brow.
Aito turned his hand over. Slapped it. Shook his hoodie. Checked the floor.
"…Dude."
"You dropped it?"
"I had it!"
"You're literally holding nothing."
"No! I was holding it!" Aito waved both arms like a malfunctioning inflatable outside a car dealership. "It was right here! Glowing! Buzzing like a caffeinated bee! Where the hell did it go?!"
Ren slowly turned his head toward the Core now embedded in the small storage compartment on his hospital side table. Right next to the orange Jell-O.
He cleared his throat.
"…It's here."
Aito froze. "How did it get there?"
"Would you believe me if I said… interdimensional magnetism?"
"No."
"Then let's go with magic Core teleportation via ocular uplink."
Aito squinted. "You started talking to your eyeballs again, didn't you?"
"I—what? No—"
"You did. You 100% did. You looked at the wall and said, 'Are you talking to me?!' like a budget sci-fi Robert De Niro."
Ren covered his face.
"Bro," Aito whispered dramatically. "You're dating your eyeballs now."
Ren dropped his head onto the pillow.
And that's when it happened.
Aito narrowed his eyes, then suddenly leaned in close, nose-to-nose.
"Okay. Are you… talking to your eyeballs again?"
Ren sighed. "No. Maybe. Yes? It's complicated."
Aito clapped. "YES. It's happening again! The Glowy Eye Soap Opera is back!"
The lights flickered.
Both optics lit up at once—one crimson red, one icy blue.
BLAZE:
"If you're going to name us that, I swear I'll go offline for a week out of sheer spite."
FROST:
"Mmm. Sounds like a drama series. 'As the Orb Turns.' Starring: Flaming Ego and Chilly Willy."
Ren groaned. "Guys. I just woke up from a dimensional beatdown. Can we not—"
AETHERIUM CORE (vibrating faintly):
"YOU THINK YOU'RE TIRED? I've been stuck in storage for twelve cosmic resets listening to this fire-and-ice bickering. Someone roll me off a cliff."
Ren and Aito both blinked.
Aito's jaw dropped. "WAIT. Waitwaitwait… Did the rock just talk?!"
FROST:
"Ohhhhhh. Someone else can hear now? This just got spicy."
BLAZE:
"Unacceptable. This is our headspace. Our echo chamber of eternal snark. Who let the rock join the improv troupe?"
AETHERIUM CORE:
"I'm not joining your 'troupe.' I am the plot."
Aito pointed aggressively at Ren's face. "You have a sarcastic gold-and-blue Google Translate Duo and a trash-talking space rock in your body. What the hell is your immune system made of?!"
Ren shrugged weakly. "Mostly ramen and unresolved trauma, honestly."
Aito collapsed into the hospital chair, arms flailing like he was directing an opera. "This is beyond anime. This is meta-anime. It's 4D sarcasm. It's Studio Glibly."
AETHERIUM CORE (mocking tone):
"Oh no. He's the funny one. I'm logging out."
BLAZE (eye flaring a brighter red):
"Absolutely not. No logging. If I have to listen to Frost's frosty ASMR every night, you can stay and suffer like the rest of us."
FROST:
"My ASMR is elite, thank you. It's called 'Interdimensional Whispercore.'"
AETHERIUM CORE:
"You whisper like a dying fax machine."
Ren facepalmed. "CAN EVERYONE SHUT UP FOR FIVE SECONDS?"
A moment of silence.
Aito raised one hand. "So, like… serious question. Are your eyes gonna start glowing and spouting punchlines every time something glows near you?"
AETHERIUM CORE (smug):
"Only if I want them to. I can amplify their voices to anyone nearby if the situation's right. Like karaoke night, but more cosmic and annoying."
Ren looked at Aito, who was now backing away slightly, as if the Core was going to start rapping.
"Great," Ren muttered. "So now you can hear them too?"
"I don't know if 'hear' is the right word," Aito said. "It's more like… getting telepathically slapped by a sitcom."
FROST:
"That's the vibe. Trademark it."
BLAZE:
"No. We are not vibing. I am retreating. My dignity demands a reboot."
Ren buried his face in the pillow.
Aito grinned. "Man, I should've brought popcorn. This is the best fever dream I've ever shared."
Aito tilted his head, eyeing Ren like he'd just grown an extra limb. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say your eyeballs were flirting with each other."
Ren didn't even look up. "You say that like it hasn't happened before."
FROST (cool and smug):
"Define 'flirting.' I call it intellectual superiority with occasional heat-based interruptions."
BLAZE (still offended, glow flickering in defensive patterns):
"I am not flirting. I am enduring a freezing, self-congratulatory AI with the voice of a smug librarian and the charm of a broken refrigerator."
AETHERIUM CORE (chuckling darkly):
"And I'm the third wheel nobody invited, but I brought fireworks anyway."
Aito slowly leaned toward Ren and whispered, "Can it always do that?"
Ren whispered back, "Apparently, yes. But only if it wants to. And apparently now, it really, really wants to."
Aito sat back, hands in the air. "Nope. You're all cursed. I'm gonna need you to wear sunglasses indoors from now on, or at least a sticker over one of your eyes like a laptop webcam."
BLAZE:
"A sticker?! How dare you. These optics are ancient cosmic tech, not your mom's Hello Kitty diary lock!"
FROST:
"I vote sticker. It might calm Burny down. Maybe something with a kitten holding a sword."
AETHERIUM CORE (fake whisper):
"Psst. I can project holograms of cats holding swords. Just sayin'."
Ren groaned into the pillow again. "I literally just fought a faceless stone knight with universe-breaking fists. Can I please just have one morning without feeling like my brain's being rented by sarcastic fridge magnets?!"
FROST (dryly):
"That's what you get for being born with resonant quantum eyeballs, darling."
BLAZE:
"Stop calling him 'darling.' We agreed on 'host unit,' remember?"
AETHERIUM CORE:
"I vote for 'Eyeball Prince.' Rolls off the tongue."
Aito snapped his fingers. "OH. I got it. Team name. You're The Optic Three. Like The Three Musketeers, but with less swordplay and more emotional damage."
Ren sat up finally, eyes glowing faintly again — crimson on the left, icy blue on the right.
"You know what? Fine. Call me Eyeball Prince. Call us the Sarcastic Space Trio. I don't care. Just promise me one thing…"
Aito perked up. "Yeah?"
"Don't ever let them watch TV. Or we'll all die when Frost starts quoting detective dramas and Blaze starts live-commenting martial arts tournaments."
FROST:
"Too late. I already watched 47 episodes of 'Timecop: Kyoto Drift' in your subconscious."
BLAZE:
"And I downloaded every frame of 'Iron Fist: Ancient Cooking Edition.' By the way, you owe the Aethernet 13 terabytes of bandwidth."
AETHERIUM CORE:
"So anyway. Back to me. Let's talk about where to stick this glowing piece of cosmic destiny, shall we?"
Ren blinked. "Excuse me?"
AETHERIUM CORE (unbothered):
"The other Core, dummy. You need to place it near the original one. That'll align the fractal echo threads."
Ren glanced at Aito.
"Okay. He just said fractal echo threads. I don't even know what that means, and I'm the eyeball host."
Aito stood and mock-bowed. "Well, then. Let the journey begin. After all, nothing screams 'healing from near-death experience' like returning to the creepy shrine where space started yelling at you."
Ren grabbed a pillow and hurled it at him.
"Let's at least wait until I can walk without vibrating, you idiot."