The cube didn't move for three days.
It just sat there on the professor's glass table, glowing faintly like it was breathing. The pendant that had been next to it hovered in a magnetic trance, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.
Each night, the mark on my chest grew warmer. I could almost hear a hum buried under my pulse—as if the two artifacts were whispering to each other.
Professor Thornwood had locked every door and sealed all digital access.
"No Council involvement," he said, pacing across the lab. "Not until we understand what we stand on."
I nodded. I didn't tell him that I already felt what we stood on—a world trying to wake up.
On the fourth night, I was monitoring the cube readings when its core flared suddenly.
"Professor!" I called. "It's reacting to something—maybe the pendant!"
He hurried over and placed his instruments over the surface. Numbers flickered, then broke into symbols no device could read.
"This energy isn't pure electric or magnetic," he murmured. "It's trans‑dimensional."
Before I could ask what that meant, the cube lifted off the table and spun midair.
Rings of light emerged around it and expanded toward the walls. Wind rushed inside the sealed lab, whipping papers into a storm.
"Back away!" he shouted, but the air itself was magnetized; we couldn't move.
The cube burst open—white light exploded outward like a second sun.
For a brief moment, gravity ceased. We weren't in the lab anymore.
We were falling—and floating—inside a sky of liquid colour. Floating islands rotated around us, each carrying monuments half-built, half-burnt. Above them hung a crimson ring of light, pulsing like a heart the size of a planet.
"This is impossible," the professor breathed. "We're seeing a parallel plane—a real one."
I spun slowly, marvelling. "It feels alive. Like the world knows we're here."
But before he could answer, the scene cracked.
The floating land shimmered—then split into threads of electric light.
A shockwave hit. The pendant around my neck glowed too bright to bear.
"Hang on!" the professor yelled, reaching for me as lightning arched between us.
The impact threw us apart.
Pain ripped through my nerves—electric and cold. And then darkness took everything.
When vision returned, I was back in the lab. Smoke filled the room; machines lay shattered and sparking. The cube was cracked. The pendant had fallen into pieces.
And the professor was on the floor, unconscious.
"Father!" I stumbled over him but stopped mid‑step.
The fragments of the pendant began to glow again—melting into pure energy that flowed toward my chest.
Before I could move, the light sank into my skin like liquid fire.
I fell to my knees, gasping as a voice echoed inside my head—gentle, yet echoing from every direction at once.
"Hello, Host."
My heart stopped.
"Who's there?"
"I am Arina, the Divinity Goddess System. Would you like to begin binding?"
Her tone was unhurried, warm, and almost human. But the words pulled every cell in me tight.
"Binding to what?" I managed to say.
"To purpose. To fate. To the system that wants to rewrite what heaven forgets."
I froze, the room quiet except for the buzz of the broken lights.
"Why me?"
"Because your mark chose light over silence. Do you accept?"
I hesitated only a moment before breathing, "Okay."
"Binding process initiated. The host will experience synchronisation for twenty‑four hours. Warning: System exposure to others will result in mutual termination."
Her voice was calm when she added, "Until then, let the world see you as ordinary."
A surge of white static filled my vision. For a second, every memory in my mind flashed in reverse, as if life itself were being rewritten to fit around her presence.
Then silence and darkness.
When I opened my eyes again, it was morning.
The fire was out; the sky outside the lab glowed soft and grey.
The professor still lay on the floor, breathing shallowly but alive.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the counter, knelt, and splashed his face.
He stirred and blinked. "...Mukul?"
"I'm here," I said. "You passed out. The cube…exploded."
He sat up slowly, coughing. "What happened to the pendant?"
I glanced toward its shattered case. "Destroyed. Just fragments left."
He looked at me strangely for a second, as if he felt something different in the air—but said nothing.
While he inspected the wreckage, I felt the mark on my chest flicker.
It was no longer just a scar. It was alive—pulsing in harmony with a presence inside me.
Arina's voice whispered, "Day one of binding complete. Welcome home… Guardian."
I helped Father to his feet. We packed the broken cube, the remaining data, and our gear into steel cases.
Neither of us spoke much on the flight home. He thought we had barely survived a failed experiment.
I knew we had opened something the world wasn't ready for.
As the plane lifted off, I looked through the window at the distant desert we'd left behind.
Somewhere out there, beyond sky and memory, a parallel realm waited—and now a voice from its heart lived inside me.
And its first command was simple.
"Survive … in silence."