Sky Splits - Ch. 1

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  The Jade Chakra Dragon thundered first; her glimmering surface shimmered and rippled like liquid light, slicing through the skies as the avalanche roared and crashed below.

  Thud! The violet, barky text-block manuscript slipped from my hands and struck the soft, deep snow. My heart jumped as the sound rang out—a sharp, rumbling clatter that shouldn’t have been possible. Drakos froze, his ears pinned back, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

  I stiffened, my breath hitching, and my fingers instinctively twitched as if trying to grasp the fallen grimoire. But there was no thud. At least, not as it should have been. The noise swelled unnaturally, echoing through the icy air like a bell tolling a warning. My stomach churned, a cold knot twisting deeper with every beat of the reverberation.

  Emblazoned on the cover, its title seemed to glare at me, heavy with disapproval: Grimoire of the Chronicle Stages of Dying and Living. Snowflakes scattered around the grimoire, the pristine surface now marred by my carelessness.

  My companion, Sheppard Drakos, barked, his tone sharp and insistent. His ears flattened, and he circled the book as if it were alive—something dangerous. A chill crawled up my spine, but it wasn’t from the cold. Drakos’s head turned toward me, his gaze settling on the fallen text. He stopped barking and stood still, not waving his tail. Instead, he closed his eyes as if a guru ready to chant—low and steady at first, then rising in intensity. His voice cut through the storm, resonating in a way I didn’t understand but could feel deep in my chest. This was no ordinary chant—it was raw, commanding, eerily coming from a dog.

  Before I died, everything that had happened to me replayed like a movie fast-forwarding at 100x speed. They called me a jinx, a walking curse—a Harbinger of Doom. In my hometown, they spat the words like venom: Wretched Witch. The truth they believed about me cut deep, like a blade slicing through the brittle air. I shouldn’t have defied my grandmother, no matter the shadow her lineage cast over me. Or my mother, who begged me not to wander in the mountains. If I had obeyed, worked quietly as a kitchen hand in Master’s practice house, none of this would be happening.

  But no. I had to adamantly climb these cursed Himalayan peaks, trying to escape from the practice house. As such, the storm screamed around us, biting through my patched parka and into my skin. My shawl flapped wildly as I gripped it tighter around my shoulders. Loose strands of raven-black hair stuck to my wind-burned cheeks, flushed red against the olive tone of my skin. The air burned my lungs, my breath a pale fog that vanished as quickly as it came. My eyes, darkened to shades of brown and blue by the storm’s fury, seemed sharper, more almond-shaped—like the crisis itself had carved them this way. The irises caught the faint light and swirling snow, wide, frantic, searching. My lips quivered, already cracked and bloodied from the cold. I looked like a stray goat caught in a blizzard—fragile, out of place. My boots barely clung to my feet, soaked and scuffed from days of trudging through snow. Even my grandmother’s woven tunic beneath the parka was drenched, heavy against my thin frame.

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  The worst part? I had dragged my dog, who had accompanied me all these years loyally and lovingly—Drakos, unshakable as the mountains. Drakos, silently lying on his belly, looked at the avalanche filled with faces of avatars and everyone we knew who had passed away. My chest tightened as I stared at the jagged peaks, their shadows cast like judges over me.

  “Get a grip,” I suddenly heard a voice whisper nearby, but it was immediately swallowed by the wind. Still, there was the scent of a lotus I wasn’t familiar with at all. There were no lotuses in the mountains. Anyway, my nails bit into my palms through the coarse wool of my gloves. Deep down, I knew—I was nobody. Just a stubborn girl from the snowy mountains, leading us all toward ruin.

  “Maybe... if I put it back...” After all, it was just an old book, the Heaven Book—what did it have to do with me, a mundane? My words barely formed, the thought dissolving as quickly as it came. The golden-covered book lay in the snow, its title glaring at me. The snow crunched beneath my knees as I scrambled to retrieve it, my fingers trembling from the cold and fear. The storm’s howling wind tugged at my shawl, and Drakos whined, circling nervously.

  The skies thundered again—the lights, the colors, the fierce face shimmering with swirling maps—longitudes and latitudes glowing across her scales, shifting like living universes. Faces flickered within the patterns, serene yet unknowable, their meditative forms etched in lotus positions.

  “Drakos...” My voice broke, barely audible. “Do you see it?... all of it?” My hands clenched tighter around the barky and jade Heaven Book I had found and taken away from an ancient cave adjacent to the edge of the mountain. Someone’s hand gripped mine; I suspected it was my granddad or my dad pulling me back to my feet.

  “Focus,” the voice was steady even as the storm roared. I looked up at the dragon, bracing for death, and managed to answer: “Maybe this is it,” I whispered. “Maybe this is where it ends.” The voice shouted something else, but it was lost to the roar of the storm.

  The ground beneath me cracked, the world tilting as if the mountains themselves were giving way. And just like that, everything fell. Everybody dies. Now it’s my turn.

  And then the sky split.

  That happened—Today, circa 20,000,011.1.1, intertwining with 2025.1.1; where ancient fears meet the unknown. Or, rather, the yet-to-be-known.