Chapter 956

Chapter 956: 956

The blinding glare of the stellar core suddenly dimmed to a soft, pulsing ember as the two Driftborn withdrew their massive hands from the star. The violent roiling of the plasma subsided into a quiet, steady burn, leaving behind an eerie, suspended silence in the vacuum.

The older sibling slowly uncurled his gargantuan palm, holding it out flat before the floating herald. Resting in the center of his massive palm which looked like an entire continent of rugged stone, was a compact, meticulously folded mass of dark, metallic fabric.

"We cannot fix the barriers of the worlds for you, little herald," the playful brother rumbled softly, leaning in close so his voice vibrated directly within Tweet’s mind. "An immune system must test what enters its borders. That is the law of life."

The older titan carefully pinched the garment between two massive fingers, lifting it out of his palm and depositing it directly into the space before Tweet’s chest.

It unfolded itself in the zero-gravity vacuum, settling into a sleek, articulated suit of armor tailored precisely to Tweet’s humanoid form. The metal possessed a deep, obsidian sheen that seemed to swallow the ambient starlight, and etched seamlessly across the chest plate was the bold, unmistakable insignia of the Driftborn, a pair of intersecting paths bridging an endless void.

"A shell for the road, bearing the mark of the threshold," the brothers spoke together, their resonant voices wrapping around the small herald like a warm embrace. "Wear it well, traveler. May it keep your bones intact until our paths cross beneath the stars once more."

Tweet accepted the gift, resting his palm upon it as he watched the two towering figures prepare for their departure.

"Are we going to see each other again? My creator would love to have you both," Tweet said, his voice carrying an eager, expectant tone.

The brothers exchanged a brief glance before a booming, resonant laughter erupted from them, shaking the space around them. "It has been an age since anyone has thought to invite us as guests," the younger brother rumbled, amusement still crinkling the corners of his eyes.

The laughter faded as abruptly as it began, replaced by a profound, heavy silence as their gaze locked onto Tweet. "There is a reason we are called the Driftborn, little herald," the older brother said.

Before Tweet could form a reply, the older entity continued, stepping slightly forward as the light around seemed to bend around his massive silhouette. "We only ever experience the firm land between our feet and the warmth of the sun above our heads for the first few years of our existence. After that, everything changes."

A sorrowful weight settled into the younger brother’s tone as he continued. "We only learned of this truth much later, when we crossed paths with an intensely advanced civilization that took a keen interest in studying our biological makeup."

"Naturally, they didn’t get very far in their research before their instruments failed, but they allowed us to learn a great deal about ourselves in return. You see, across our long lives, we have witnessed many worlds meet their end."

"We didn’t understand why back then, only that worlds seemed to fracture and die whenever we grew too close. It was through that civilization that we finally learned the terrible truth, we are the reason those cataclysms occur."

"Such deep knowledge isn’t my forte," the younger one muttered, glancing briefly at his sibling, "but according to those scholars, the bigger something is, the greater its mass, coupled with a bunch of other complex words..."

The older brother, watching his sibling struggle to articulate the technical burden, stepped in to better explain it to Tweet.

The older brother placed a heavy, mineral-crusted hand upon his sibling’s shoulder.

"He means to say that our very substance defies the natural balance of settled worlds," the older brother explained, his gaze shifting from Tweet’s stunned face toward the distant horizon. "A body so vast that it might cradle an entire world in the hollow of a single palm comes with a price."

"When we draw near to a populated sphere, when we seek the simple comfort of soil beneath our feet or the company of those who dwell in those world, our mere presence tears at the fabric of their home. Our mass does not merely greet a world, it commands it. The crust groans, the oceans rise to chase us in monstrous, continent-drowning tides, and the very fault lines tear open like old wounds. We dismantle worlds simply by daring to exist too close to them."

A bitter, sorrowful note bled into his deep voice. "That civilization tried to give us names for it, gravitational shear, tidal disruption, the collapsing well of spacetime. But no vocabulary of mortals can soften the reality of what we leave in our wake. Whole kingdoms slip beneath the waves, and skies choke on the dust of shattered tectonic plates, all because we wished to stand still for a single season."

He looked back down at Tweet, his massive eyes glowing with an ancient grief. "Your creator sounds kind, little herald, and the gift you bear is a rare and beautiful mercy. But an invitation to stay is a sentence of absolute ruin. We cannot walk among you without bringing the very heavens down upon your heads."

The older brother’s gaze softened just a fraction, the terrible, crushing pressure drawing back quikly.

"Yet, do not mistake our curse for an absolute law," he continued, his tone steadying into something peaceful. "Over epochs of wandering through the dark, we have learned to hold ourselves in check. We tether our mass, binding our destructive weight behind invisible walls of will. We temper the pull that tears at worlds."

He let out a slow, earth-shaking breath "We can delay the inevitable, little herald. We can walk softly for a time, but we can never truly erase what we are. Even our restraint has a limit."

He turned his massive frame toward the horizon, his brother moving in silent synchronization beside him. "We will meet again, if fate wills it. The paths of the cosmos are strange, and all roads eventually loop back upon themselves."

Before Tweet could draw breath to respond, before a single word of argument or farewell could cross his lips, the two entities vanished.

There was no sound of tearing space, no blinding flash of light, no violent atmospheric shockwave, nor any lingering disruption of the dust. One second they filled the horizon with their impossible scale, and the next, they simply were no longer there. The empty space they occupied felt hollow, as if reality had quietly closed a seam behind them.

A sudden, chilling realization struck Tweet, freezing him in place.

These two were not merely beings of immense size, they operated on tiers of existence entirely unimaginable to his current self. It struck him with the sharp clarity, just as gods and paragons existence like himself existed in dimensions above ordinary mortal perception, untouchable and unfathomable to those beneath them, these brothers existed entirely in dimensions unknown to him.

He had only been able to see them, speak to them, and stand in their presence because they had deliberately lowered their veil to allow it. If they had chosen otherwise, his senses would not have even registered their approach, let alone permitted him to draw close enough to offer a gift. They were ghosts of a higher reality, walking quietly among the stars.

With that realization came a sudden, sharp understanding as he looked down at the armor they had gifted him. He remembered the casual, awe-inspiring display of raw power when the two entities had forged the metal simply by plunging their bare hands into the heart of a burning star.

"Show-off," Tweet muttered to himself, shaking his head as he suddenly saw right through the dramatic flair. They hadn’t needed a stellar furnace at all; they could have shaped the alloy through sheer will or invisible mechanics without any of the theatrical display.

In immediate response to his muttered words, a voice echoed inside his mind, ringing clear as though the younger brother were standing right beside him again, fully aware of how Tweet’s mind would work.

"We did it to show off of course," the voice rumbled with clear amusement. "You strike us as one who loves to tell a tale. We could only imagine the stories you would weave for those who cross your path, tales of titans who use a living star as an anvil and a forge. Image matters, little herald." A deep, fading chuckle echoed in the chambers of his consciousness.

Tweet stood frozen in the stillness of the void, his gaze locked on the empty space where the colossal brothers had just stood. It took him a long moment to process the weight of the encounter, to let the lingering hum of their power fade from his senses. Gradually, the lines of hesitation and uncertainty smoothed away from his expression, replaced by a strong resolve.