The air thrummed with a dissonance I’d never before encountered. It wasn’t chaos, not precisely. More like a… peeling back. Like the universe was shedding layers of itself, revealing something raw and undeniably *wrong*. I witnessed it, of course. The Scholar-Kin, those meticulously ordered beings of logic and observation, were… disrupted. Their crystalline structures, normally radiating with serene blue light, fractured, shards scattering like frozen tears. The cause remained elusive – a localized distortion in the Aetheric currents, perhaps? Or something… older. Something that sought to remind us of our place within the grand, uncaring tapestry.
The ‘stabbing’ wasn’t physical, not initially. It was a severance. A severing of connection. A disconnect between the known and the terrifying potential of the unseen. I felt it most acutely in Lyra’s eyes – a sudden, profound emptiness where understanding used to reside. She simply… ceased to process. A chilling testament to the vulnerability of even the most fortified minds.
The fracturing intensified. The Aetheric distortions coalesced, forming patterns that resembled… blossoms. Not beautiful blossoms, mind you. These were composed of solidified shadow and pulsing crimson light. These 'Obsidian Blooms', as we began to call them, radiated a palpable sense of *intent*. It wasn’t a hostile intent, not overtly. More like a persistent, unnerving curiosity. A desire to *explore* the shattered remnants of our reality.
I observed several individuals – those closest to the Bloom’s influence – experiencing… the ‘stabbing’. The sensation was described as a cold, precise intrusion. Not a physical wound, but a violation of the self. A momentary erasure of memory, replaced by a single, overwhelming image: a spiraling vortex of crimson light. The reports were fragmented, unreliable, like dreams struggling to hold form. Some claimed to have seen themselves reflected within the Bloom’s core – a grotesque parody of their own existence. Others spoke of feeling their thoughts dissected, analyzed, and ultimately, discarded.
The Bloom’s influence spread. The Scholar-Kin were gone, entirely. Their structures had dissolved, leaving behind only dust and echoes. The air grew heavier, colder. The sense of ‘stabbing’ became more frequent, more intense. Individuals would simply… cease to be. Not in a violent manner. More like fading. Like a candle flame extinguished by a sudden gust of wind. Their essence seemed to be drawn into the Blooms, becoming part of their unsettling, iridescent core.
I began to understand the nature of the intrusion. It wasn’t about destruction. It was about *replacement*. The Blooms weren’t attacking us. They were *re-writing* us. Injecting fragments of themselves into our minds, altering our memories, reshaping our perceptions. It was a process of gradual assimilation, a slow, meticulous corruption of the soul. The feeling of the ‘stabbing’ was the sensation of this re-writing, the raw, agonizing awareness of one’s own identity being eroded.