The sound was dry and violent—a sharp, splintering crack of hardwood striking hardwood with enough force to rattle the bones of anyone standing within the clearing. Clack. The impact echoed through the dense perimeter of the forest, sending a flock of native birds scattering from the canopy in a frantic, feathered cloud.

  In the center of the trampled grass, Rize gasped for air, her chest heaving like a rusted bellows. Sweat stung her eyes, a salty burn that blurred the world into a smear of green and brown, while her palms felt raw and blistered against the rough leather grip of her practice sword. Her fingertips throbbed, pulsing with a numb, electric heat that refused to fade, even as her muscles screamed for a reprieve.

  Across from her, Naz stood ready. He was a mountain of a man, his stance as solid and unyielding as a boulder rooted in the earth. Unlike Rize, he wasn't even out of breath. He watched her with a professional, heavy-lidded patience that only made Rize’s stomach churn with a sense of inadequacy.

  Faster, Rize told herself, her teeth clenched tight enough to ache. I have to be faster. At this speed, I’m just a spectator. If I don't change, I’ll never make it. I’ll just be watching again, screaming at a sky that doesn't answer.

  Frustration, hot and jagged like broken glass, pulsed in her chest. It mixed with the physical exhaustion, twisting into a reckless, desperate impulse. She didn't just want to react to Naz’s movements; she wanted to precede the moment itself, to exist in the heartbeat before the strike.

  Rize closed her eyes for a split second, reaching deep into the well of mana she had learned to tap during her short, brutal adventuring history. She didn't just draw the energy; she seized it, forcing the volatile current into her neural pathways. [Lightning.] It wasn't enough. The familiar spark of speed flickered in her limbs, but she needed more than a spark—she needed a wildfire.

  She pushed harder, layering the spell over itself, ignoring the primal warning bells ringing in the back of her mind. Double-Stack. The sensation was immediate and terrifying. Mana roared through her veins like a flash flood, a surging tide of power that began to overwrite her biological limits.

  The world didn't just sharpen; it slowed to a crawl. The rhythmic rustle of the wind through the trees dropped an octave into a low, guttural moan. Falling leaves seemed to hang suspended in the stagnant air, their descent reduced to a series of jerky, individual frames. Her thoughts accelerated into something inhuman, processing light and sound before her physical body could even register the signals.

  Naz’s shoulder twitched. In normal time, that movement would have been a negligible blur. But to Rize’s overclocked senses, she saw the individual muscle fibers contract beneath his tunic. She saw the infinitesimal shift in his center of gravity, the precise arc his blade would take before he had even fully committed to the swing. The future wasn't a guess anymore; it was a visible, glowing trail.

  There. She stepped in. Her body moved automatically, a puppet to her accelerated mind, her boots barely touching the grass. She knocked Naz’s blade aside with a sharp, resonant crack that vibrated all the way up her spine. By the time his eyes widened in genuine, startled shock, Rize’s wooden tip was already hovering inches from his throat, the air around the wood shimmering with the heat of her mana. Victory. Or at least, the fragile, fleeting illusion of it.

  "Gh…!?" Rize groaned.

  The cost came instantly. The world didn't just return to normal speed; reality itself seemed to skip, like a scratched disc in an old player. Her knees buckled as if the tendons had been severed by an invisible blade. THUD. Her body slammed into the dirt, falling with the dead weight of a collapsed marionette. The pungent smell of damp soil and crushed grass filled her nose, but it felt distant and muted, as if she were experiencing the sensation through a thick pane of glass.

  …Eh? Rize confused. She tried to speak, but her own voice sounded warped and distorted, a hollow echo reaching her from somewhere far underwater. The rustle of the trees, the frantic, heavy sound of Naz’s footsteps approaching—everything reached her senses delayed and fractured. The audio of the world no longer matched the video. It was lag—pure, visceral lag. Her brain had processed too much data, too fast, and now her physical form was struggling to catch up to the corrected timeline.

  Then, the video feed cut entirely. Light flared white, a blinding, searing explosion behind her retinas, before darkness dropped like a heavy, velvet curtain.

  "A…?" Rize murmured. Suddenly, the ground was right in front of her face again. Her cheek was pressed against the cold, gritty mud. Her breath came in erratic, shallow gasps, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird trying to break free. She didn’t remember falling. She didn’t remember hitting the ground. The entire sequence of events had vanished, a skipped frame in the reel of reality. Cold sweat slid down her spine, freezing her skin despite the humidity of the forest. What… what was that… just now…?

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  "You idiot!" Naz’s voice roared above her, the volume making her skull throb. Hands like iron clamps grabbed her shoulders, hauling her up roughly. His face was pale, a terrifying mixture of fury and genuine terror. "Even my [Maximize] collapses if you try to double-stack it!" Naz shouted."There's no way to control a [Maximize] on top of a [Maximize!] If that skill is linked directly to your body... it's going to kill you!"

  Rize hung in his grip, her limbs trembling uncontrollably, her head lolling slightly. But even through her ragged breaths and the static hissing in her ears, she didn't look away. She wiped a smudge of mud from her cheek with a shaking hand, her eyes burning with a scary, feverish light that Naz didn't recognize.

  ?

  The massive school gates glowed a deep, bruised blood-red in the dying light of the sunset. Students poured out in rhythmic waves, their collective laughter and mundane chatter blending into the ambient, electric hum of the Japan evening. They talked about upcoming exams, about karaoke plans, about the latest viral dance on their feeds. They existed in a world of cushioned peace, a reality where the greatest threat was a failing grade or a social faux pas.

  Yu walked among them, a ghost in a school uniform. He walked alone, his steps slow and heavy, his boots dragging against the asphalt. Days had passed since Claval’s live streaming, but the noise hadn't settled. If anything, it had grown louder, a constant, digital scream that followed him everywhere. The words he had exchanged during his interview with Mamiya-sensei still lingered in his mind, heavy and unresolved like lead.

  Right or wrong… none of that matters anymore. He had stopped caring about the morality of his choices. The career aspirations survey, the expectations of his mother, the laws of physics—none of it held any weight. There was only one axis left by which to judge his life: whether he could protect Rize and Claval. That was the single line dividing all of his choices, the only metric that carried any meaning in this gray, sterile world.

  "If I can protect them… that’s all that matters. Everything else is just noise." Yu murmured. His own voice sounded cold, alien to his ears, as if a stranger were speaking through his throat. But immediately after the words left his lips, a pulse of dark exhilaration rose from his gut. It was a sweet, dangerous heat that tightened every nerve in his body, a high that felt like drowning in warm honey.

  Drip. Yu raised a trembling hand to his face. Something wet and warm slid over his upper lip. He pulled his fingers away; they glistened with a bright, viscous crimson. "…Tch." He didn't panic. He stared at the blood on his fingertips, and as he did, his vision began to tint.

  The crimson hue bled outward from his hand, staining the streetlights, the pavement, and the faces of the passing students in a monochromatic wash of red. The world warped, the straight lines of the buildings shifting and breathing like a living organism in a fever dream. The boundaries of reality felt thin, porous, and ready to tear.

  It’s fine… this much is nothing. A small price to pay for the bridge. He steadied his breath, ignoring the rhythmic throbbing pain behind his eyes that timed itself to his heartbeat. His lips curved into an unconscious, private smile. To any student passing by, it might have looked like a grimace of relief. But under the unnatural red light of the setting sun, it looked far more like the onset of madness.

  ?

  "But it doesn’t matter if I’m too slow. It doesn't matter if my body breaks." Rize clenched her fist, digging her nails into her palm until the skin broke. She exhaled sharply, her voice vanishing into the vastness of the alien forest, swallowed by the relentless rustling of the leaves. Pain stabbed her chest with every shallow heartbeat; even her lungs burned as if she had inhaled liquid smoke.

  At that same moment, worlds away. Yu walked through the dimming residential streets of Japan, a lone shadow under the humming streetlamps. He wiped the fresh blood from his nose with his sleeve, indifferent to the dark stain on the fabric. He spoke into the empty air, his voice a low rasp, as if answering a question no one had asked.

  "If I can’t protect them… then nothing in either world has any meaning." His fading voice dissolved into the dusk, heard by no one but the static of the city. Their words couldn’t reach each other across the divide. There was no magical connection carrying their voices across the void, no broadcast to link their souls. But their hearts beat desperate rhythm—vibrating across the impossible distance of dimensions, tuned to the exact same frequency of self-destruction.

  "This… is my strength. This is how I survive." Rize’s voice shook, but her resolve blazed bright, a furnace fire burning away the last of her fear. Naz frowned at her recklessness, opening his mouth to scold her again—to tell her she was throwing her life away—but he stopped when he caught her gaze. She wouldn't lower her eyes. Not now. Not ever.

  At the same moment. Yu stopped beneath a flickering streetlamp that hissed with electrical interference. He wiped the drying blood from his cheek, his fingers tracing the stains. Through the deep red haze of his vision, the world looked like it was already consumed by flames. He smiled faintly, a expression of terrible peace.

  "If I can protect them both… I don't need a future." Yu’s voice was dry and brittle, but a feverish light burned in his eyes, bright enough to rival the mana of the other world. It was a smile that looked like hope to him, and like a descent into obsession to anyone else.

  Their silhouettes overlapped across the boundaries of worlds, two shadows cast by the same fire. Two people pushing past their limits, breaking their bodies and fracturing their minds, focused on the same impossible horizon.

  "…Beyond the flame." A whisper with no speaker echoed quietly into the dark, a phantom sound that belonged to neither world. They were both running toward a cliff, hand in hand across the stars, without ever looking down.