The air inside the ruins was more than merely cold; it was a stagnant, heavy chill that clung to the skin like a damp shroud. Every breath Rize took tasted of ancient dust and a metallic tang that sat unpleasantly on the back of her tongue. The walls, once grand spectacles of masonry, were now scarred by deep, violent slashes that cut through the intricate carvings of forgotten kings. Scorch marks blossomed like black flowers across the floor tiles.

  There was no doubt that a fierce battle had transpired here, yet the silence was absolute. Rize stopped in the center of the hallway, her hand instinctively hovering near the hilt of her blade. She scanned the shadows, her eyes searching for the gruesome aftermath that should have accompanied such destruction.

  But the world felt wrong. There were no monster corpses rotting in the corners. No stray bloodstains marring the gray stone. Not even a splintered shield or a snapped arrow remained. The ruins held the echoes of a massacre, yet the combatants had been erased as if they had never existed at all.

  In the dead center of the secondary chamber, a magic circle lay etched into the stone pavement. It pulsed with a faint, rhythmic glow, a pale blue light that seemed to breathe in the gloom. That spot alone was disturbingly pristine—no rubble, no dust, no signs of the chaos that had ravaged the rest of the room. It sat there, a clean island in a sea of wreckage, looking as though it had been swept by an invisible hand. This is it. The threshold where Team Jask and the others vanished.

  "Rize, stop!" A sharp voice barked from behind. One of the high-class adventurers assigned to the survey stepped forward, his face tight with a mixture of professional caution and raw fear. "Don't get any closer to that thing. It’s a teleportation trap, or worse. One wrong step and you’ll vanish into the void just like the rest of them!"

  Rize didn't turn around. She stared at the glowing lines, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Fear was a cold weight in her gut, but the thought of Naz, Roa, and Hanara trapped in some dark, unreachable place was a sharper pain.

  "If they disappeared here, then this is where the trail starts," Rize said, her voice barely a whisper. "I have to verify it. I can't just leave them behind while I wait for a gild to decide if it's safe."

  Ignoring the frantic calls to halt, Rize took a step forward. Then another. Her boot crossed the threshold of the circle, and for a heartbeat, the world went silent. Then, a blinding, incandescent light erupted from the stone. It wasn't just a flash; it was a physical force that swallowed the room, the air, and her very existence.

  Rize felt a sickening lurch in her stomach, the sensation of being pulled through a needle's eye, and then the ruins were gone.

  ?

  When Rize opened her eyes, she was met with a vista that defied every law of nature she had ever known. She wasn't in a cave or another ruin. There was no sky above, no ground beneath—only an infinite, ambiguous expanse of pale, milky mist. Up and down had lost their meaning; she felt as though she were floating, yet her feet rested on a surface that felt as solid as granite despite casting no shadow. The air was thin and bitingly cold, stabbing into her lungs like needles. When she exhaled, a thick, white fog scattered from her lips, drifting away into the endless gray.

  "Where am I...?" Rize said.

  "Rize!" The voice was a lifeline. She whirled around, her boots clicking on the invisible floor. Standing a few yards away was Yu, his face pale and etched with an exhaustion she had never seen before. Beside him stood Claval, her silver hair shimmering in the strange, sourceless light. Her sword was already drawn, her knuckles white as she glared into the swirling mist.

  "Yu? Claval?" Rize stammered, her mind reeling. "How are both of you here? Did you fall into a trap too?"

  "That’s our line, Rize!" Yu’s voice trembled with a frantic energy. He held up his smartphone, the screen flickering with a glitchy, erratic light that bathed his hand in a digital blue. "I got a message... a direct ping to my phone. It said they had 'taken custody' of you. There was a map. Look." He turned the screen toward her. An eerie string of scrambled text sat below a map image that flickered in and out of focus, looking like a corrupt file from a nightmare.

  "I don't know anything about a message," Rize shook her head, her confusion deepening into a cold dread. "I wasn't kidnapped. I came here on my own, searching for team Jask. I thought they were the ones in danger."

  Then who sent it? A dark suspicion began to coil in Yu’s chest. The weight of the phone in his hand felt like a lead weight. This was too precise for a prank, too technologically impossible to be a coincidence. If a third party could manipulate the observation system and send messages across worlds, then nothing was safe.

  A low rumble vibrated through the space, a sound that wasn't heard so much as felt in the marrow of their bones. The white mist around them began to shimmer and tear, opening like an unhealing wound.

  ?

  A shapeless, pitch-black shadow began to swell from the rift. It moved with a jerky, unnatural rhythm, as if the frames of its existence were being dropped. It coalesced into a human-like silhouette made of swirling fog, its edges glitching against the gray background.

  "Gh—!" Claval didn't wait. She leveled her blade.The shadow drifted closer, its face coming into focus—a blank, featureless surface as smooth and white as a Noh mask. It spread its arms wide in a grand, theatrical gesture, looking down upon them as if they were insects in a jar.

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  "Who are you!?" Yu shouted, his voice cracking. "What did you do to Rize?"

  "I’m the master of this delightful little pocket dimension! And I’m the Good?Guy who sent you that lovely little invite!" The shadow’s shoulders bounced in an eerie, mocking rhythm. When it spoke, the voice was brightly out of tune, a discordant melody that sounded like several people speaking at once through a synthesizer. Yu felt a violent chill run down his spine. The tone was light—dangerously, psychotically light. It felt like a mask hiding a cosmic void.

  "Where is team Jask? Where are my friends? They came through the circle in the ruins. If you've hurt them—" Rize stepped forward, her hand on her sword.

  "No worries, no worries?" The mask’s mouth—a black slit that hadn't been there a moment ago—curved into a wide, artificial grin. "I’m just keeping them detained in a separate waiting room so they don’t get in the way of our little chat."

  "This black sphere of yours is an eyesore in our territory. You’ve interfered with Avlas subjects. Remove it at once, or I’ll cut it out of everything." Claval pointed the tip of her blade at the center of the mask.

  "That’s no problem either?" the shadow chirped. "Once the punishment is over, the whole thing will go poof and vanish, just like a bad dream! Is not that wonderful?" The frivolous laughter echoed around the gray space, overlapping itself until it became a deafening cacophony.

  "Just tell us... what the hell are you!"Yu felt his temper snap, a mixture of fear and fury boiling over.

  "My true existence has no name. Your kind—dwarfed, inferior organisms trapped in three dimensions—cannot perceive the totality of what I am. To explain it to you would be like explaining the sun to an amoeba." The shadow went still. The laughter died instantly. The atmosphere in the room shifted, the pressure increasing until it felt like the mist was made of iron. When the entity spoke again, its voice was stripped of all intonation. It was cold, dead, and sounded like the vacuum of space.

  Goosebumps erupted across Yu's skin. The sheer, indifferent cruelty in that voice was more terrifying than the monsters of the other world. But in the next second, the shadow flipped back to its manic, cheerful persona.

  "So, I decided to borrow a name! Something from your world, your little island country! Easy to understand, right? A brand you can recognize!" He threw out both arms like a stage actor taking a final bow. "Let me introduce myself properly!"

  "My name is TP!" He shouted arrogantly.

  "TP...?" Yu blinked, the breath catching in his throat.

  "That’s right! TP! Time Patrol! The cosmic janitors! The wardens of the timeline!" The shadow leaned in until its Noh mask was inches from Yu's face. "And you, Yu Shiro—you’re a wanted man too. A glitch in the system. A parasite feeding on the providence of two worlds!" The bizarre voice shattered the fragile air of the dimension.

  ?

  "Wanted man...? Don’t you dare insult Yu!" Claval’s eyes burned with a literal fire of rage. She didn't wait for an explanation or a trial. Without hesitation, she sprang forward, her boots kicking up invisible dust as she closed the gap in a heartbeat. She unleashed a slash so fast it tore a vacuum in the mist—a strike infused with every ounce of meant to pierce the shadow through its very heart.

  But TP didn’t move. He didn't even flinch. He simply flicked a finger. Snap. Claval’s blade was repelled with the force of a high-speed collision. The vibration traveled up her arm, snapping the bone in her wrist. Her body was thrown backward, spinning violently through the gray air like a broken doll. She crashed into the invisible floor, the sound of the impact sickeningly wet.

  "Gh—!" Claval groaned, then a cold and sickening shock pierced her chest. A shard of black energy, looking like a splinter of the void itself, had manifested in the center of her torso. In the next instant, a fountain of fresh, hot blood sprayed into the space, staining the mist a brilliant, horrific red.

  "Claval!" Yu screamed, the sound tearing at his vocal cords.

  Rize was already moving, sliding across the floor to Claval’s side. Her hands began to glow light. Rize poured every drop of her simple healing magic, that any adventurer can use, into the wound. But it was powerless. The blood didn’t stop; it surged through Rize’s fingers, hot and sticky. The warmth was draining rapidly from Claval's body, her skin turning the color of ash.

  "It’s not working... it won’t stop!" Rize’s voice shook, sweat dripping from her forehead into the pooling blood.

  "Claval! Claval, stay with me! Don't you dare close your eyes!" Yu dropped to his knees, his hands hovering over Claval’s face. He kept calling her name, his voice a broken, pleading mantra.

  Claval’s lips turned a pale, bruised blue, and the focus of her eyes began to waver, drifting toward the empty gray above. Her blood-soaked hand reached out, her fingers trembling as they grabbed Yu’s sleeve. Her grip was weak, the strength of an adventurer failing her, but she held on as if he were the only solid thing left in the universe.

  "Yu..." Her voice was a dry rasp, barely audible over the humming of the dimension. Her trembling lips struggled to connect the words, her breath hitching in a wet, rattling sound. "Listen to me, Yu... I... I love... you..."

  "What are you talking about, Claval! Don't talk like that! Stay with me! We have to go back!" The words stabbed straight into Yu’s chest, deeper and more painful than any physical blade. "I... I love you too... I should have said it sooner! So don’t close your eyes! Please! Claval!" Tears blurred his vision, hot and stinging.

  For a split second, a faint look of relief—a soft, human warmth—softened her expression. Her eyes met his, and for that one moment, she wasn't a goddess or a superstar. She was just a girl. But then, the light in her irises flickered and died. Her hand lost its grip on his sleeve, her fingers sliding away and falling into the blood.

  ?

  "Behold! This is the price for twisting the providence of worlds!" TP’s laughter crashed down upon them from behind, a sharp, manic sound that felt like nails on glass.

  "Listen well, Shiro-kun. The two worlds... they were never meant to touch. But with you as the focal point, as the bridge that doesn't belong, they are drifting too close. They are beginning to grind." Suddenly, his tone deepened again. It became cold, oppressive, and heavy, echoing like the gavel of a judge in a silent courtroom.

  Yu and Rize froze, the horror of his words sinking in.

  "If this continues—you will trigger the annihilation," TP said, his Noh mask tilting to the side. "Massive energy release. That side, and this side. Both worlds will be snuffed out like candles in a storm. Everyone you know, everything you love... gone in a blink."

  The moment those words fell, a sound like a gunshot rang through the space. CRACK. A razor-sharp fissure ran through the gray air above them. Blinding light leaked out from the crack, as if tearing through the black darkness hidden behind the mist. The fissure spread in the blink of an eye. No one could move; they were simply frozen by the sound of reality itself beginning to break.