The moment Samuel stepped into the vortex, it felt like every part of him had been deconstructed—his mind, his memories, his bones. Time didn't pass in seconds or minutes but in fragments of thoughts, each flash of emotion guiding the shape of the path.Then suddenly, there was gravity. Air. Solid ground.He dropped to his knees with a gasp, the weight of reality crashing back onto his shoulders.Around him, silence ruled.The sky above was alien: a deep violet canvas painted with two massive moons—one blood-red and still, the other fractured like glass but hanging intact. Wind stirred the tall, ash-colored grass in waves, and strange mountain peaks jutted from the horizon like obsidian blades.Samuel stood slowly, trying to steady his vision.Sarah was already a few meters ahead, eyes wide as she turned in slow circles, taking in the surreal, haunting beauty of the place."This isn't just another dimension," she murmured. "It's… a memory."Samuel frowned. "Whose?"She didn’t answer.

Samuel landed first, his boots crunching on what looked like glass—but the texture beneath him crumbled like ash. He narrowed his eyes. They were standing atop the remnants of a battlefield, ancient and long forgotten, with massive skeletal remains of titanic beasts scattered in the dust.A blood-red sky loomed overhead, unmoving. The air tasted like cold iron.Sarah stumbled beside him, clutching her head. “The Rift is still leaking into this place. I can feel it in my bones. Something about this place is... off.”Joey emerged last, blinking at the desolation. “I liked the trauma cathedral better,” he muttered. “At least it had walls.”The portal behind them sealed with a low hiss.“No going back,” Aria said quietly, scanning the surroundings with her tablet. “We’re not in the Tibetan rift anymore. This is somewhere else. A sub-layer, maybe. Pre-dimensional.”“A pocket?” Samuel asked.She nodded slowly. “More like a wound in reality itself.”They moved cautiously. The map crystal sti

City A no longer resembled the place Samuel once called home.Its skyline, once gleaming with ambition and glass spires, now flickered beneath a bruised and swollen sky. A storm churned over the city like an angry deity—red lightning raking the clouds, casting shadows that moved even without wind. Civilians had either fled or gone underground. Those who remained walked like ghosts, hushed and paranoid, as if the very streets whispered betrayal.The Vanguard's airship emerged silently over the southern ridge. It bore no markings, cloaked by the energy shell developed by Aria weeks before. Inside the dimly lit cabin, tension cracked through the air like static.Samuel stood at the front viewport, one gloved hand gripping the rail. Flames shimmered faintly in his pupils, and the once-faint mark on his palm now burned constantly. He had changed since taking the Flame Shard. Everyone could feel it—even if no one dared say it aloud.Joey broke the silence. “They’ve fortified the old parliam

The Vanguard command base in City A hummed quietly as dawn broke over the scarred skyline. Though the Rift node near Sector Nine had been sealed just hours earlier, tension still clung to every corridor like fog that refused to lift.Samuel walked with slow, heavy steps down the hall lined with holographic blueprints, energy pulse monitors, and shadowed remnants of torn-out surveillance systems. The Rift had retreated—but something had changed. It was as if the world had blinked, and in that single instant, the rules had shifted.He entered the central chamber where Aria, Joey, and Sarah waited. The table in the center projected a 3D map of the globe, with two remaining Rift nodes still pulsing in red—one deep in the Tibetan mountains, the other somewhere submerged off the coast of Chile.Joey was pacing.“I don’t like this,” he muttered. “We close one Rift, and the others spike harder. It’s like we’re squeezing a balloon—it just shifts the pressure.”Aria zoomed in on the Tibetan nod

The cold morning wind howled through the shattered monastery as the last of the torches flickered and died. Samuel stood alone in the ruins, echo crystal clenched tightly in his hand, while the sun painted the snowy peaks with muted gold.But despite the morning light, something darker stirred beneath the stone.“What is that sound?” Sarah asked, stepping carefully through the debris, still pale from her ordeal within the mirrorstone. “It’s like... whispering.”Samuel turned. “You hear it too?”She nodded.Behind them, the crystal in Samuel’s hand began to pulse—not bright, not ominous, but curious. Almost as if it were listening.Aria approached from the edge of the clearing. “It’s not just whispering. It’s language. Old Orion dialect. I’m picking up patterns.”Joey, limping slightly but grinning through a bruised lip, tossed down a cracked communicator. “Well, that’s great. Because we’ve got a new problem. Spiral’s not retreating—they’re regrouping. West Line intercepted a message f