Chapter 72: The Color of Nothing[Elira’s POV]…How long had it been?Time didn’t move here. It just… folded in on itself like damp parchment.The room was nothing but white: walls, floor, ceiling, everything bleeding together into a single, merciless hue. The kind of white that erased identity, swallowed sound, and devoured the concept of “before.”“Let me out…”Her voice trembled as it left her lips, but even the echo sounded tired.She didn’t know if she’d been here for years or centuries. The air itself didn’t change. It didn’t age. It didn’t even smell. It was like existing inside a memory that refused to fade or end.And the notes.Always the notes.Slips of parchment appearing out of nothing, inscribed in Drennov’s perfect, haunting handwriting. Each one beginning with polite concern. Each one ending in silence.How are you?Do you still dream?Do you stil

Chapter 73: The City That Sleeps in Light (Kael’s POV) “They weren’t fucking kidding when they said this trip would take a day,” Kael muttered, staring through the glass wall of the aircraft as clouds streamed past like torn silk. What did you expect? The System’s voice dripped with amused indifference. These continents are not your Earth’s fragile toy maps. They stretch like gods that forgot to stop growing. Kael smirked. “Yeah, fair. Still, how the fuck are there so many villages?” He had been counting since takeoff—eighty villages, at least, each one neat and alive, little pockets of civilization scattered like starlight across the endless green. They weren’t sprawling cities. They were heartbeat clusters. And all of them thrived under skies thick with mana. The scenery was absurdly beautiful. Mountains carved with veins of glowing crystal. Rivers that sang. Forests breathing in rhythm with the wind. Nature here hadn’t just survived civilization—it had swallowed it whole and

Chapter 77: Safe---Kael had been walking for what felt like forever, the weight of the small, unconscious child slung across his shoulder pressing into his bones like a punishment he didn’t remember earning. Two hours. Maybe more. His map promised a stretch of grassy serenity up ahead, but right now it all felt like the same dry, corpse-colored earth, sighing under the heat of a sun that refused to die.The kid hadn’t stirred once, not even a grunt of awareness—just the occasional twitch or mumble, like he was wrestling ghosts in his dreams.Kael exhaled. “Should I just leave this kid here? My shoulder’s starting to ache.”He said it with his usual sarcasm, the kind that made it hard to tell whether he meant it or not. But the boy must have heard the words somewhere deep inside that sleeping shell, because he jerked awake so violently he almost crashed face-first into the dirt.Kael caught him mid-fall by the foot. “You could have used better wording,” the System remarked dryly ins

Chapter 76: The Last Green Dot ‘What the fuck are they doing…?’ Kael stood on the ridge of a shattered settlement, the air thick with the scent of iron and rot. Through the filter of his mana-sense, the world below glowed in spectral colors: red for threats, green for the living. Only one green dot remained amid a sea of red. But the red ones were wrong. They moved like people, twitched like people, tore at flesh like beasts. Humanoid monsters, wrapped in blood and shadow, gnawed on what used to be civilians. The screams had long since ended, leaving only the wet chorus of teeth grinding through meat. Even at full speed, Kael hadn’t made it in time. The settlement had fallen before his boots touched dirt. Civilians everywhere, no real defenders, no proper mana shields—just a feeding ground for nightmares. The creatures pulsed with mana so thick it warped the air. High-level, easily in the one-eighties, maybe

Chapter 78: The Odd Woman[Kael’s POV]“How does it taste?”Kael didn’t even have the luxury of answering before his body decided to violently betray him. He bent forward and vomited everything onto the stone floor of the cave, the sound echoing wetly in the cold air. That made it the fourth monster he’d ruined today. Four steaming piles of culinary failure, each more inedible than the last.They looked edible enough—beast-like, muscular things that probably considered him a snack in another life—but once he cooked them, every bite tasted like rotten mana condensed into despair.Orin had already fallen asleep deeper in the cave, curled against the wall like an overgrown cat. The cave itself was safe, wrapped in a natural mana flow that repelled beasts. Kael should’ve been at peace. Should’ve been, if not for the yellow dot blinking on his Halo’s minimap, a few dozen meters away.The dot hadn’t moved. It just watched.“Wh