The separation of Markus did not stabilize anything.If anything, it made the Second Layer feel even less grounded. The absence of his presence created a gap in the group’s structure that the system immediately began to exploit. The Identity Hunt Protocol continued operating across the region, but now its effects felt more concentrated, as if the system had shifted focus toward more fragile targets.The hybrid girl was the first to show signs of collapse.It started with small things.She would say something to Axel, then pause shortly after, her expression briefly shifting into confusion as if she could not fully remember what she had just said. At first, Axel assumed it was residual instability from the memory war zones. But the pattern repeated too consistently to ignore.She walked beside him through fractured terrain, speaking occasionally, but each interaction felt slightly incomplete. Not in content, but in continuity. Like her thoughts were not fully carrying forward into memo

The aftermath of the Identity Authority Commander’s collapse did not bring relief.The Second Layer remained unstable, but the instability had changed form again. Instead of chaotic distortions, the environment now carried structured silence, as if something had been removed at a system level and the world was adjusting to the absence.Axel noticed it first through the system interface.There was no reward confirmation.No stabilization feedback.No continuation prompt.Just a quiet, widening emptiness where system response should have been.The hybrid girl stood beside him, still in her unstable state. Her gaze occasionally shifted toward Axel, then away again, as if recognition was attempting to form but failing to hold. She did not speak. She simply remained physically present, while continuity inside her remained fractured.Axel looked around slowly.The battlefield no longer contained active Memory Hunters nearby.But he could feel something deeper moving beneath the layer.Not p

The instability inside Axel did not settle after the last encounter.The Sub-Entity system continued operating beneath his conscious control, but now it no longer felt like isolated interference. It behaved more like a parallel execution layer running alongside his decisions, occasionally overriding timing without fully replacing intent. Axel had begun adjusting to it, but not fully trusting it.The Second Layer shifted again without warning.Not through visible distortion or structural collapse, but through a change in pressure across identity fields. The environment felt heavier in a different way, as if something had begun targeting the connections that kept people stable rather than the people themselves.Axel noticed the hybrid girl first.She was walking beside him, still partially unstable after previous memory disruption events. Her expression was more fragile now, with longer pauses between thoughts and occasional moments where she seemed to lose track of what she was doing m

Axel did not wake up in the Second Layer.At least, not in anything that resembled it.There was no terrain, no sky, no broken wasteland, and no sense of distance or direction. Instead, he found himself standing in a space that had no physical definition. It was not darkness, but absence of structure. Even the concept of “ground” only existed when he focused on it, and even then it felt temporary, like it could disappear at any moment.His body was intact, but the sensation of physical consistency was unstable.He lifted his hand slowly.It responded normally, but the feedback felt delayed, as if his movement was being interpreted rather than directly experienced.Axel turned his head.The space around him reacted to that motion.Not visually changing, but restructuring its perception layer.Then something began to form in front of him.At first it was just a faint outline, like a system rendering process trying to decide what should exist. Gradually, it stabilized into layered geomet

It started without warning in a way that felt too precise to be coincidence.The Second Layer didn’t break or distort first. It simply paused for a fraction of a second, like a system that had stopped all background processes to focus on a single task. Even the instability that usually lingered in the environment faded, replaced by a heavy sense of alignment.Axel noticed it immediately.Not through sound or vision, but through the system interface inside him. Every layer he had ever interacted with flickered at once. Root Layer, Second Layer, and the deeper Origin traces all aligned into a single point of reference.A targeting coordinate.He stopped walking.The hybrid girl beside him also slowed, her expression already unstable but now slightly more alert than before. Markus was a few steps behind, still carrying residual instability from his echo state, but even he looked up as if something in the environment had shifted beyond normal rules.Axel exhaled slowly.Then the system re