The air had already changed before anyone noticed it fully. Not because the giant moved, but because the space around it stopped behaving like normal terrain. Every breath felt slightly delayed, as if the world itself was reacting a fraction too late to what was happening inside it. The pressure was no longer just physical; it had become structured.Markus felt it first.“…It’s stabilizing its field,” he said quietly.The guide shook his head once.“No,” he corrected. “It’s narrowing it.”Rell, still half-kneeling from his earlier impact, wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and forced himself upright.“That thing nearly turned my spine into dust and now we’re discussing vocabulary?” he muttered.No one answered him.Because the giant had already moved again.It didn’t rush.It didn’t need to.One step forward was enough to trigger the ground beneath it to fracture outward in a controlled wave, not chaotic, but patterned, like the terrain had memorized its footsteps and was repeat

The truck did not land so much as it collapsed through space, as if the world itself had lost patience with its existence and finally dropped it into somewhere it no longer belonged. The impact did not come as a single moment of destruction but as a layered series of breaks, each one stripping away a different assumption of reality. Metal groaned, not like machinery, but like something alive being forced into a new shape. The structure of the vehicle folded inward, then outward, then inward again, until it no longer resembled anything designed for transport. Instead, it resembled a living frame held together by unstable Root Constructs that pulsed faintly along its interior, as if the world itself had decided the vehicle was not meant to die yet.Axel pushed himself up slowly from the tilted floor of the truck, feeling the shift in gravity settle unevenly across his body. The others were already reacting differently. Markus had one hand braced against the warped interior wall, stabili

The ground outside the shelter split open in layered fractures, not like something breaking, but like something being deliberately unfolded. The tunnel that formed was too clean, too controlled, as if the space itself had been rewritten to allow entry. From it, the Retrieval Entities stepped in without urgency.They did not rush. They did not roar. They did not behave like anything alive in the normal sense.Markus felt it first and stepped back instantly.“Formation—now,” he snapped.But the command barely mattered anymore.The first entity advanced, and a silent pulse spread across the area. It didn’t explode outward or create visible energy. It simply touched everything at once, like an invisible hand marking objects in a list. Axel felt it brush across him and immediately noticed the difference. This wasn’t scanning for life. It was sorting existence.Rell stiffened mid-step as his body slowed unnaturally. Markus moved to support him, but another pulse hit before he could stabiliz

moment Axel’s hand made full contact with the distortion, the Root Layer did not resist in the way he expected. There was no force pushing him back, no defensive rejection. Instead, the space around his fingers softened, as if the environment itself was uncertain how to classify the contact. The distortion did not break or expand. It acknowledged him.Then everything inverted.Axel’s vision collapsed inward, not into darkness, but into layered structure. The shelter, the battlefield, the distant traces of the entities, all of it flattened into a single compressed plane before dissolving entirely. What replaced it was not another world, but a system interface stripped of form. Lines of information stretched in every direction, looping into themselves without origin or end.For the first time since entering the Root Layer, Axel was not inside the environment.He was inside its architecture.A voice formed, not audible, but direct, as if the concept of communication itself had been rewri

The settlement did not wait for consensus before reacting.The moment the observer confirmed recognition of Axel’s signature, the atmosphere shifted from curiosity into controlled hostility. Not chaos, not panic, but structured suspicion. People began repositioning themselves across the layered platforms, cutting off natural movement routes through the central corridors of the city. It was subtle at first, almost invisible unless one understood how this place maintained balance.Axel understood it immediately.Markus noticed it seconds later.“…They’re isolating the center lanes,” Markus muttered. “This is a containment formation.”The armored leader from earlier stepped forward again, this time with more authority behind his movement. Others aligned behind him without spoken command. That alone confirmed hierarchy. In a place like this, authority was not granted, it was reinforced by compliance.“You’re not from any exile registry,” the leader said directly, his gaze fixed on Axel. “