Even on the way home from school, the pounding in Yu’s chest wouldn’t subside.

  It wasn’t the healthy kind of heartbeat that came from running up stairs too fast, or laughing too hard with friends. This was the frantic drum of something hunted—something that didn’t know where the threat was, only that it was close. The late-afternoon streets were ordinary: commuters waiting at crosswalks, scooters humming past, a convenience store door chiming open and shut. The normalcy should have been soothing.

  It made him feel worse. Yu walked like someone pretending to be a student on his way home, when in reality his mind had already left his body and sprinted ahead into a different world—one with stone rooftops and alarm bells and black smoke.

  How did I even make it this far? Inside his head, two versions of himself wrestled for control. One was panicked, loud, insisting he run, call, do something, anything. The other was eerily calm, listing facts like a machine: you don’t have proof, you don’t have access, you can’t cross worlds, you can’t—

  The switch between them happened so fast it left him dizzy. A step would land, and he’d be calm. The next step would land, and the panic would surge so sharply his vision would narrow. He shoved his hand into his pocket and gripped his phone as if it were a lifeline.

  The metal edge pressed into his palm. The screen was warm from being held too long, and that warmth—small, human—was the only thing keeping him from feeling like he might float away.

  The moment he reached his apartment, he kicked his shoes off without properly aligning them, slipped past the entryway like a ghost, and shut himself into his room.

  The air inside smelled faintly of detergent and paper. A fan rattled quietly in the corner, pushing stale warmth around. His desk lamp was still off. The room was dim, lit only by the gray-blue spill of evening through the curtains.

  Yu sat down hard in his chair and opened EWS. His fingers moved before his thoughts could catch up—muscle memory, obsession. Rize_channel_042. Tap.

  The page loaded with a clinical smoothness, as if the app were proud of its stability. And then, centered on the screen, a single cold line of text greeted him.

  [No Stream Available]

  Just that. No thumbnail. No “Live.” No replay button, no chat, no archive list. The channel header floated above emptiness like a name carved into a gravestone.

  Yu stared until his eyes began to sting. He refreshed. The little spinning icon rotated once, twice. The page reloaded.

  [No Stream Available]

  He tapped again. And again. The edge of his nail clicked faintly against glass with each press, the sound too small for the violence in his chest.

  Nothing changed. Silently, Yu closed the screen, as if closing his eyes would make the words disappear. He immediately opened another stream. Then another. He hopped through channels the way someone flips between emergency broadcasts, trying to find the one camera angle that proves the nightmare isn’t real.

  A stream from the town square: shaky footage, people sprinting in every direction, the camera operator breathing too hard. Someone screamed a name that was swallowed by the crowd.

  Another from a rooftop across the market district: smoke rising from the direction of the western gate, thick and black and wrong. The bell towers were ringing, not in celebration, but in warning—deep, resonant clangs that vibrated through the microphone and into Yu’s teeth.

  Another from a street near the guild: guards shouting, adventurers drawing steel, merchants slamming shutters down. The audio peaked with the scrape of metal and the wail of frightened animals.

  Yu’s chest tightened, not because he heard the sound through his phone’s speaker.

  Because he recognized it.

  That roar—distant, layered under panic—was the exact same roar from that day. The day he first connected with Rize, when the system had done something it wasn’t supposed to do. The day “Something” had appeared out of mist and pressure and impossible silence.

  The sound wasn’t just in his ears. It was in his body, carved into him through the frame like a scar. His skin prickled. His stomach sank. His throat went dry as if his body remembered choking on smoke.

  It’s happening again. Yu stopped flipping through streams and let the phone rest in his hands. The screen’s glow painted his fingers pale blue. In that light, his hands looked wrong—too thin, too distant, like he was looking at someone else’s body.

  He set the phone down on his desk with forced care, like it might shatter if he moved too quickly. When he closed his eyes, the image of Rize on that rooftop floated behind his eyelids: hair swaying in the wind, a sunset bleeding into stone, her voice saying his name with quiet certainty.

  “…Can I really do nothing?” The words came out as a rasp, his throat cracked like parched earth.

  The room around him didn’t change. The fan still rattled. Somewhere beyond the wall, a neighbor’s TV murmured. A car passed outside, tires hissing on asphalt. And yet it felt as if time had stopped only for him. As if he alone had been cut out of the world and left hovering in a gap between realities.

  His fingertips curled around the phone again. One more time. Just one more time, let my voice reach her.

  ?

  In the city, the sound of bells rang out.

  It wasn’t the usual tolling that marked an hour or accompanied a festival. This was an alarm—heavy, frantic, each strike dragging a cold hook through everyone who heard it. The sound bounced off stone walls and narrow alleys, multiplied by echo until it felt like the city itself was shouting.

  On the rooftop, Rize moved before the sound even registered fully. Her hand closed around her sword, sheath and all, and she ran.

  Down the external stairs, boots striking stone, her cloak snapping behind her. Her bandages pulled tight with each step, and pain flared—sharp, insistent—along her ribs and through her legs. Her body tried to remind her it wasn’t fully healed.

  Rize reminded it she didn’t care.

  She forced her legs, still aching with every step, into submission with sheer will. Breath burned in her chest, not with exhaustion alone, but with the memory of suffocating under that black smoke, of feeling her own life slip sideways while the world watched.

  “—Is it back?” The whisper left her mouth and vanished into the wind, swallowed by the city’s uproar.

  When she emerged into the square, the atmosphere was already thick with abnormal tension.

  People ran past in clumps, not yet a stampede but close. A mother clutched a child to her chest so tightly the child’s face was pressed into fabric. A cart veered hard around a corner, wheels skidding, the driver shouting apologies that nobody listened to. Shopkeepers slammed their doors shut and shoved iron bars into place. A blacksmith’s apprentice sprinted with a bucket, trying to drown the forge’s glow before it drew attention.

  Only the sound of metal remained in the air. Steel leaving scabbards. Shields being lifted. Boots scraping as guards took positions. Rize’s mind flashed backward without permission.

  Strained air. A pressure like the world leaning on her shoulders. That cracking roar that made her vision shake. The sensation of something looking at her—not with eyes, but with existence.

  That sensation had returned, crawling under her skin like frost. But this time, she wouldn’t run. The pain was still there. The weakness was still there. But she could grip her sword. She could stand, move and fight.

  ?

  Black smoke was rising from the west side of the city.

  It wasn’t the thin gray of a cooking fire or the lazy haze of a chimney. This was dense, murky, rising in a column that smeared the sky and swallowed light. Even from a distance, it looked like it didn’t belong to the world’s palette.

  Rize headed toward it, each step steadying her resolve.

  Near the western road, the city guard had gathered in lines that were trying very hard not to look like a retreat. Adventurers clustered at the edges, faces hardened, weapons already in hand. Some wore the restless excitement of battle; others wore the quiet dread of people who had survived too many fights to romanticize them.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Rize felt eyes catch on her as she approached.

  Some recognized her. Some didn’t. But they all saw the bandages, the sword, the way she didn’t hesitate. She steadied her breathing and drew her blade.

  Steel slid free with a clean, cold sound that cut through the noise around her. The weight settled into her hand with an intimacy that was almost comforting. This wasn’t a stream. This wasn’t a frame. This was real metal, real danger, real consequences.

  “…I can’t let that thing… enter the city.” The words came out quiet at first, then firmer as she stepped forward. Her back was straight. Her grip did not tremble.

  Through the smoke, a vibration like an earth tremor crept closer. The ground under her boots seemed to remember how to shake.

  Rize reached the West Gate and looked up at the structure engulfed in black smoke. The massive wooden doors were barely visible behind the darkness, the iron reinforcements on their surface glinting like teeth.

  Around her, soldiers and adventurers spread out.

  Someone shouted instructions—evacuation routes, positions, distances. Someone else screamed at a group of civilians to get back, to stop staring, to move.

  But the majority of gazes, including Rize’s, were fixed on the depths of the smoke.

  “It’s coming…” The whisper barely reached her ears, but her body heard it anyway. Her muscles tightened. Her lungs stalled mid-breath.

  The gate groaned. Not the small complaint of wood shifting in wind, but a deep, tortured sound like bones grinding. With a thunderous crash that sounded like something being broken on purpose, the massive wooden gate burst open. Smoke poured inward like a tide.

  And from within it, Something revealed itself. Rize gasped. It was a shadow far larger than the “Something” that had cornered her before.

  Its arms were as thick as the pillars of a building. Its movement wasn’t smooth—it lurched, joints twisting wrong, and each motion dragged smoke with it as if the smoke were part of its flesh. Dull, glowing eyes burned from within the fog, fixed on the city with an attention that felt hungry.

  “…It’s even bigger than last time…!” Her heartbeat spiked violently, slamming against her ribs. Fear tried to root her feet to the stone.

  Her legs kept moving anyway.

  “It’s a monster! Evacuate—!” The scream snapped the crowd into motion like a whip.

  Guards surged forward, shields raised. Adventurers shouted to one another, the air filling with names and tactics and raw battle cries. The mixture of sound built the battlefield, brick by brick.

  Rize took a step forward. There was no tremor in the hand gripping her sword. She was here to overcome that defeat.

  “Reinforcements will come,” she muttered softly. “Surely…” She didn’t know who she was convincing—herself, the guards, the city, or the wind. “So for now…” Wind tossed her hair. Smoke crawled along the street, thickening, making the world taste like ash. Somewhere inside it, the shadow shifted.

  “I’ll buy time,” she said, voice rising.

  “I will… do it. This time for sure!” With a shout, Rize charged. Her blade didn’t waver. Her focus narrowed until there was only one line in the world: straight toward its heart.

  The curtain was rising on the battle once more.

  ?

  Yu returned to his room and sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his smartphone as if staring hard enough could force the universe to behave.

  The screen showed the dim home UI. No notifications. No alerts. No system message that said, yes, we know, yes, something is wrong, please remain calm.

  The silence from the app felt almost mocking.

  “…Rize.” Still, he called her name through the glass. His voice was too small for what he was trying to do. No answer came back. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then—suddenly—the EWS app launched on its own.

  The screen flashed white. Static roared like a sandstorm, loud enough that Yu flinched. The image stuttered, pixelated blocks snapping into place as if reality were being assembled from broken parts. What appeared was a street scattered with rubble.

  “…What is this…” Yu leaned forward without realizing he’d moved. The phone’s cold glow lit the underside of his brows, made his pupils look too dark in the mirror of the screen.

  The footage showed buildings engulfed in flames, crumbled stone walls, dust dancing in the streets like pale ghosts. The camera angle shook with each step, the viewpoint low and frantic, as though whoever held it was running and trying not to trip over bodies.

  And there were bodies.

  People lay on the ground here and there—some moving, some not. Soot-stained clothes and dropped swords were scattered everywhere, abandoned in a way that screamed of sudden chaos rather than orderly retreat.

  It was a ruin. But it wasn’t an ancient ruin, the kind adventurers explored for treasure. This was a cross-section of a city being destroyed right now.

  “Rize!? Can you hear me!? Rize!” Yu’s call was sucked into the screen without an echo, as if his voice had fallen into a hole.

  From far away, the sound of a child crying threaded through the noise. Someone shouted a name—two syllables, maybe three—but the audio broke up, reaching him only in fragments that made his stomach twist. Flames crackled. Stone collapsed with a deep, muffled thud. Someone coughed wetly, a sound too human to be background.

  The viewpoint swerved. It sprinted down a narrow alley, the walls close enough that Yu felt claustrophobic just watching. Debris rained from above. The camera jolted, and Yu’s breath hitched as if he’d been the one struck. His throat was parched. A sharp pain pulsed in the back of his head, like a migraine trying to bloom. He blinked hard. The screen blurred for a moment, then snapped back into focus.

  “Rize… where are you? Where are you…!” His words broke into something smaller, weaker—a prayer squeezed out through clenched teeth.

  The screen was shaking. He didn’t realize it wasn’t the phone trembling. It was his own hands.

  ?

  In the video, the viewpoint stumbled into an open square.

  The camera lifted, tilting up toward the sky. The sky was wrapped in ash and soot, heavy enough that it looked like it might fall. The light was wrong—orange and dirty, filtered through smoke until the world looked bruised.

  Then a black shadow fell across the edge of the frame. It was colossal. Not human. Not beast. Not even something that fit the word magical beast in any way that felt familiar. It was grotesque, slow, and impossibly present, like a hole cut into the world that had learned how to move.

  Its texture was wrong—like skin, like rock, like rotting meat all at once. Its joints twisted backward with every movement, and smoke trailed from it as if the air itself was peeling off. Its malformed right hand was clutching something against its chest. Against its ribs, wrapped in fingers thick as beams—Rize.

  Yu forgot to breathe. Her hair was matted with blood and dirt. Her gear was torn. One arm hung limp, motionless, swinging slightly with the monster’s movement like a broken doll’s. For a second his mind refused to connect the image to reality. No. No, that’s not— But it was her.

  “…Gah… Ahh…!” A sound tried to become a voice in Yu’s throat and failed. His lungs locked. His vision blurred as heat surged from the bottom of his chest to his mouth, as if his body were trying to expel something toxic.

  “St… stop…” he rasped. “Give her back… Give Rize back…!” The corners of the smartphone dug into his palms. The pressure hurt. The pain didn’t matter. He couldn’t let go.

  Rize was lifted higher. Her body dangled, her head lolling unnaturally to the side. Yu’s heart gave a violent lurch, and something inside him collapsed with a sickening finality.

  “Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!” His scream tore through the room. Sobs surged up his throat, tearing his chest apart. Tears and saliva spilled together. His whole body shook in spasms he couldn’t control, like his muscles had been hijacked by grief.

  The phone slipped from his hands and tumbled to the floor.

  But the video didn’t stop. On the screen, the city burned. Smoke and ash. Collapsed buildings and motionless people. The monster’s shadow moved like a slow, inevitable tide.

  “It’s no use…” Yu choked out, curled with his knees to his chest. “I can’t save her… I can’t do anything…!” His voice broke into raw, helpless sounds. He couldn’t stop it. His words had never reached her when it mattered. There was nothing in his hands.

  And still, the stream continued—quietly displaying the end of the world as if it were just another broadcast.

  ?

  Yu’s sobs filled the room. Between the groans that were no longer words, his trembling finger reached out and touched the screen of the fallen smartphone, not with intention, but with the blind desperation of someone reaching for a railing in darkness.

  At that moment, the screen—shook. ROAR. A sound like the earth splitting surged from the depths of the video, so loud it made Yu flinch as if struck. The camera’s vision bleached white for a split second, the brightness burning through his tears. Then something fell.

  A colossal sword descended from the sky—no, from a layer far above the sky—cloaked in lightning. It came down in a straight line, clean and merciless, as if the world itself had been marked for execution. The blade was impossibly tall, towering far higher than any structure in the city. It wasn’t just steel. It was a solid mass of will, the kind of weapon that didn’t exist unless someone had the power to tell reality to move aside.

  The shadow skewered the monstrosity’s back. CRASH! A flash burst. Smoke exploded outward. Chunks of blackened flesh—or something that looked like flesh—tore away in ragged pieces. The air trembled, and the microphone spat out a scream-like static that made Yu’s teeth ache.

  Yu’s eyes widened. Through his tear-blurred vision, the silhouette of someone standing atop a crumbled building emerged, framed by smoke and lightning afterglow.

  A man. Clad in full black armor that drank the light instead of reflecting it. Behind him, the faint afterglow of magic still stretched vertically into the sky like a wound.

  “…Wha… t…?” Yu lost the ability to form words. His throat clogged again, but this time not with despair.

  The footage—shaking, noisy, alive—caught the man’s face. Hair fluttered in the wind as he turned his gaze from within the smoke toward the camera, toward whoever was holding it, toward the world that had been breaking.

  His mouth moved.

  “—Kept you waiting, you piece of shit!” Even through distortion, the intent slammed through clearly, sharp as a blade.

  Yu’s breath hitched. Is this… the one Rize talked about?

  Naz. The name rose in his mind like something he’d been holding under water and finally let surface. His chest shuddered, heat trembling behind his strained tear ducts—pain turning, impossibly, into relief.

  Inside the smartphone screen, the battle wasn’t over.