The Cartenone Temple had returned to a fragile calm, but the digital horizon trembled with something new. A shifting rift of black-and-purple code had appeared on the horizon, rippling like corrupted water.
"This… isn't just a domain," Frostbinder said, ice forming instinctively on her gloves. "The system here… it's alive."
Brush D. Rush stepped forward, aura flickering as he sensed the strange currents. "This is what comes next," he murmured. "The Dark Web. It's… corrupted… dangerous… and it knows we're coming."
Equinox adjusted her violet lances, eyes narrowing. "Dangerous? Try impossible."
The team crossed the threshold, and the world around them shattered into a surreal nightmare. Platforms bent at impossible angles, streams of distorted code flowed like rivers, and fragments of corrupted NPCs flickered in and out of existence. The rules of physics didn't apply—every step could lead to falling into a void or being trapped in a looping corridor.
"Keep close," Brush instructed, teleporting forward to scout. His aura flared, all his powers synchronized, sensing the flow of the corrupted data. "We move as one. No mistakes."
Almost instantly, the first glitch monsters appeared: malformed creatures, half-code and half-physical, shifting between forms. One resembled a giant digital spider, its legs made of jagged frames, eyes like frozen GIFs. Another flickered constantly, making it impossible to anticipate its attacks.
Brush teleported into action, Erasure flaring, slicing through the first creature mid-attack. Creation Guardians surged to intercept additional fragments. Equinox's violet lances streaked through the void, piercing a glitch that tried to swap her perception of space.
"They adapt fast," RobbRox shouted, rebuilding a collapsing corridor for the team to advance."Faster than anything we've faced before," FooTube added, streaming illusions to distract the shifting forms.
The team moved in perfect synchronization, but the corruption kept evolving. Every strike they landed was met with a new mutation—attacks warped into other forms, fragments recombined, loops duplicated. Brush realized quickly that the Dark Web wasn't just a battlefield—it was a thinking entity, testing them at every turn.
"It's learning," he said, voice tense. "Every move we make, it predicts, adapts, and mutates."
Frostbinder froze a cluster of glitches mid-transformation, Melody Guard harmonized to calm sensory overload, and Equinox carved a stable corridor for the team.
But even with their coordinated effort, a massive wave of glitch fragments surged forward, threatening to engulf them entirely. Brush's aura flared violently. Determination pulsed from him, and every time a fragment struck him down, he revived instantly, stronger and more focused.
"We're not just surviving," Brush shouted. "We're controlling the chaos!"
The team pushed through the first trial of the Dark Web, stepping into a zone more corrupted and surreal than anything they had ever seen. And far ahead, the rift pulsed—a signal that something far larger, far more dangerous, awaited them deeper inside the Dark Web.
"This is just the beginning," Brush said, determination blazing. "We survive here, and nothing can stop us. Not glitches… not corruption… not even the Dark Web itself."
The team advanced, fully aware that every step forward would be a battle of perception, power, and will. The Dark Web had begun its test—and it had already claimed its first challenge