That night, after another quiet meal, the tension remained. They ate a savory stew made from the garden vegetables. They ate in silence in a small dining alcove. The only sounds were the soft clink of a spoon against a bowl. Lilith did not try to touch him. She did not try to read his emotions. She just watched. Her violet eyes were thoughtful. Calculating.
Kaito's mind was racing. The success of Shadow Spark was a lifeline. But it was a dangerous one. Using it raised his Glitch Meter. It stressed his unstable System. And it alerted Lilith to his potential threat. He had to be careful. He had to be smart.
He needed to find the weak point. The anchor point he had sensed during his Limit Break. The place where the Shadow Keep was stitched to the real world of Elysia.
After the meal, he returned to his room. Lilith did not follow him. He heard her footsteps fade away, heading toward the library. He heard the distant, soft sound of a page turning. Then silence.
He waited. He waited for what felt like an hour. He lay perfectly still in the smoky quartz bed, listening. The Keep was utterly silent. There was no day or night here. Only the eternal, bruised glow from the vortex. But his body clock, his System clock, told him time was passing.
Finally, he moved.
He slipped out of bed. He moved silently to the door. He peered out into the corridor. It was empty. The violet orbs floated serenely, casting their weak light.
He stepped out. He used Enhanced Cognition. The world sharpened. He used the skill not for speed, but for memory. He re-traced the path they had taken earlier in his mind. He needed to find an external wall. Not an internal wall like in the practice room. An outer wall. The boundary of the demi-plane.
He moved like a ghost. His bare feet made no sound on the cool obsidian. He avoided the main hall. He took servant passages—smaller, plainer corridors he guessed were meant for movement through the Keep. He followed a slow, downward slope.
He found it. A long, curved wall of seamless, black obsidian. It had no features. No tapestries. No doors. No shelves. Just smooth, cold stone from floor to distant ceiling. And on its surface, the ever-present, faint sheen of clinging shadow. This had to be the western edge. The weak point his overdriven Analyze had identified.
He placed his palm flat against the wall. It felt solid. Impossibly thick. Impossibly dense. He pushed against it. It did not budge a millimeter.
He would need a lot of power. More than one Shadow Spark. This was not a tapestry. This was part of the Keep's foundational structure.
He began his work. It was slow. Miserably slow.
He stood back a few feet. He raised his hand. He focused. "Shadow Spark."
The murky, static-filled bolt shot from his palm. It hit a single point on the wall with a soft hiss. The patch of shadow clinging to that spot sizzled. It vanished like smoke in the wind. The obsidian beneath looked slightly duller. Less reflective.
He waited. His MP was now 5/30. With Soul Fatigue, it regenerated at a crawl. He stood there, breathing slowly, watching his MP bar refill one tiny point at a time. After several long minutes, it reached 10/30.
He cast again. "Shadow Spark."
Another patch of shadow vanished. The dull, clean patch on the wall grew. It was now about the size of his hand.
Glitch Meter: 8%.
System Instability: 13%(holding, for now).
MP: 0/30.
Wait again. The silence was oppressive. Every second felt like an hour. He listened for any sound of Lilith. He heard nothing. Just the hum in his ears. The hum of the Keep, or his own blood.
His MP slowly filled. 5/30… 10/30…
Cast. "Shadow Spark."
Glitch Meter: 9%.
MP: 0/30.
Wait. Cast.
Glitch Meter: 10%.
MP: 0/30.
He lost track of time. His head began to ache from the constant strain. The mental focus. The slow drain of his energy. But he saw progress. A circle of wall about three feet wide had lost its shadowy sheen completely. The obsidian beneath looked wrong. It looked dry. Brittle. Hairline fractures, thin as spider silk, were now visible in the dark glass under the dull spot.
This was taking too long. The "day" in the garden pocket-dimension would come eventually. Lilith's routine would bring her to check on him. He was running out of time.
He had one last, dangerous idea.
He let his MP fill to 15. Instead of casting Shadow Spark, he cast a regular Mana Bolt. But as he formed it, he pushed a trickle of Glitch energy into it. Just a tiny trickle. He aimed not for the wall in general, but for the very center of the de-shadowed, fractured circle.
The glitch-tinged blue bolt shot forward. It struck the center of the fractured obsidian.
CRACK.
A sound! A real, physical sound! A web of fractures spread out from the impact point across the entire three-foot circle. The cracks deepened. They turned from hairline to visible seams. And through them… he heard something else. A faint, distant sound. The howl of a wind. Real wind.
It was working! The barrier was thinning!
But the sound! It echoed in the silent corridor.
He heard a distant, sharp intake of breath from somewhere deep in the Keep. From the direction of the library. Lilith. She had heard it.
No time. No more time for subtlety.
He gathered all his remaining energy. He had 5 MP left. It wasn't enough for another Shadow Spark. But he didn't want to unravel shadow anymore. He wanted to break. To shatter the weakened reality.
He visualized the Shadow Spark skill. But he pushed his will beyond it. He didn't want to carefully consume. He wanted to explode. To detonate the Glitch energy itself against the weak point.
[Skill Evolution Attempted: Shadow Spark -> Shadow Burst.]
[Requirements: Glitch Meter > 10%, High Stress Environment, Clear Destructive Intent.]
[Conditions Met. Evolution granted temporarily.]
He didn't question it. He embraced the Glitch. He let the chaotic energy fill him. Just for this moment.
He didn't fire a bolt. He placed both hands against the cold, fractured circle on the wall. He pushed.
"SHADOW BURST!"
The energy did not shoot out. It detonated from his palms. It was a wave of silent, consuming darkness. A sphere of nullification. It hit the fractured obsidian circle.
The wall did not shatter into pieces. It dissolved. It vaporized from the center out in a ring of sizzling, black static. A hole tore open. A ragged, man-sized hole. The edges of the hole crackled with violent red and blue energy. Beyond the hole was not another room. It was a blur. A screaming, rushing blur of distorted colors and chaotic energy. The chaotic "between-space" that separated dimensions. The wind-roar was deafening now.
An exit. An unstable, terrifying, suicidal exit.
[Glitch Meter: 15%]
[System Instability: 14%]
[New Skill: Shadow Burst Lvl 1.]
[MP: 0/30]
"KAITO!"
Lilith's voice. It was not calm. It was not gentle. It was raw. It was full of panic. And a betrayal so deep it was a physical force in the air. He could hear her running. Her footsteps were not silent now. They were pounding. He could feel the shadows in the corridor gathering. Coalescing into a storm behind him.
He didn't look back. He couldn't.
He took two stumbling steps back. He took a deep breath of the Keep's scentless air. He looked at the screaming, chaotic void in the wall. It was madness to jump into that. It was certain death. Or worse.
But staying was a different kind of death. A slow death of the spirit in a gilded cage.
He ran. He took three fast steps and leaped.
He leaped headfirst through the jagged, sizzling hole into the formless, screaming void.
The last thing he heard from the Shadow Keep was her voice. It broke apart. It shattered into a sob of utter, centuries-old despair.
"WHY DO YOU ALL LEAVE ME?!"
Then, the void swallowed him whole.
The between-space was not a place. It was a sensation. It was total chaos.
He was tumbling. There was no up or down. There was only violent motion and a cacophony of non-sound that vibrated in his teeth. The glitched energy still clinging to him from the Shadow Burst interacted violently with the chaotic stream. It acted like a shield. A fragile, cracking shield.
He saw flashes. Images. They were not real. They were fragments of other places, other times, bleeding through the thin walls of reality. A city of gold. A desert under a red sun. A battlefield with giants. They flashed and were gone.
He felt his body stretching. He felt his mind fraying at the edges. The System Instability warning flashed red in his vision, even though his eyes were squeezed shut.
[Warning: Dimensional Shear.]
[Soul Integrity at 85%... 84%...]
He was going to die here. He was going to be torn apart into cosmic dust.
Then, a pressure. A pull. The chaotic stream he was in was hitting something. A stronger, more stable reality. It was being deflected. He was being spat out.
The tumbling became a fall. A straight, violent fall.
Light—real, blinding, glorious sunlight—assaulted his closed eyes. Sound—the roar of a crowd, the braying of animals, the shouts of merchants—replaced the silent scream of the void. Smell—dust, spices, cooking meat, animal dung—flooded his nose.
WHUMP.
He hit the ground hard. He hit hard-packed earth. The impact drove the air from his lungs. He rolled several times, a tangle of limbs. He came to a stop on his back, gasping, staring up at a bright, blue sky.
The sky. The real sky. With one sun. A yellow sun.
He was out.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, wheezing. He was dizzy. He was nauseous. The world swam around him.
He was in the middle of a marketplace. A huge, bustling, noisy, alive marketplace. Stalls with colorful awnings stretched in every direction. People—humans, beast-kin with animal features, tall elves—milled everywhere. The air was thick with dust and the smell of a thousand different things.
Behind him, in the air about five feet off the ground, the ragged hole he had fallen from still hung. It crackled with dying glitch-energy. It looked like a tear in the world itself. People nearby were staring at it, pointing, shouting in alarm.
With a final, loud POP, the tear snapped shut. The air where it had been wavered for a second, then was normal.
He had escaped. He was free. He was in a city.
And standing right over him, having just sidestepped his tumbling body, was a woman. She had sharp, pointed ears poking through short, reddish-brown hair. Her eyes were a mischievous green. She wore practical, dusty leathers. She had been in the process of tucking a small, embroidered purse back into her belt. She looked from the spot where the portal had vanished to his disheveled, shocked face.
A slow smirk spread across her features. "Well," she said. Her voice was rough but amused. "That's one hell of an entrance. You trying to make a scene, or did you just forget how doors work?" She cocked her head. "You gonna pay for the show, or are you just planning to lie there in the dirt all day?"
Kaito stared at her. His mind was reeling. The bond link in his soul—the link to Lilith—was still there. But it felt different. It was stretched thin. A thread of pure, anguished cold stretched across an impossible distance. He could feel her grief. Her rage. It was a dull ache in his own chest.
He was out. He was in a city. In broad daylight.
And he had no idea where he was. No idea what to do. No resources. No allies.
[Quest Updated: Escape the Shadow Keep.]
[Status: Success!]
[New Quest Generated: Survive the Oasis-Fortress Zerzura.]
[Objective: Navigate the city, avoid notice, and find shelter.]
[Warning: The Shadow Sovereign's grief has turned to cold rage. The Celestial Legion actively hunts an 'anomaly.' Your glitch signature is a beacon. You are not safe here.]
He looked up at the smirking woman. The thief. She looked capable. She looked like she knew her way around. She looked like she wasn't afraid of much.
"I need…" he started. His voice was a dry croak. He swallowed. "I need help."
Elara's smirk widened. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a shark. "Everyone in Zerzura needs help, kid. The desert is cruel. The city is crueler. The question isn't if you need help." She leaned down slightly, her green eyes glinting. "The question is, what's it worth to you?"
She offered a hand to help him up. It was not a friendly gesture. It was a transaction waiting to happen.
Kaito looked at her hand. Then at the crowded, dangerous, unfamiliar city around him. The hunt was on. From two different directions. And he was right in the middle of it, with nothing but a glitching System and a soul full of cracks.
He took her hand.
To be continued...