Mio
The barrier didn't feel like cold water this time.
It felt like dying.
The green shimmer pressed into her mouth first. Then her lungs. Then deeper. Into the spaces between her cells, the gaps she didn't know existed. For one endless second, Mio wasn't a body anymore. She was particles. Scattered.
Unmade.
Then the incursion pulled her back together.
She stumbled through gasping, fingers clawing at her own arms to make sure they were still attached. Her skin felt new. Wrong. Like it had been put back slightly off-center.
The air inside tasted like soil after rain. Rich. Heavy. Like breathing through earth.
"You okay?" Aoi glanced back.
Mio's hands were still shaking. "You didn't feel that too?"
"Huh?" Aoi's brow furrowed. "Feel what? Are you okay?"
Must be the shimmer.
"I'm good."
[Entering Incursion]
[Grade: F]
The first floor looked almost normal. Fluorescent lights stuttered in familiar patterns. Shelves stood in neat rows, stocked with chip bags and bottled water that hadn't quite finished becoming something else.
The first three rooms were fodder. Slimes that burst against Rin's shield and knee-high things with too many teeth. Aoi cleaned them up while Mio watched from the back, counting cooldowns.
They moved through the floor in loose formation. Rin at the front, shield humming. Aoi ranging ahead, checking corners. Shiori in the middle, fingers already moving through buff patterns. Mio at the back.
Watching.
The fourth room had goblins. Six of them, grey-skinned and dim-eyed, clustered around something on the floor.
"Goblins." Rin's shield came up. "Six. Standard formation. Shiori, haste first."
"Tch." Shiori's hands were already blurring. "I know my job."
Blue light rippled across Rin's armor.
The goblins looked up and shrieked.
Rin met them like a wall. Shield bash, sword thrust, shield bash. The first two died before they touched her.
Aoi materialized behind the third, daggers finding the gap between shoulder blades.
The fourth swung a rusted cleaver at Shiori. Mio tensed.
Rin pivoted, caught the blow on her shield's edge, and opened the goblin's throat in a single motion.
The fifth hesitated. Looked at its dead packmates. Looked at Rin.
In the corner, a sixth crouched with its back to them. Not charging. Not shrieking. Just still.
Then the fifth ran.
Aoi's dagger took the runner in the back before it reached the doorway. A second blade caught the still one mid-turn.
"Six," Aoi said, retrieving her daggers. "Thought you said six."
"I did." Rin was already moving. "Nice throw," she added over her shoulder.
"Stop mouthing the cooldowns," Shiori said, not looking up from her buffs. "Eight seconds on the shield. We know."
Mio shut her mouth. Watching was the only thing she could do without draining the party dry, but she kept that to herself.
Aoi caught Mio's eye again. Shrugged.
They cleared the rest of the first floor without incident. By the second floor, Mio's mana had crawled back to full. Small mercy. She could actually think again.
Which meant she noticed things.
The products on the shelves weren't arranged right. Small things, wrong things. Chip bags facing inward, water bottles on their sides, labels peeled away.
"How many rooms was that?" she asked.
Shiori checked her phone. Bureau database, cross-referencing incursion layouts. "Eight total, across both floors."
"That's high for an F."
"Some incursions run long." Aoi said. "We're getting paid by the clear, not the hour."
"Hey." Mio's voice came out sharper than she intended. "Has anyone seen a goblin hide before?"
Rin paused mid-step.
"The one in the corner. It wasn't attacking. It wasn't even looking at us. It was just waiting."
"Dead now," Shiori said. "Does it matter?"
Yes. Goblins swarm. They don't hide. They don't wait.
"Let's just keep moving," Aoi said. "The sooner we clear, the sooner we get paid."
They kept moving. Down the stairs. Through two more rooms of fodder that barely slowed them down.
Then they reached the third floor, and the convenience store was gone.
Fluorescent lights had given way to darkness. Tile floor had become rough stone.
The walls, when Mio could see them, weren't walls at all. They were vines. Thick, dark green, almost black, crawling over everything in patterns that might have been writing.
"What the hell is this?" Rin's voice echoed in the sudden silence.
"Nested incursion." Shiori's face had gone pale, phone casting harsh light across her features. "This shouldn't exist in an F-grade. We need to leave. Now."
"And lose the bonus?" Aoi's jaw tightened.
Rin planted her shield onto the stone. "If we go deeper and die, no one gets anything."
"It's an F-grade, Rin. Even if there's something extra down here—"
"F-grades don't have nested incursions." Rin's voice was flat. "That's not how this works."
They stood there, waiting for someone else to chime in.
Mio looked at the vines on the walls. At the darkness ahead.
We should leave. Something's wrong. Something's—
Her mana shifted.
The same sensation as before, at the barrier. A pull. A whisper too low to hear.
Come.
She took a step forward. Then another. Her legs moved without her permission.
"Mio?" Aoi grabbed her arm. "What are you—"
Mio kept walking. Aoi's grip dragged behind her like it wasn't there.
"Rin! Stop her!"
Rin stepped into her path, a wall of D-grade muscle. Mio walked right into her. She didn't have the strength to push a tank, but Rin stumbled back anyway, unnerved by the dead look in Mio's eyes.
"I can't stop," Mio whispered.
Please. Please, I have a sister. I promised I'd come back.
The pull didn't care.
"If she's going, we're going with her." Aoi's voice had gone hard. "We're not leaving her."
"This is insane!"
"Yeah. It is." Aoi drew her daggers. "Stay behind Rin."
They followed her into the dark.
The passage went on longer than it should have. Sounds echoed from nowhere.
Then the passage opened, and the cathedral swallowed them whole.
[Unique Scenario Triggered: Trial of Genesis]
"What the hell?" Rin's voice cracked. "Did everyone get that?"
"Trial of Genesis." Aoi was scanning the chamber, daggers already drawn. "Shiori, what does that mean?"
Shiori's phone hung limp in her hand. Bureau databases had nothing.
"I don't know. I've never— there's nothing in the logs. Nothing."
Fifty feet to the ceiling. At least. The walls were breathing. Vines expanding and contracting in a slow rhythm, synchronized with something Mio could feel in her chest.
Her heartbeat. Or something else's.
The pull released her.
Mio stumbled, nearly fell. Rin caught her.
"You okay?"
"I—" Her voice cracked. "I don't know what that was."
"Doesn't matter now." Shiori had gone still. "Look."
They looked.
In the center of the cathedral, a massive emerald pulsed with light. The incursion core. Overgrown. Ten times the size it should have been, veins of light threading through it like a circulatory system.
And beyond it, sitting on a throne of living vines—
Something looked back at them.
She descended slowly, bare toes pointed like a diver's, skin the color of moonlight through leaves. Foliage wrapped her like a living gown, blooming and rotting in the same breath. White flowers threaded through dark hair, blooming in silence.
Mio knew better than to look directly at her eyes.
She watched them the way a child watches ants.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
When her feet touched the stone, flowers erupted beneath them. Tiny white blooms that opened, withered, and crumbled to dust in a single heartbeat.
Then the pressure hit.
Her presence, unfolding.
Gravity tripled. The air turned solid.
Rin and Shiori hit the floor instantly, armor clanging against stone. Aoi made it two steps before her legs folded.
But Mio's mana surged against it.
Her blood ran hot. Something in her chest pulled toward the Entity, tuning itself to the same frequency.
For one wild second, she stayed standing. The pressure washed over her, singing in tune with the room.
The Entity's eyes snapped to her.
Then the weight doubled.
Mio hit the ground. Knees cracking against stone, breath leaving her in a sharp wheeze.
The Entity raised a casual hand.
Behind them, the vines surged. They knitted together in seconds, weaving, thickening, sealing the corridor into a wall of living green.
Rin pushed herself to one knee, shield raised toward the Entity. A tank's instinct. But there was nothing to block. Nothing to fight.
Shiori was still scrolling. Searching for an answer that wasn't there.
[WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[Grade: ???]
She looked at them.
Her head tilted.
When she spoke, her voice was the sound of earth shifting. Roots cracking stone deep underground.
"Three may leave."
She let the words settle.
"One must die."
Somewhere behind her, Shiori made a sound. Like a whimper.
Aoi's hand found Mio's. Squeezed once. Hard.
Mio's pulse beat in her throat. Too fast. Too loud.
We're going to die.
But the Entity wasn't looking at the others.
She was looking at Mio. The one who had stayed standing. The one whose mana had sung back.
There you are.