I've been pondering… What is a rift, really?
Not just a rupture or tear. Not a simple dimensional doorway from old stories. Rifts are… vectors. Broken lines in the continuity of space. A rift connects two points not by distance, but by intention.
When the ring cast me here, when the clock swallowed me for the first time, it wasn't time that changed—it was direction. Logic. The vector of my being was distorted. The ring folds the world not to test me… but to teach me to fold the world.
So what if the same mechanism that threw me into these twisted realities is the same one that lets me leave them?
The ground gave way beneath me and I was hurled downhill, rolling among corroded corpses and electric thorns whipping the air like demonic serpents. A worm the size of a horse spat a green lightning bolt that blasted half the slope away, sending me crashing into a pile of bones.
I'm at my limit.
Eleven days to climb four damned steps. My body is broken, my mind in fragments. But this thought… this is the key.
"The staircase leads nowhere," I growled, spitting blood. "The test isn't climbing. It's understanding."
I staggered to my feet.
Another worm lunged.
Thirty feet of pulsating flesh covered in chitinous plates that crackled like dry thunder. Its maw bloomed open; multiple sharp tongues writhed like snakes.
I reached out.
The energy answered.
A rift formed between my fingers—long, thin, black as absence—and with a clean gesture, I sliced the monster in half.
Blood sprayed like a viscous rain, scorching the earth.
"That's it. I'm using rifts as weapons… but I can use them as vectors. As exits."
I ran.
I descended a muddy, slippery trail, the world trembling behind me, worms erupting from craters, spitting lightning that painted the sky purple. The air smelled of ozone and rot.
Below, under a black chasm hidden beneath sludge thick as oil, something gleamed.
A rift—but not like the others.
It spun. Like an eye. Like a miniature black hole. But instead of pulling, it pulsed with the same energy that carried me here, the moment the ring swallowed me.
I knelt before it. I felt the repulsion, the pressure.
"Maybe you taught me the exit, you disgusting thing," I hissed at a worm trying to swallow me.
I plunged my hand in. The world screamed.
The sludge churned. The worms howled in unison. The sky shattered with a nameless light.
And then everything vanished.
**
I returned.
The rift's light pulled me back, and once again I awoke at the same spot: the first step.
My body screamed. Accumulated wounds were still there—no regeneration. No relief.
I leaned on the uneven floor, gasping. Then I raised my head. It was time to start again.
Step 1. A simple rift. Two points crossing at a symmetrical angle. I mirrored its vector. The structure collapsed. Path opened.
Step 2. Wave interference. Two fractures at opposite frequencies. Inverted rhythm. I stabilized it.
As I climbed, step after step, my mind wouldn't quiet:
"What is a rift, after all?"
Maybe… it's like a cut in space. As if the universe were a stretched canvas and something tore it. A line of access between two places normally distant—like a forbidden shortcut.
"I'm sure on Earth some scientists call this a wormhole, right?"
Who knows. I'm no physicist—I never went to school. But it makes sense. As if the universe has secret tunnels. And when you understand how they work, you can cross them.
Or at least know that they exist.
Step 12. Twisted connections. The rift curved like a spiral. I mimicked the rotation pattern. The vortex broke.
I moved on.
"But… what if all this has to do with that quantum entanglement thing?" I vaguely remembered. Something about distant particles seemingly linked. Like twin siblings feeling each other's pain. Except… with physics. And much weirder.
Maybe rifts are like that, but on a spatial scale. A place ahead connected to one behind. And I'm walking the edge of cosmic scissors. And the scissor blade is the world's energy: prana and mana.
"What if that's what the ring is trying to teach me? To feel these connections? To manipulate this torn fabric?"
Step 20. Three pulsing fractures. Each at its own frequency. Noise amplification. Chaotic interference. I recreated an inverted-phase rift to neutralize it. I passed with difficulty.
I started sweating cold.
"Maybe the rift that threw me into this ring is the same kind I use now to escape false realities…"
"And what if it is?"
"If it is… then I can force entry. And force an exit."
Step 28. Inverted torsion pattern with secondary vortex. Lateral infiltration, rift at left. I engaged my spatial sense. I cut. Controlled jump.
Blood trickled from my legs, my left arm. My shoulder throbbed. But my reasoning… sharpened.
"These rifts are unstable. I only manage them because the ring forced me to learn. But out there—can I create my own? Can I fold real space… like here?"
Step 33. Multi-vector. Four overlapping rifts. A chaos of entries and exits. I entered meditation for seconds. I simulated the structure. I began weaving rifts upon one another—sweat trickled down my face, blood from my nails, vision blurred—but finally it worked.
Step 34.
The final conquered.
My breath turned to vapor.
The fractures trembled like nerves about to break.
I pressed my hand to the wall. I smiled at the corner of my mouth, despite the pain.
Step 34 stretched before me like a wall of distortions—a barrier of overlapping rifts connected like irregular vertebrae at the edges of the platform.
The ground trembled lightly. The fractures… vibrated.
I limped forward. My left arm barely responded. Dried blood coated most of my open wounds. My clothes were tattered, fingers deeply cut, and a stab of pain seared my shoulder with every deep breath.
None of it mattered now.
Rifts connected at the vertices. Some stabilized by mirrored inverse rifts to cancel distortions. Others, however, required the opposite: completion. Flow lines were missing—as if the structure were incomplete.
"An incomplete network."
I studied the entire pattern again. The structure was… strange. Much more complex than the previous ones.
Rifts joined in three-dimensional arrays. Geometric repetition with axial variation. It was almost…
I paused. My eyes widened.
"A face‑centered cube…" I murmured.
Yes. The arrangement made sense—rifts at vertices and face centers. A crystalline grid of instabilities.
But something still didn't fit.
The fractures of the central edges were misaligned. They vibrated opposite to the edge fractures.
It was counterintuitive—as if the system demanded two simultaneous flow directions.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
"What if that's it?"
I embraced the paradox.
I created inverse rift vectors on the central edges while completing the lateral ones with parallel rifts. Like opposite polarities coexisting in the same field.
A tremor rippled through the structure.
The air became dense. The entire step oscillated, vibrating like it would collapse.
"Damn… I messed up," my hand still frozen mid-air.
Fractures began twisting… one spiral pulling another. The light of warped space shimmered and, for a moment, I was sure—it would collapse.
But then…
A dry snap. The geometry vibrated once more and stabilized.
The rifts canceled each other.
The space around me cleared. And the floor beneath my feet opened.
With no time to react, I fell face‑first onto step 34's surface.
It was high. Very high. This staircase wasn't built for human feet—each step was a wall, and between each one, I fought as if scaling a cliff with my body in tatters.
I rolled aside, coughing.
"Thirty‑four…" I breathed, spitting a little blood. "Never want to look at a cube again."
I lay there, feeling my bones ache as if grinding from within. The world spun faintly.
I lifted my head. Step 35 still stood above me—a black monolith, no visible rifts from here. But I knew one lurked there. Hidden.
"On the next, I'll get out," I said, more like a promise. "If I'm right… if this challenge uses the same entry principle that pulled me here, then I can reverse the process."
"Entanglement, reversed symmetry. If each rift inside me pulls me into an alternate reality… then maybe, just maybe, a rift can thrust me back."
I smiled with bloodied lips.
"Let's see if the real world still exists for me."
And I began crawling, heading for step 35.
**
The 35th step wasn't a step.
It was an abyss.
The structure was there—the same colossal wall rising in the void—but as I approached, I realized: there were no visible fractures. No rifts. No points of instability.
The stone was smooth, uniform. A perfect monolith.
And yet, it vibrated.
The space around it rippled like a mirage. A distorted field, formless but saturated with presence. Like a point of overlap between two worlds.
I let my fingers touch the surface. No resistance. No texture.
And yet, my fingers vanished.
My eyes widened.
I yanked my hand back, and my fingers were intact. Trembling. But it was enough to confirm: the step was a rift. A disguised portal.
I took a deep breath. The air felt heavier here.
"This is my limit…" I murmured.
Thirty-four steps.
Eleven days.
Dozens of realities.
Hundreds of wounds.
A thousand thoughts between despair and logic.
And there were still more steps above, too many for my vision to grasp the end.
Everything now narrowed to one decision.
I closed my eyes and began mentally reconstructing the entire path that brought me here. Every rift, every leap.
The way the ring had swallowed me.
The pattern.
"If every rift until now was a dimensional projection…" I whispered to myself, "then every rift was a transposition vector."
The sound around me began to change.
Something… was whispering.
A murmur from all directions, as if space itself spoke formulas in forgotten tongues.
"What defines a displacement isn't just the exit point. It's the return vector."
I opened my eyes. The world before me trembled.
This was the moment.
I raised my right hand.
I focused spatial energy.
Not to cut.
Not to distort.
But to fold space into itself.
My fingers shook. The space in front of my palm twisted. A violet-blue glow pulsed at the edges of the step, and the structure began to fracture like warped glass.
And then I did the unthinkable:
I traced the exact same spatial signature I had felt when the ring swallowed me.
The same pattern.
The same frequency.
The same path in reverse.
The step screamed.
Not with sound, but with space.
Logically, this wasn't the solution the step demanded. So, I should have been dragged into whatever pre-programmed reality that rift led to. Unless… I reprogrammed the destination myself.
That was exactly what I had tried.
The ground shook. The sky inside the ring split into cracks of light.
A vortex opened before me, like a wormhole spat out by a collapsing universe.
My eyes teared from the pressure. My body screamed. Wounds reopened.
But I laughed.
"This is it…" I whispered as the vortex expanded. "The end of the cycle."
I took a step forward.
And was swallowed by the fold I created.
Silence.
Darkness.
Vibration.
Like being spit out by thunder.
My eyes flew open in a jolt.
The black ceiling of the cultivation chamber loomed above me. The ritual candles still burned—weak, nearly extinguished.
I was back.
But my body...
My skin was glowing with the splendor of power.
My veins pulsed with heat.
My muscles were tense, denser.
My bones, hard as steel.
And I was bigger. Stronger.
"You came back…" a faint voice called.
I turned. Seraphine.
Sitting against the wall, still pale, but her eyes… were glowing.
"It's been four days…" she said.
I nodded, swallowing hard.
My hand still vibrated with the residual trace of the fold.
"I didn't finish the staircase…" I murmured. "But I found the exit."
And then, I smiled.
Not from relief, but from understanding.
Which didn't last long. Looking out toward the horizon, the void was only hours away from consuming the mountain we stood on.
"Phew… it's all or nothing now!"