The calm after the storm was not peace—it was confusion, a jarring discord resonating through the bones of the world like a machinery uncertain of its next breath.
The poisoned sky above continued to convulse with bursts of purple static, the convulsive dying throes of something out of place—a thwarted attack by something which shouldn't have been, yet had.
It had broken through whatever it was.
It had touched the surface.
And it had left a scar.
The warping of the digital realm wasn't retreating this time. The usual reset protocols, the gentle mending of the game world after a catastrophic event, weren't activating. There was no rollback. No emergency purge. Just silence.
Kaito was standing at the edge of a shattered cliff, where the ground fell away into a burned-out crater. He knew the place—it had once been a training hub for mid-level players, littered with battle dummies and low-level drops.
