Dorothy watched a colossal fireball claw up into the sky, a blazing sun ripped free of the horizon.

Rainbow rays and missiles chased after it, bursting like lawless fireworks—aimless, patternless, a messy, unorganized fusillade.

What is that?

Why did the Arctic sky suddenly turn so lively, like a winter carnival set ablaze?

That’s a ghost recorded by Sorcery. Yekase leaned in by Dorothy’s side, eyes on the window. A battle happened there once, dragged in by the half-ruined sorcery field girding the city… Arcadia should be below. Harrison?

Yeah. That way.

The off-road truck slid past a muddy river shoal and bit toward the place where the sky image hung, like a hound tugging its leash.

A giant mechanical hand thrust up from the earth, seized something—then squeezed an explosion out of the air like a rotten fruit.

Arcadia’s stone giant, Yekase said, breath steady, words heavy.

The mecha and spellfire were aiming at something that fell from the sky—a target the image didn’t catch, a star missing from the frame.

Greenfield faction texts say Arcadia vanished from Central Europe before the World Tree was planted. No trace of why. Not one thread.

Back then Sandryon was a young court painter. Alicia Alicia hadn’t been born. Aurora was in Northern Asia, shaping her human–dragon commune like a potter at the wheel. No one left to ask.

Jixia might know. We can’t reach her.

Forget it. We go in and investigate, and the dust will speak.

We can only hope the Shadow Realm War is squatting on the old city and hasn’t reshaped it by whim… If Arcadian artifacts are broken, Yekase will grieve like a widow in black.

That’s… my real homeland. Arcadia… Harrison murmured, voice fragile as paper.

Yeah.

Yekase, in the passenger seat, turned to face the man who seemed to age ten years in one breath. His whole body trembled like a leaf in an autumn gust.

Was that hope, or fear?

Was he yearning to step into the hut where he was born, the cradle of his first breath? Or fearing the truth—because the clearer the ghost, the clearer he can never go back?

Your parents and your people crossed five hundred years to send you to this era. At least see the place they lived.

Mm. I should.

Arcadia mastered black-hole engines and even studied grand Sorcery that bent time. But faster-than-light dances against the cosmos—only true at singularities where the laws go to ash.

The sorcery-torn, controllable wormhole was likely baby-sized. An entire city dying bought a single new life, an ember carried through the storm.

That life wandered the human world forty years, finally walking back to the homeland he whispered to night after night.

The four made their quiet preparations, breath like coals banked for a coming flame.

As the truck drew closer, the sky image climbed, then halted overhead, a phantom moon on a string. Harrison and Yekase tilted their heads, watching a hologram reel unwind above them.

A gaping crater tore open the earth ahead, a mouth about to swallow.

Eyes on the road! Lu Yao barked, his voice a whipcrack.

We’re going in! Brake! Brake! Dorothy cried, fear rising like winter floodwater. Celestial Speech, Le—

Was it the angle of the ground? Only at arm’s length did the abyss lift its veil.

Harrison screamed louder than Dorothy, planted the brake to the floor, and wrenched the wheel like a helm in a storm. Panels hummed open along the SUV’s side, a light-curtain bloomed. The Peace Walker’s giant hand-shadow floated from within, reaching outward like a guardian from glass.

Yekase slid off her seat into the front gap, folding like someone stuck in a wall—only their rear exposed, dignity left behind. Dorothy’s Levitation Spell reached half a syllable; the truck bit down speed. She slammed into the seat, stars clanging in her skull, tongue nearly caught by shock.

Screeeeeech—!!

The tires sang with tooth-aching fury, stopping at the crater’s rim like a dancer toeing the edge.

We almost rushed straight in… Harrison wiped cold sweat, heart still a galloping horse.

He forgot his say carried the least weight among the four. He rounded on Yekase, anger sparking like flint. Ms. Yekase! You send drones daily—how’d you miss a hole this big?

Yekase was still wedged between seat and console, trapped in a pose like someone half-set in concrete, only the backside for the world to see. Face pinched by her knees, she mumbled through pressure.

The Iron Beast Bird didn’t see it! A hole this size was clearly masked by sorcery. Making me match spellwork with an Ascender—come on.

The crater stretched over ten kilometers, a perfect circle cut in the earth like a stamp of doom. With the SUV at its lip, they looked toy-small, ants at a well. Three jumped out. Lu Yao, wearing pure disgust like a mask, finally hauled Yekase free.

Ow…

Yekase rubbed her waist and walked to the edge. With Harrison and Dorothy, she leaned over, eyes dropping into the world below.

She saw a field of ruins, a dead sea of stone.

Compared to the clean, intact Arcadia conjured above Soville City by “Seeking Fog Notice,” this ruin felt meteor-punished. The signature great palace lay smashed dead-center by a monstrous mechanical carcass, face beyond recognition. Streets and houses around it wore wind-scars and time-cracks, littered with shards large and small like bones.

Meteorfall—the biblical lash for a sinful city. Dorothy’s voice rose, a dawn breaking the fog. So Arcadia was destroyed by the Church!

No…

Arcadia’s stone giants used white stone. The long-dead machines showed sleek lines; their skins still winked with light after years, a lacquered black that drank the sun.

Yekase knew those machines like scars you can’t forget.

Silicon-born life from ten years ago, faithful to Perfect Alexander—humans called that Gestalt-minded species Exogens.

Why here—

No. It tracks.

Arcadia’s fading from European history mirrors the Reverse Meme that swallowed the Twenty Second Squad, a vanishing writ in fog.

With magical-tech prowess that dominated its era—and would still give modern fighters a bruising—only alien invasion or self-immolation explains a sudden wipeout.

And their proud mecha, built on Europe’s anti-sorcery materials, were near useless against Exogen minions, claws slipping off like rain on oil.

Before this ruin, the notion that Exogens invaded Earth earlier sat among unprovable, half-comic guesses—like God chucking a meteor at Arcadia.

Now, seeing the wreckage, hindsight lights old hints one by one, lanterns in a corridor.

That largest sphere smashing the palace is a landing ship. Look—mid and small machines strewn along the streets. Shells in black and white. White is Arcadia. Black is Exogen.

Aliens… Dorothy had been five then, cloistered deep in the palace. My sense of Exogens comes from texts and recordings. The court library stored nothing useful to rule; I read more after reaching Ivalice.

Ten years ago… Harrison scratched his head, shameless and proud, grin crooked as a scythe. I holed up in Mysidia, didn’t dare step outside. Heard aliens were terrifying. Heard humanity almost went under. Never knew how terrifying exactly—

Lu Yao turned, lids lowered, watching Yekase’s face surrender its calm like a flag lowered at dusk.

Well? Do you have a plan?

The Shadow Realm War base is in the ruins. If we let her slip again, she’s gone. Plan or no, we go.

Same old flavor. Lu Yao’s voice carried dry mirth, a chuckle with edges. After all the scheming, it still ends with a face-charge.

Got a plan that isn’t charge-first?

I’m not the commander.

Then that settles it.

Yekase forced a laugh, bracing her will like a shield.

If it’s only the Shadow Realm War inside, she and Lu Yao could box them in and wipe them clean.

If it’s only Exogens, her long practice would let her take most of the fight alone, a hunter in a steel forest.

Both together—she couldn’t promise victory, not without lying to herself.

She bragged plenty off-hours, but she respected her enemies like storms you don’t turn your back on.

And the city might still hide Arcadian traps, old teeth in old stone.

What a joke… The Shadow Realm War picked Arcadia’s ruins for this very reason. Even if nothing’s there, the threat hangs heavy—and heavier for the well-read.

If you neither know Arcadia nor the Exogens—honestly, that’s normal—you’d just mutter, “Damn, that’s one majestic ruin,” and walk right in.

…Huh?

No. That’s wrong.

By common logic, illusions are for blinding the many who can’t pierce tricks.

A warning an average person can’t even name, let alone find chilling—what’s the point? Are they so confident the average won’t dare knock? Do they expect only combat archaeologists fluent in historical riddles?

Still, this mad empty-city bluff hit Yekase right between the eyes, a pebble in the brow.

She knows Arcadia. She knows the Exogens. Her nature skews cautious, a fox testing ice.

Damn it. Whatever. We go!

Yekase swung Harrison over her shoulder, took three quick strides, and dove into the yawning maw like a swallow into a cave.

Whoaaa—?!

Don’t grow up into an adult like her, Lu Yao advised, voice cool as shade.

I—I won’t… Dorothy watched their figures shrink along the Y-axis and Z-axis, her heart flapping like a trapped bird in a glass lantern.