Dear Ms. Hedi Melvina,

After careful deliberation, the Academy has decided to decline your resignation.

We understand your passion for adventure and the unknown, and your early achievements are truly remarkable.

Your gift for magic and instinct, along with your attentive guidance of students, have made you one of the most beloved professors at Hervor Academy in a short time.

Therefore, on behalf of the faculty, I urge you to reconsider.

We’ll do our utmost to support you professionally and create better conditions for your magical research.

We sincerely hope you’ll continue to lend your talent to the Hervor Academy of Magic. Please give us this chance.

Respectfully,

Principal Bruns.

Hedi pinched the edge of the stationery, folded it cleanly, and slipped it into her coat. Wind clawed at the carriage; dense black smoke drifted in, a coal-bitten smell stabbing her nose. She shut the window. The train beat south along austere iron rails, a fast rhythm on a stern line.

She was headed for the Shattered City, the small town worst scarred by Dark Realm Erosion.

They’d stopped counting its people years ago. The young had flowed to big cities like a tide, leaving old folks to witness the town’s decay, and Dark Realm Investigators no one wanted near.

“Unwanted” sat in Hedi’s mind inside air quotes. Investigators held back the Dark Realm’s spread; most people honored their effort. But the work was filthy and grinding, and the Privileged Party and nobility turned up their noses like frost.

“For the Empire’s honor, they shoulder this bitter duty without complaint. Noble, that sacrifice. In this world, someone has to lose.”

A sigh first, then words. Hedi murmured, her forefinger slowly curling a pale-gray strand at her temple like twining smoke.

Outside, the scenery fled in a blur, and her reflection flickered on the glass with it. Only her bright orange eyes burned steady, like wildfire searing the pane.

She tipped her face up, thoughts drifting like cloud-bands. If the timing held, she’d reach the Shattered City at dusk.

The train plunged into a tunnel. The world outside fell behind a wall of unbroken black.

Weariness rose first like a tide, then she settled back against the soft seat and replayed the principal’s plea. The Academy was good—too quiet. In this second life, after she got used to a woman’s body, the grind stayed the same: nine-to-nine, six days a week, a wheel rutted deep. She was bored; her passion for research had thinned like mist in sun.

Too much theory turns the mind muzzy, especially after hours hunched over papers.

She needed shock. Something to reawaken numb nerves. The Dark Realm felt like the hammer to smash that iron routine. But what lay inside? No one knew except Investigators.

Years ago, an explorers’ team went in and vanished like foam in surf. Since then, no ordinary soul tried. Fragments of rumor lingered: a great beast’s stomach inside, acid strong enough to melt skin; or a white bone arm rising from its depths, seen from afar like a ghost-limb.

To Hedi, they sounded like scenes torn from a novel, maybe a fallen writer’s fever dream.

“Next stop, Shattered City.”

A prickle of focus first, then movement. Hedi listened to the announcement and took out her mechanical pocket watch. The time matched her estimate: six-thirty.

She turned off the brass lamp by her seat, lifted her brown valise, and crossed the polished floor that gleamed like a still lake. She stopped by the door.

The Shattered City sat in the upper left of her view, wrapped in fog like damp silk. The mist rolled and swallowed the world, its tone shifting to pale gray, then blending with the western dusk, inseparable as ink in water.

Hedi stood at the carriage door and stared at the mirage-like city for a quiet moment.

A small brace first, then action. She raked her fingers through the ponytail at her nape like combing coarse rain, smoothed the strands, and walked toward the ruined town.

By the time she reached it, a blood-red sun was burning through heavy white fog, draping the whole city in a gauze of gray-blue light.

The deeper she went, the tighter her breath became; a strange odor seeped through the air like rot under stone.

“Stop there!”

Bang. The gunshot snapped Hedi still.

She looked toward the voice and took in the towering city gate.

The gate was black through and through, stacked from heavy dark bricks. Its face was carved with a tangle of magic sigils that crawled like ivy.

“What are you here for?”

The guard on the gate watched her like a hawk. He wore a dark-blue silk tight, a red cloak drawn tight at the neck. Inside the cloak glinted metal scales like fish armor. In a century sprinting with steam and wires, the outfit felt like a relic.

If it weren’t for this place’s strangeness, Hedi would’ve pegged him as a traveler out of time—medieval in a steel age. But this was the Shattered City; nothing in dress surprised you here.

Maybe it was the magic. Metal worked like a ward against mind-sorcery.

“Research related to the Dark Realm.”

A slip of unease first—her gaze wavered. She hadn’t expected armed guards. Books and rumors had painted the city; reality was another beast. She hadn’t planned a better excuse. Anything beat saying “adventure” out loud.

“More research? Get lost!” The guard went from calm to rage like a storm front, and kept firing at Hedi’s feet to vent it.

Fear clawed up first; she stepped back and raised her hands a little. “Your aim’s sharp, but you shouldn’t be firing at civilians.”

“Heh. You know why?”

“If you’re willing to tell me.”

He swapped rounds with a practiced clack and lifted his arm toward the edge of the wall.

Hedi followed his gesture. Around the Shattered City, white fog pooled like a silent sea and hugged the town. The day’s last heat pressed on it, but couldn’t pierce it; the light lay on the mist like clothing on a curve.

In that reddened glow, the fog showed a tender gray-blue, thin as gauze.

Through the haze, Hedi glimpsed the high ramparts, and a black vortex hanging above them. It turned slowly, and the jagged shadow of its teeth flickered where sunlight met fog like a blade at water’s skin.

The dying sun couldn’t light its deep dark core. It was a black hole; anything that drifted close vanished into it like a moth into flame.

“That thing is the Dark Realm.”

“Records say the Dark Realm is usually closed. Someone opened a path and didn’t seal it in time.”

“Someone? Who?”

His brows slammed inward. His eyes went wide, blue ice flashing under a lid of anger. He ground out the words through clenched teeth: “A researcher like you opened it.” His chest heaved; he hammered the wall with his fist like pounding a drum. “I warned her—no entry without an Investigator. But that arrogant woman insisted on throwing her life away!”

“So the Investigators—”

“When it’s forced open, you can’t close it from outside.”

“So none of them came back.”

“I’m sorry I yelled.” He waved a hand in the air, chopping at shadows. “I just hate the word research.”

A hush first, then thought. Hedi nodded, thumb and forefinger pinching her chin. She watched the black swirl above the wall, mind weighing the Dark Realm’s boundary like testing the edge of glass.

Her eyes tightened, then loosened. Orange pupils held the vortex’s churn; her fingers rubbed her chin without noticing, counting pressure like an abacus bead.

After a bit, she drew her gaze back and faced him. “Can I stay here tonight? The last train left half an hour ago.”

He held her in silence a few beats. “It’s dirty and rough here. No bed for you.”

“Uh... I’m a Professor at the Hervor Academy of Magic. You might know my name—Hedi Melvina. A regular in the journals.”

“What’s a big-name professor to me?”

“I’m not ordinary. I might find a way to close the Dark Realm. Only with your say-so. I won’t act alone.”

He let out two dry laughs and turned the wheel by the gate. Click, click—the iron groaned open. Dust billowed up in a dull wave; Hedi coughed twice, the grit scratching her throat.

“Ah! It’s open!”

“Hurry, let us out!”

“Save me!”

Bang!

A shot cracked. The old man in front dropped, his thigh pierced, pain folding him to the ground. The others froze like deer in glare.

The guard came down from the side door with his gun and handed Hedi a mask she barely understood. “What’s wrong, Professor—afraid now? Weren’t you staying the night?”

Hedi stared, shock like frost on stone. The people weren’t people anymore. Their skin was wall-gray, peeling like snakeshed. Faces swollen and warped as if soaked for days in dirty water.

Some twitched in fits, limbs bent at impossible angles, bones churning under flesh like a storm in a sack. They craned their necks and loosed short, blurred vowels that scraped the air. Others lay limp, bodies rotting, viscera bulging from torn bellies, a stench thick as sour blood.

Terror hit first and hard. It was as if her ribs iced over.

“These... these people are?”

“Residents of the Shattered City, infected by the Dark Realm.”

She pulled the mask on. Her breath turned the inside hot in a blink, heat waxing to damp, steam fogging her lips like a storm on glass.

“Don’t worry,” the guard said, voice steady as a weight. “They’ve just changed shape.”

“Worse than I imagined—forget it.” Hedi let out a thin breath. The mask hummed, enlarging sound like a hundredfold echo in a cave.

Every inhale came back amplified, loud to her and to anyone near, like a sea sighing in a shell.

“Come on. The lodging’s not far.” He waved her forward. “Watch your step. Don’t chip that pretty face.”

Hedi hummed an assent and followed, stiff-backed. Her quick breath rolled inside the mask, a tunnel echo in an empty night.

“Help us!”

“Don’t lock us up like monsters!”

“Are you sent by His Majesty to save us?!”

A yank at her coat hem jerked her back. She turned. A gray-faced, twisted infected gripped her with tendrils like worming vines. His ruined face was mottled with red sores like rust.

“Back off!” The guard slipped in front of Hedi, raised the gun, and barked, “Or I’ll blow your brains out!”

At the instant the infected let go, Hedi slid behind him—so close her breath could have warmed his back. Then, seeing those empty eyes fixed on her like pits, a spike of panic drove her ahead. She sprinted into the guard post before he did.

“Scared already?” He shut the post door slow, set his shotgun against the wall, and glanced over. “They’re just ugly. They won’t bite.”

“It’s... it’s outrageous.” Hedi dropped onto a rough wooden chair, unhooked the mask, and wiped sweat away like rain streaks. “They look like walking corpses.” She repeated “outrageous” in a whisper, as if speaking would banish the images gnawing her mind.

After a while, her breath steadied like a pond after wind. She looked to the guard cleaning his gun. “You said a woman opened the Dark Realm?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“Investigators track names. I’m just the gatekeeper.”

“Alright.”

“But that one was like you.”

Confusion first, then a question. “Why do you say that?”

“She came at dusk. Alone. I asked her reason.” He lifted his eyes, shadowed now, and looked straight at Hedi. “She said—”

His voice fell like a stone in water.

“Research related to the Dark Realm.”