Time crept by in silence, like a thin stream under frost.

The world held its breath, waiting for Hedi Melvina to wake.

She lay on soft grass, gray hair spilling like moonlight across the ground.

Her pretty mouth was a straight line, while her nostrils fluttered, drawing in the wind’s green scent of cut meadow.

A scent that stirred old summers like leaves in a chest.

In some buried memory, she had gone to the forest with the Priest and a nun.

But the when was blurred, like ink in rain, for the old world and this world were braided together.

Each attempt to recall felt like crouching in ruins, brushing dust from relics with a soft brush.

Only after long patience did a shape rise and whisper, Oh—that happened too.

“Professor?”

Hedi opened her eyes; it wasn’t Selina’s call, just two moments meeting like ripples.

“Where... are we?”

The world climbed out of chaotic blackness and settled into a sullen gray, like ash after a storm.

All she could see was boundless steppe and a roof of rain clouds.

Grass drowned her ankles and heaved in the gale, while black clouds sat nailed to the sky.

Hedi’s coat and Selina’s white shirt were the only strokes of color.

The scene looked like a melancholy plate in an art textbook.

“We got pulled into the Dark Realm.”

Hedi hummed, a thin laugh escaping like a chime in fog. “Looks like there really is another world inside.”

She rubbed her temple, piecing stray tiles of memory.

Then she eyed Selina in puzzlement, like a bird tilting its head. “Why are you fine?”

“I blacked out for a bit, but I woke before you.”

“Not that—what’s this?”

She stepped to Selina and studied the crystal pendant at her throat, its light a faint moth-glow.

“A tool that helps an Investigator resist Dark Realm Erosion.”

“It didn’t work last time.”

“Last time?”

“When you dragged me toward the Dark Realm.”

“Ah—” Selina half clenched a fist and tapped her palm, like a student recalling a line.

“I blinked and I was back at the outpost. You wouldn’t tell me; you only said you carried me home.”

“Your mind was tainted by the Dark Realm, and this trinket did nothing?”

“It only triggers if you use it on purpose, so—fine, I thought we were safe outside.”

“You didn’t know? Even I did.”

Selina scratched the back of her head with a sheepish look, like a cat caught in rain.

“A new Investigator doesn’t touch the Dark Realm for the first half year.”

“The old hands just make us train our bodies for whatever crisis waits inside.”

“They gave you a Dark Realm countermeasure before you even went in?”

“Bold. You slipped out, and you even swiped gear.”

“When I heard my sister opened the Dark Realm in the Shattered City, I couldn’t wait another breath.”

“And now, like your sister, we’ve ended up in a place that makes no sense.”

“Not the same. We were sucked in.”

“Uh-huh. Why did that happen? Explain.”

“I... don’t really know.”

She sighed, a small wind through teeth. “Trainee Investigator.”

Selina laughed dryly and followed Hedi across the vast prairie, like a kite on a short string.

“Why weren’t you affected? You don’t have a Dark Realm item.”

“Once I learned the Dark Realm can erode the mind, I trained for it, like bracing a door against a storm.”

She felt Selina’s gaze on her back, but more than that gaze, she wanted to know what else breathed here.

A gray, heavy sky hung above like a lid.

The clouds didn’t move, like paint that had dried.

The grassland lay flat and plain, like a sheet pulled tight.

Every outline was too sharp to be true, like cutouts collaged from different places.

The wind carried a fearsome moan, thick and hollow in the open like a drum in a cavern.

Hedi walked on, and the wind hit hard and fast, almost squeezing the breath from her chest.

It felt like the sky had been chiseled open, and something above blew through a wound toward the ground.

She lifted her head to the low clouds, and their shadow pressed on her shoulders like wet cloth.

As she trudged, she glanced back at Selina.

Selina kept tucking her hair and squinting at the grass like a hunter.

“Is the world the Dark Realm makes fixed, or random?”

“Why ask?”

“Because there’s nothing here.”

“If the previous Investigators came to the same place, we should see them, like footprints after rain.”

“The seniors said, once a world is finished, it won’t change, like fired clay.”

“So it’s fixed.”

Hedi shoved both hands into her pockets and stood in the wind, silent as a stake.

“If other Investigators are here, we could look for them.”

“No.” Hedi’s hands curled into fists inside her pockets, like seeds in soil. “I can’t feel mana, so I can’t cast detection spells.”

“There’s no mana in the Dark Realm, of course; every Investigator knows that.”

“Then how do we search?”

“This.” Selina took off the crystal and twiddled the tiny dial on it, like tuning a cold star.

“Besides resisting Dark Realm Erosion, it’s a trail marker for Investigators lost in the Dark Realm.”

Hedi hunched against the wind and watched Selina work, her voice flat as still water.

“Strange. The Dark Realm is woven from mana, yet there’s no mana ripple inside.”

“Professor?”

“Found the marker?”

“We... might need to run.” She raised the crystal, and its glow slid into danger-dark red like embers sinking.

“Which way?”

“This way!”

Hedi pounded south with Selina, her eyes sweeping the wide grassland like a hawk, and nothing stood out.

As they ran, her calves began to itch, maybe from grass tips flicking skin like tiny whips.

She bent to scratch, and something shot up her finger with the quickness of a spark.

“Son of—” She snapped, and she whipped her right hand like shaking off fire.

“What happened?”

“A bug. I hate bugs.” She searched the ground, wanting to see what she’d flung away.

If it was an ant, fine; if another arthropod, a nightmare.

“A bug? Look there!”

Hedi followed Selina’s finger and saw a black veil blooming at the wavering horizon, the deep shade drowning the grassland.

Look closer, and it was a tide of cockroaches, enough to pebble the skin with gooseflesh.

They packed together in a moving shadow, crawling in order along the horizon like ink running.

Some met the gale head-on and glided for a heartbeat in the air like dirty leaves.

Rustle, rustle.

A rustle that jarred the eardrums like a spoon on a drum head.

The noise came from countless hairy legs scraping the skin of the earth.