The stone floor exploded beneath Mei’s boots, sending a bone-rattling shockwave straight up her spine. Cracks webbed across the chamber like black lightning, splitting ancient foundation stones apart—and then something worse leaked through the fractures.
Not shadow. Not darkness. Something wrong.
The temperature dropped off a cliff. Frost raced outward in crystalline tendrils, freezing Mei’s breath into instant clouds. Then the rift screamed.
The sound bypassed soundwaves entirely, drilling straight into the marrow of her skull. Her teeth rattled, her vision blurred into a nauseating smear of motion, and around the chamber, seasoned Blaze Hunters dropped like dead weight. One hit his knees; another vomited violently inside his visor.
Joshua buckled, his heavy armor clattering against the flagstones as the psychic assault struck his mind. Beside him, the Core Fragment flared out of control, its wrist display flashing critical red: WARNING: SPATIAL COLLAPSE IMMINENT.
"Mei..." Joshua choked out, struggling to raise his rifle as a three-ton block of ceiling caved in, smashing stone into powder inches from his boots. "The dungeon... it's collapsing... get the squad out..."
Mei didn't run. Assassins survived by knowing when to cut their losses, but she wasn't leaving anyone behind to die.
She caught the desperate, self-sacrificing look in his eyes—that same stubborn, ridiculous smile—and for a split second, the chamber melted into a memory: a burning fortress under a blood-red sky, Joshua kneeling in the ash, blood slicking her hands. Run, Mei.
Not today.
Her gut twisted as she read the spatial currents. The Core wasn't just collapsing; it was acting as an anchor, locking the dungeon’s exit shut while pulling a god-like nightmare through the breach. Three violent pulses flashed beneath the space-distortion. Left. Right. Above.
"The exit is sealed!" a Hunter screamed, slamming his fist against the solid wall of shifting stone where the exit corridor used to be. "We're trapped!"
"Cover me!" Mei barked, her voice cutting through the panic like a blade.
Before the breach could fully open, a massive, jagged claw longer than an armored transport pushed through the dark. Glossy plates of living volcanic glass covered its surface, pulsing with sick crimson light from within fractured seams. Where the claw touched the floor, the stone didn't crush; it simply ceased to exist, erased from space.
A second claw emerged. Then a third. Cold flooded the air, freezing weapons mid-draw. Then came the smell: rotten seawater, freshly turned graves, scorched iron, and old blood.
Voices followed—a chorus of thousands crying, praying, and screaming inside their heads. Blaze Hunters collapsed around them, clawing at their helmets. Beside her, Joshua went pale, staggering as the psychological pressure hit his compromised defenses. He was wide open.
The beast’s shoulders pushed through—massive spinal columns twisting together like living serpents—followed by an elongated predator's head draped in fragments of human jawbones.
And then its eyes opened.
Hundreds of crimson, gold, and milky-white eyes split open across its flesh, snapping in unison toward Joshua and the paralyzed squad.
Pain exploded behind Mei’s forehead as the creature tried to flood her mind with the memory of her father's death—the rain, the blood, the cruel lesson of you survive, you run.
No. Mei shoved the nightmare back into the dark. She wasn't that helpless twelve-year-old girl anymore. She didn't run. And she didn't let the people she cared about die.
She sliced through the psychic intrusion with a surge of raw willpower, stepping firmly in front of Joshua as his knees buckled.
The creature’s jaw split—unfolding thousands of needle-thin ivory fangs. Wings of living darkness unfurled, swirling with dying galaxies and fractured stars, blotting out the ceiling. The nightmare lunged straight for them.
Eclipse Step.
Reality folded. Sound vanished. Cold wrapped around Mei’s skin as space stretched to its absolute limit.
A heartbeat later, she materialized directly in front of the creature's colossal main eye. She didn't attack the monster itself—she targeted the spatial tether binding it to the chamber. Her shortblade, glowing with intense spatial force, swung in a violent arc.
SHNK.
She sliced through the rift's primary anchor.
The dungeon roared in agony. The monster let out an otherworldly shriek as the breach forcibly inverted, sucking its massive, multi-eyed form backward into the void.
"Joshua! Grab the squad!" Mei screamed, landing hard on the cracking stone.
She reversed her grip on both daggers and rammed them directly into the floor. She didn't just use her movement abilities—she forced her spatial mana into the crumbling dungeon itself, grabbing hold of the warping geometry.
Spatial Fold.
The collapsing stone walls shrieked as Mei forcibly rewrote the dungeon's layout. She bent space, tearing open a raw, glowing rift directly behind the Blaze Hunters that bridged straight to the surface world outside the Gate.
"Go! Move now!" she ordered, blood trickling from her nose from the sheer strain of holding a dimensional doorway open against the falling ceiling.
Joshua hauled two paralyzed Hunters to their feet, staring at her in absolute awe. "Mei—what about you?!"
"I'm right behind you! MOVE!"
Joshua shoved the last of his squad through the portal, turning back to grab Mei's hand just as the dungeon roof completely caved in. With a final, agonizing pull, Mei snapped space shut behind them.
The chamber smashed into dust—but they were gone.
Mei tumbled onto the sunlit grass outside the Gate entrance, gasping for air as the dungeon portal behind them shattered into harmless glass shards, permanently sealed.
Joshua collapsed beside her, staring up at the clear sky, then back at Mei, breathless and alive.
She wiped the blood from her lip, her daggers shearing back into her sheaths. "Told you. Not today."