The street suddenly seemed incredibly quiet.
Ram looked up, wiping his eyes with a dirty palm.
The ambient traffic noise from the main road had faded away.
Not gradually, either.
It was simply…
gone.
He could still see the cycle-rickshaws and stationary cars farther down the avenue, but he couldn’t hear them.
Even the morning wind through the neem tree had completely stopped.
Ram frowned, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“What…?”
The edge of the concrete pavement directly beneath his hand shifted.
He pulled his arm back in terror.
The road had cracked.
A thin, dark line ran straight through the asphalt, then another appeared right beside it, splitting the stone without a sound.
Ram stared, his breath catching.
The brick buildings on either side of the lane seemed to bend inward like rubber.
Only slightly.
He blinked hard, and they were normal again.
Then the white van down the street flickered.
For an instant, it looked stretched out, as though reality had pulled it from both ends like taffy.
Ram pushed himself backward on his hands.
“What is happening?”
The very air around his torso trembled, rippling like the heat above a tar road in mid-July.
The cracks in the asphalt spread farther, splitting the dirt shoulder.
He looked down at his own hands.
They were shaking violently, but something else was happening too—the space directly around his fingers seemed to distort, blurring the lines of his skin.
Ram couldn’t understand the physics of what he was seeing.
He looked back at Shweta’s still form.
“No.” He crawled closer to her again, ignoring the shifting ground.
“Please.”
His voice broke.
“I don’t want this.”
The distortion spread outward from his knees in a visible wave.
The road beneath him warped, stretching visually for twenty yards before snapping back with a sickening lurch.
The buildings seemed to move miles away, then suddenly rushed back into focus.
Ram grabbed his head, his fingers twisting in his hair.
“Stop.”
The pressure inside his chest was becoming completely unbearable, a burning sensation that felt too large for his body to contain.
“Stop!”
Nothing stopped.
The air folded inward around his shoulders like a collapsing lung.
The van in the distance bent strangely, its rectangular shape becoming completely blurred and transparent.
Ram stared at Shweta one last time.
“I don’t want you to die.”
Something deep inside him gave way.
A violent wave of pure distortion burst outward from his chest.
The asphalt completely disappeared beneath it.
The brick buildings twisted into impossible geometric forms.
The white van was pulled sideways, shattering into nothingness as though the world itself had lost its dimensions.
Ram’s knees left the pavement as his body lifted into the air.
He didn’t seem to notice the lack of gravity.
Tears continued running down his face.
Then something warm and thick slipped from the corners of his eyes.
He touched his cheek, his mind sluggish.
His fingers came away entirely red.
Ram looked at them, thoroughly confused by the fluid.
A dark vortex had begun forming directly behind his floating body, widening without making a single sound.
The street folded inward.
The buildings disappeared into the black center.
The van disappeared.
Ram tried to reach out his arm toward the space where she had been.
“Shweta…”
His voice was entirely gone.
Then the last piece of reality vanished beneath him.
Everything went black.
“What a feast.”
The voice originated from an absolute vacancy in the darkness.
There was no solid ground beneath the sound, no sky, no light—only an empty stretch of space scattered with distant, indifferent stars.
A figure slowly emerged from the deep shadow.
He wore a long coat with a heavy hood that fell forward, completely obscuring his face.
Whatever features could be caught in the dim starlight refused to settle into a permanent shape, shifting just enough to prevent the mind from registering a definitive human form.
Only his eyes remained distinct.
Their color shifted continuously, cycling slowly through muted hues.
The figure surveyed the silent expanse before him.
“SYSTEM.”
A translucent screen materialized in the air.
It possessed no physical mass; the distant starlight passed straight through the interface while unfamiliar, blocky symbols rolled rapidly across the display.
“Yes, Boss,” a flat, synthesized voice answered.
“What can I do for you?”
“Open my status.”
“Sure, Boss.”
The interface flickered, rearranging the rows of shifting light.
[ SYSTEM ]
[ Name: ?????
]
[ Age: ???/????
]
[ Bloodline: ????
]
[ Soul Fragments: 17.9M ]
[ Class: ???
]
[ Title: ???, The One, Cosmic Door Holder, ???
]
[ Strength: ???
] [ Agility: ???
] [ Intelligence: ???
]
[ Mana: ???
] [ Physique: ????
]
[ Skills: ???, ???, ???, ???, ???
]
[ Laws: ???, ???
] [ Authority: ???
] [ Worlds: ???
]
[ Item: Cosmic Door — Rank Unknown ]
[ Remark: ???
]
The figure focused entirely on a single numerical string.
“Seventeen point nine million.”
“Yes, Boss.”
“How much did the last world yield?”
“Three point two million,” the System replied.
The figure remained silent for several seconds, his hood tilting slightly downward.
“That was a Rank Two world.”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“A Rank One environment wouldn’t have given us even a tenth of that amount.”
“Correct.”
“So we would be forced to harvest several of them in succession.”
“Assuming those sectors still contain intact, living souls, yes.”
The figure’s brow furrowed under the shadow of his hood.
That was the primary issue.
He wasn’t collecting these fragments because of some vague desire for power; he required them for basic survival.
Every single activation of the Cosmic Door drained his reserves.
The toll was never small.
He had learned that reality the hard way during his early transmigrations.
The first time he had forced the Door open, the mechanism had burned through millions of souls just to bridge the gap between two neighboring galaxies.
The farther he pushed into the deep sectors, the more the core demanded.
He looked back at the interface.
17.9 million.
He needed a minimum of twenty million to ensure a clean transit out of the cluster.
“Three million short.”
“Yes, Boss.”
He exhaled slowly, a faint vapor instantly dissipating in the vacuum.
“One more decent world.”
“Preferably Rank Two,” the System added.
“I know.”
The figure turned his gaze toward the dark horizon.
He had lingered in this specific galaxy for too long already.
Most of the weaker, low-tier worlds had been thoroughly emptied over the previous cycles.
The remaining sectors were either depleted beyond utility or far too volatile to approach safely.
“SYSTEM.
Where do we plan the next course?”
The translucent panel filled with a fresh cascade of text.
“I’ve been scanning the surrounding clusters.
There are very few Rank One systems remaining within our safe operational radius, and I haven’t located another viable Rank Two baseline yet.”
“Give me a timeline.”
“Data insufficient,” the System stated.
“I don’t know.”
The figure’s jaw tightened under the cloth.
“We don’t have the luxury of an infinite search.”
“I know, Boss.”
“If we fail to secure another source before the Door’s reserve drops past the critical threshold, we’re stranded here permanently.”
“Yes.”
The figure opened his mouth to give a command, but the interface suddenly hitched.
The translucent screen brightened, the edges blurring.
“SYSTEM?”
No response came through the audio channel.
The symbols on the status sheet fractured into vertical lines of white noise.
[#$%ERROR$%]
[#$%ERROR#]
The figure stepped forward, his eyes narrowing.
“What is this?
Are you malfunctioning?”
The screen flickered violently, the synthetic voice cutting in with heavy distortion.
[B_Boss…
$## need to leave…
### ERROR #&##]
His expression hardened.
“What happened to the connection?”
[#ERROR#$*#]
[#%$ Coming #]
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