The light through the trees shimmered unnaturally.
Not in the poetic, sun-dappled kind of way. No, this shimmer bent — as if the light itself was confused about where to go. The trees didn't sway in rhythm to wind but to something else entirely. Some kind of delayed pulse. A rhythm out of sync with time itself.
"Did that tree just…glitch?" Luma asked, stepping back as the bark of an ancient baobab flickered like a bad hologram.
Ion crouched beside the roots, his hand carefully reaching out. "Don't touch it. That's not bark. That's phase distortion. The tree's partially out of alignment with its own matter."
Luma raised her brows. "That sounds incredibly bad."
"Well, yes. Imagine trying to sit on a chair that's not entirely there when you do. You'd fall through—except, in this case, you might fall through ten different versions of the same chair."
"Ten different—Ion, can you please stop explaining physics like it's a haunted furniture showroom?"
He chuckled. "Sorry."
They had just left the resistance outpost behind—a camouflaged shelter built from old comms towers, vines, and roots that hummed with acoustic messages. Luma still wore the small band around her wrist that translated the pulses. Every so often, it vibrated faintly, warning her of a flux pocket nearby.
Now, as they moved deeper into what the locals called the Hollow Verge, the world itself was fragmenting. Walls of stone that should have been solid blinked in and out of visibility. Patches of grass rippled as if underwater. The horizon seemed… unreliable.
"Wait—" Luma stopped. "That stone ruin up ahead. Wasn't that on the left of the path a second ago?"
Ion's face grew serious. "It was."
They approached the half-collapsed temple, etched in a language Luma didn't recognize. It looked ancient, but not worn — as though it had aged sideways rather than forward. Moss grew in strange, circular spirals. A bird flew overhead, paused mid-air, then resumed flapping.
Luma's eyes widened. "Did time just—?"
"Quantum decoherence," Ion said, already scanning with his gauntlet. "This whole region is caught in unstable phase states. Think of everything here like soup that hasn't decided if it wants to be hot or cold."
"Can we not talk about soup while I'm watching birds glitch out of reality?"
Ion gave a sheepish nod, then turned to a crack in the stone wall. "But here's the important part: Something or someone is making it worse."
As they moved inside, a new figure emerged from the shadows. Tall, draped in patchy leather armor and glowing paint, he stepped out with a long staff. His voice echoed strangely, like he was speaking both from his mouth and from the air itself.
"You're the ones from the Spire," he said. "The Riftwalkers told me to watch for you."
"Toma," Luma said, surprised. "You're the one from the outpost."
He nodded. "And now I'm the one showing you the deeper truth."
"I am also the leader of this sector's study unit. Welcome to the forgotten."
He beckoned them deeper into the temple. The stone floor buzzed faintly underfoot. Symbols on the wall flickered — alternating between solid lines and static. Luma reached out, touched one, and felt her hand momentarily phase through the stone.
She yelped and pulled back. "Okay, this place is definitely cursed."
"Not cursed," Toma said. "Just fractured. Every time this region tries to resolve its reality, something yanks it back. Like a file on loop that never finishes downloading."
Ion leaned closer. "The anomalies… are these localized or expanding?"
"Expanding," Toma said gravely. "The Verge is growing. The Riftwalkers have been studying the epicenter. We believe something is warping the base laws—gravity, time, phase coherence. And we've found… traces."
"Traces?" Luma asked.
Toma hesitated, then tapped the wall. A panel blinked and slid open to reveal a map — though calling it a map was generous. It was more like a chaotic cloud of motion, patches of reality overlaid on top of one another, like a dozen dimensions fighting for control.
And right in the center of the map, pulsing faintly, was a signature. One Luma recognized.
"…Saren," she whispered.
Ion nodded grimly. "He's been here."
Toma turned. "We believe he's studying the fracture. Not causing it — at least not yet. But it's only a matter of time."
Luma's thoughts raced. Saren… watching from the shadows again? Was he stalking them? Or was he warning them?
As if on cue, a faint shimmer outside caught her eye.
She turned sharply. Through a window—well, what passed as one—a figure stood between the trees. Cloaked, still, half-hidden in a layer of warped air. Luma's breath caught.
It was him.
Saren.
Their eyes met, even across that twisted distance.
But instead of attacking, he simply nodded.
Then, he vanished into a ripple of broken light.