Three days after the chaos of the rift opening, Grayridge still hadn't calmed down.
The alarm sirens no longer wailed, but the four blue streaks in the sky remained—each about ten meters long, vibrating with a steady rhythm like the breathing of an invisible giant. D.I.S. said they were "stabilizing" the rifts.
That morning, Ethan woke with a pounding headache. His dreams had been filled with strange images.
He sat up, wiping sweat from his forehead. Outside the window, Grayridge had awakened: the hammering from the smithy, ore carts rolling on tracks, children running across the yard. Everything seemed normal—but no one looked up at the sky. No one paid attention to the four blue streaks vibrating overhead.
They'd gotten used to it, he thought. They'd learned not to look.
Maria had left for work. Liam still hadn't returned—three days since D.I.S. had "invited" him to their meeting. On the table was a small note Maria had left:
"Food's on the table. Don't wander off. If Liam comes back, tell me right away."
Ethan folded the note, tucking it into his pocket. He knew he couldn't just sit and wait. Liam was being held for some reason. And Father's map—the map with the "Cave X" mark—still lay in the drawer, like a silent summons.
He pulled out the map, spreading it on the table.
The X was clear: east of the village, near the dry streambed. Father had added a small note in pencil:
"Thomas Gray's treasure."
It sounded like the game Father used to play when Ethan was little—hiding toys somewhere secret in the house, then giving clues for him and Liam to find.
He folded the map, tucking it into his inner jacket pocket. Pulled on his coat. Stepped outside.
***
Grayridge square now looked like a temporary military camp.
Three large gray-green tents with embossed D.I.S. logos had been erected. Armored vehicles parked in the corner, mounted guns pointing in four directions. Soldiers in light armor patrolled, carrying EC-Carbines, eyes scanning the surroundings as if searching for something.
At the center of the square, a new device: a three-meter-tall metal pillar with a rotating disc at the top emitting blue light, surrounded by a circle of screens displaying wave graphs. On the screens, four waveforms pulsed steadily, corresponding to the four rifts in the sky.
Ethan stood at the edge of the square, observing. On the screen was a line of text:
RIFT STABILIZATION FIELD ACTIVE
BOUNDARY FREQUENCY: 5.8 Fz
ESTIMATED CLOSURE: 72 HOURS
72 hours. Three days. They planned to keep the rifts open for three days.
They're experimenting, he thought. Measuring something.
"Stay away from the equipment."
He turned. A D.I.S. soldier—a young woman with her hair tied back neatly, an EC badge on her shoulder reading "EC9"—was watching him.
"I'm just looking," Ethan said.
"Look from a distance," she replied. "Ordinary people standing near this equipment for too long get headaches."
He stepped back a few paces but didn't take his eyes off the screen. EC9. She'd already gained supernatural abilities—could withstand stronger Boundary vibrations, could use superhuman skills he didn't know. While he was still just "a civilian with potential"—someone who could only hide in the house when anomalies occurred.
"Ethan!"
He turned to see Lyra running toward him, carrying a cloth bag. She wore a reddish-brown leather jacket, hair tied back, face slightly flushed from running.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Going to the forest to pick mushrooms," Lyra replied, breathing hard. "Dad told me to stay home, but I can't stand it. Need... to get out for a bit. Want to come?"
Ethan hesitated. He thought of Maria waiting at home. Thought of Liam still not back. But he also thought of the map in his pocket—the map with the "Cave X" mark Father had left.
He pulled out the map. "Actually... I was planning to find a place too. Father left me this map. But I don't know where this spot is."
Lyra looked at the map. Her eyes widened. "This place... I know it!"
"You know it?" Ethan was surprised.
"Yeah!" Lyra pointed at the X mark on the map. "This dry stream, I passed by it once picking mushrooms with Dad. There's a big boulder, and lots of mushrooms grow nearby. I remember it clearly because... because it smelled like ozone—like the air near D.I.S. equipment."
His heart raced. "Can you take me there?"
Lyra looked at him, then nodded. "Okay. But if anything goes wrong, we run immediately, alright?"
"Agreed."
***
They left the village through the east gate—a small gate few people knew about, usually used for gathering firewood. No D.I.S. soldiers here, just a small monitoring pillar blinking pale blue light.
The forest outside Grayridge was unnaturally silent.
No birdsong. No insect sounds. Only the wind through leaves and the sound of their breathing. The air carried a faint ozone bite—wrong, metallic, familiar.
"I remember the way," Lyra said, leading. "Follow this trail."
They went deeper into the forest. The trail narrowed, the ground softer, damper, smelling of rotting earth.
Fifteen minutes later, Lyra stopped. "We're here. The dry stream."
It was no longer a stream. Just a long trench between two high banks. The trench bottom was rock and dried mud, not a drop of water.
"The spot where I picked mushrooms is upstream," Lyra said. "Follow me."
They walked along the dry streambed. After about a hundred meters, Lyra stopped, pointing ahead.
"There. That big boulder."
Ahead, the streambed was blocked by a large boulder—about two meters high, three meters wide.
Ethan looked at the map, then at the boulder. "The X mark... should be somewhere here."
He stepped closer, examining the boulder's surface. And saw—on the rock face, very faint but still visible, an X mark carved with a knife or chisel.
"Here it is." He pointed.
The stone was cold when he touched the mark. It smelled of ozone. The exact smell from the mine when near a leak.
"Look at this," Lyra said, pointing down beside the boulder.
A trench.
About five meters long, one meter wide, cutting from beneath the boulder outward. Earth on both sides was pushed up, as if something from underground had risen then sunk back down. But not a natural trench. Too straight, too even—like someone had drawn a line with a giant knife.
"What is it?" Lyra asked.
Ethan knelt, touching the trench edge. The earth was cold. The edge had very faint blue streaks, like traces of energy that had hardened.
"This is the mark of an old rift," he said. "Already closed, but it left traces."
"A rift here?" Lyra looked around, worried. "D.I.S. didn't say there were rifts outside the village."
"They don't say a lot of things." He stood, walking along the trench. "See? This mark... too straight. Like it leads somewhere."
Indeed. The trench cut through earth as if someone had drawn it with a ruler. No natural curves. No branches. It went straight, downhill, through undergrowth.
He followed the trench, Lyra behind him. At the trench's end—a gaping hole.
About a meter wide, leading down into darkness. Around it, grass burned in black streaks, stones cracked.
"A cave," Lyra whispered.
Ethan pulled a flashlight from his pocket, shining it down. The light reached about three meters, then was swallowed by darkness. No bottom visible.
"Father marked X here," he said. "There's definitely something down there."
"You're going down?" Lyra looked at him, eyes wide.
"Yeah." He didn't explain further. But the instinct within him—the instinct Liam had said was "higher than ordinary"—was whispering: you must go down. Something down there is calling you.
Lyra hesitated. Then said: "Okay. But if anything goes wrong, we run immediately."
***
Inside the cave, the air was cold as a freezer.
They crawled through the opening, feet touching slippery stone. Ethan's flashlight swept the walls—natural stone walls, but unusually smooth, as if polished by water... or something else. On the walls, very faint blue streaks—like the veins of something long dead.
"Something anomalous happened here," he said quietly.
"How long ago?" Lyra asked.
"Don't know. But a long time. These blue streaks... have gone cold."
They went deeper. The passage narrowed to barely one person wide. Ethan led, Lyra followed, holding a small iron bar.
After about twenty steps, the cave opened up.
He stopped and looked up—his chest tightened, his breath catching in his throat.
Before them was a large space, about four meters high, six meters wide. But not a natural space. The cave walls were carved—not crudely, but detailed down to every line, meticulous as artwork from a lost civilization.
On the wall, a massive mural.
Not painted with ink or dye. But carved deep into stone, then filled with light—a naturally phosphorescent blue light that transformed the mural into a work of art.
The mural depicted a dragon.
A black dragon, body long and serpentine, wings folded against its back, tail coiled around concentric circles—exactly like the "Seven-Layer Realm" symbol in books Ethan had read. Each circle was a layer: from outside to inside, Realm 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
And beneath the dragon's feet, floating fragments of shattered land—exactly like descriptions of Realm 5 in D.I.S. documents. The Wild Verge.
"What is this?" Lyra whispered, voice trembling.
"Void Dragons," Ethan answered, not taking his eyes from the mural. His voice sounded like it came from somewhere far away. "Creatures from Realm 1. Creatures that once kept the Boundary stable."
The knowledge was just... there. As if it had always been.
He stepped closer to the wall, shining his light on the details. Above the dragon's head was a line of ancient writing—not ordinary human language, but angular symbols, like geometric lines running in spirals, like the script of a voiceless species.
He stared at the writing. And as if something in his mind lit up, he heard—not with his ears, but with his mind—an ancient voice:
"The Dragon holds up the sky until the gods themselves shatter it."
"Did you hear something?" Lyra looked at him, worried.
"I... I heard a voice," he said, voice choked. "It spoke about... the Dragon. About the gods."
Lyra said nothing. She just stood staring at the mural, face pale in the flashlight beam.
He swept his light down to the wall's base. And saw—in the right corner, beneath a small piece of stone—something glowing faintly. A blue-violet light, pulsing steadily like a heartbeat.
"Look," he pointed.
Lyra knelt, using the iron bar to push the stone aside. Beneath was a small object—the size of a hand, thin as a sheet, surface flat as a mirror.
Ethan picked it up.
Heavy. Strangely heavy—heavier than any metal he'd ever held. As if it contained a mass that didn't belong to ordinary three-dimensional space. Its surface reflected the flashlight beam, but the reflection was wrong—showing a different sky, a reddish-purple sky with cracks running across it and unusually large stars.
"What is that?" Lyra asked.
He didn't answer. His hand traced the patterns around the metal plate's edges, and suddenly he saw things he hadn't seen before:
On the cave walls, energy lines running along the carvings—like glowing blue veins, rhythmic, flowing through an extremely complex system. In the air, tiny particles of light floating suspended—moving freely, luminous like dust motes in sunlight. On the ground, a faint mark—traces of something that had passed, leaving "footprints" as large as a truck.
And most importantly—he saw the dragon mural... moving.
Not actually moving. But like a multi-layered illusion. The dragon seemed to breathe, wings trembling slightly, tail slowly coiling around the circles. And its glowing blue eyes—eyes staring straight at him, through time, through space.
"Who are you?" a voice echoed in his head.
"I... I'm Ethan," he whispered in reply, not knowing who he was speaking to.
"You carry the creator's power," the voice continued. "But you are not the creator. You... who are you?"
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "I'm Ethan... I live in the village..."
The voice was silent for a moment. Then:
"Keep it. It will lead you to the remaining fragments. But remember: each fragment you find, you will draw closer to the truth and must make a choice."
"A choice about what?"
"A choice between destruction and creation."
"Are you okay?" Lyra gripped his shoulder, voice worried.
He blinked. Those things vanished. The world returned to normal. The dragon became still on the wall again. No more voice.
"I'm... I'm fine," he said, but his voice trembled. "Just... I saw strange things."
"What things?"
"Something spoke to me. It said I'd have to make a choice."
Lyra looked at him, not understanding. "We should go back."
He nodded. Tucked the metal fragment into his inner jacket pocket. It was very warm, vibrating slightly.
They stood in the cave a few more seconds looking at the mural closely, neither daring to move. Then Lyra said:
"Should we tell D.I.S. about what happened here?"
"We shouldn't tell D.I.S. I don't trust them." It felt like the one thing Father had never handed over—because he didn't dare.
They turned their backs on the dragon mural, heading toward the exit. But before leaving the cave, he looked back one last time—at the dragon with its glowing blue eyes, as if watching him, as if waiting.
"The Dragon holds up the sky..."
But the dragons were long gone from the world. And the sky was slowly breaking.
***
When they returned to the village, it was late afternoon.
D.I.S. had increased patrols—soldiers in light armor carrying EC rifles, walking in pairs around the square. Blue spotlights illuminated every corner, creating strange long shadows on the ground.
Ethan and Lyra parted ways before the back gate.
He went home through the kitchen door. Maria sat at the table, holding a cup of cold tea, eyes looking out the window. When she saw him, she started to say something.
"How's Liam, Mom?" he asked first.
She didn't turn immediately. She was silent for a moment, then:
"He... they won't let him come back."
"Why?"
"They say he's 'involved in an investigation.'" Her voice trembled. "They say information about the Grayridge rift was leaked. Someone in the village... knew in advance."
His throat went dry. "They suspect Liam?"
Maria stood, stepping over to hug him. "Promise me you won't do anything dangerous."
"I promise," he said—a promise he knew he couldn't keep.
***
That night, Ethan couldn't sleep.
He lay in bed, the metal fragment placed on his chest.
And he saw an image in his mind:
A complete key. Not an ordinary key, but a long, thin metal rod assembled from seven pieces that looked like a sword. When the key was complete, it could open and close the Boundary between Realms. It could rewrite the laws of physics. It could save the world... or destroy it completely.
He opened his eyes. The ceiling was pitch black. But in his mind, he still saw the blue light of the dragon mural, still saw the dragon's eyes—eyes without hatred, without anger, only... sadness and weariness.
The Void Dragons had once kept the Boundary stable. But when the Boundary was shattered, they could do nothing. They could only watch, and gradually fade into the Void.
He closed his eyes again, gripping the metal fragment tightly.
Outside, the wind blew hard. The window rattled. And very far away, from the forest, a small screech rang out—the sound of the Boundary crying, cracking a little more.
Time was running out.