The next morning, Ethan woke to his mother's cry.
It wasn't fear—just something hollowed out and sharp. He rushed downstairs to find her standing at the back door, staring down at the yard, her face pale.
"What's wrong, Mom?" Ethan asked.
Maria didn't answer, only pointed. Ethan followed her gaze—and saw.
A dead crow.
It lay on its back on the brick paving, wings spread, claws curled. Eyes clouded over, lightless. Beak gaping wide, as if it had tried to cry for help before dying. And what made Ethan hold his breath—around the crow's neck, the feathers bore a hook-shaped blue burn mark, as if a small bolt of lightning had shot through it.
"A crow dead near the house is a bad sign," Maria murmured. "Your grandmother used to say that. It means something's wrong with the air."
Ethan didn't believe in omens. But he believed in science. And the blue burn on the crow's feathers—that wasn't a natural phenomenon.
Small animals first. His stomach tightened.
He recalled what he'd read in D.I.S. documents: "Low-tier organisms (birds, rodents, insects) are extremely sensitive to anomalous frequency. When Boundary stress increases, they die first—like canaries in a coal mine."
"I'll bury it," Ethan said.
"Don't touch it with bare hands," Maria warned. "No telling what it's carrying."
Ethan nodded, fetching a shovel and gloves. But as he bent close to the crow, he felt something strange: in his jacket pocket, the ARC-KEY fragment vibrated lightly. Not strongly. But steadily. As if it was... resonating with the faint after-vibration in the air around the corpse.
He buried the crow in the corner of the yard, beneath a large tree. And when he looked up at the sky, he saw—far away, on the horizon—more black dots falling.
Other birds were dying too.
---
The news spread quickly.
By noon, every household in the village had found at least one dead bird. Crows. Sparrows. Thrushes. All bore the same symptoms: clouded eyes, gaping beaks, and blue burn marks around their necks or on their wings.
In the square, a group of villagers gathered, talking in agitated voices.
"Are they infected with something?"
"Could be bird flu."
"Not flu. I've never seen flu kill birds like this. And what's that blue burn?"
"Could it be the Rift?" An old woman asked. "Years ago, when there was a Rift in mine level 3, rats died en masse like this too."
Whispers spread. D.I.S. sent two soldiers to collect the bird corpses, taking them back to the mobile station for analysis.
Ethan stood at the edge of the crowd, observing. He saw Kaelen Voss standing beside the mobile station, talking with a technician. From afar, he couldn't hear clearly, but he could read lips:
"...within projections..."
"...reacting faster than anticipated..."
"...continue observing..."
They weren't surprised. That was the worst part.
---
That afternoon, worse news came.
The village clinic—a small wooden house at the village edge—began receiving patients.
Five or six people at most. But the symptoms were identical: severe headaches, dizziness, vomiting. Most concerning was that they said they heard voices echoing inside their heads.
"What kind of voices?" The village doctor—an old white-haired man named Harlin—asked.
"Voices—whispering," one man answered, his voice weak. "Like someone calling my name. But not a person. The voice is... strange. Like wind. Like metal scraping together."
"Where do you hear it from?"
"From... the air. It's everywhere. Inside the house. Outside on the street. Inside my head."
Doctor Harlin frowned, taking notes. He'd encountered these symptoms before—last year, when there was a Rift in the mine. He knew this wasn't an ordinary illness.
"This is neurological disruption caused by anomalous frequency," he told his assistant. "People with high sensitivity to anomalous frequency get affected first. Need to notify D.I.S."
But D.I.S. already knew.
An hour later, a D.I.S. doctor arrived—a tall man in a white coat, carrying a medicine case and measuring devices. He examined each patient, recording every reading.
Ethan slipped into the clinic, hiding in a far corner, observing.
The D.I.S. doctor placed a small device on a patient's forehead—it glowed blue, scanning the brain. The screen displayed complex graphs with multiple overlapping waveforms.
The doctor spoke. "An ordinary person, but his brain is resonating with Boundary oscillation. Classic symptoms of Boundary resonance."
"Can it be cured?" Doctor Harlin asked.
"Temporarily," the D.I.S. doctor replied. "Neural oscillation suppressants. Will reduce symptoms. But if the frequency keeps increasing..." He didn't finish.
The realization chilled him. If the frequency kept climbing higher, medicine would stop working. Patients would hear the whispers clearer, stronger, until reality blurred. And some of them would step outside—and keep walking. Toward the forest. Toward where the Rift was forming.
---
Ethan slipped out of the clinic but didn't go home. He headed toward the village edge, toward the houses near the forest—where few people passed.
He needed to think—needed to understand what was happening. Dead birds. Sick people. Whispers. All were signs of Boundary stress.
He took out the ARC-KEY fragment, examining it closely. In the afternoon sunlight, it glowed brighter than usual—clear blue light, stable. And he felt something: it wasn't just glowing. It was pulling.
Pulling energy from the air. From the sunlight. From him.
It's preparing, he thought. Preparing for something.
"You shouldn't be out here alone."
Ethan jumped, spinning around. Lyra stood there, holding a small shovel, her face worried.
"Did you follow me?" Ethan asked.
"Yeah," Lyra nodded. "I saw you slip out of the clinic. I thought you'd do something stupid." She looked toward the forest. "Turns out I was right. You planning to go near the forest?"
"I just wanted to check—"
"Check what?" Lyra cut him off. "The Hollow Wraiths are still there. Sunlight's fading. If you're here when it gets dark, they'll come out."
Ethan looked toward the forest. He saw—at the tree line—hazy shadows moving. Hollow Wraiths. They were still there. Still waiting.
"What do you think they want?" Ethan asked.
"Don't know," Lyra answered. "But I think... they're not just waiting for dark. They're waiting for someone."
"Who?"
Lyra looked at Ethan. "People with high anomaly sensitivity. People who are hearing the whispers." She paused. "Hollow Wraiths don't attack randomly. They call. They call people into the forest. And when that person goes deep enough... they drag them through the Rift."
Ethan felt a chill down his spine. "How do you know that?"
"My father told me," Lyra answered. "A few years ago, there was a miner who got sick hearing the voices. One night, he walked into the forest. No one saw him again. D.I.S. said he 'went missing.' But my father thinks... he went through the Rift."
---
They returned to the village as the sun began to set.
Afternoon light stretched low across the ground, casting long shadows. The D.I.S. floodlights flickered on, creating a circle of light around the village. And from the forest, the cries of Hollow Wraiths began to rise—soft at first, then growing louder, like something vast and wrong waking up.
"They're starting," Lyra whispered.
Ethan nodded. He felt—in his jacket pocket—the ARC-KEY fragment vibrating strongly with each cry. They were reacting. As if they recognized the Hollow Wraiths.
Or were they warning him?
---
That night, Ethan couldn't sleep.
He lay in bed, listening to cries from beyond the forest—high sounds, low sounds, distant sounds, near sounds, all blending into a strange symphony. Maria had locked the windows tight, drawn the curtains closed, but the sounds still seeped in—not through ears, but through... the mind.
Oscillation, he thought. Hollow Wraiths don't cry through sound. You don't hear it with your ears—you feel it inside your skull.
In the middle of the night, a scream rang out.
Ethan jerked awake—realizing he'd dozed off. He ran downstairs to find his mother standing at the door, staring outside with a horrified expression.
"Someone's running outside!" She shouted.
Ethan looked out—and saw.
A man—one of the patients from the clinic—was running across the square, toward the forest. He ran unevenly, stumbling, like a drunk person. Both arms raised, as if reaching for someone.
"Stop!" A D.I.S. soldier shouted. "Don't leave the village!"
But the man didn't hear. He kept running, past the floodlight ring, into the darkness.
And from the darkness, Hollow Wraiths appeared.
Five. Ten. They surrounded the man, not attacking, just... leading. Leading him deeper into the forest.
"Fire!" Kaelen Voss ordered.
Two D.I.S. soldiers drew EC-Carbines and fired. But the energy pulses didn't touch the Hollow Wraiths—they drifted aside, faster than the eye could follow. And the man—now too far—vanished into the forest's darkness.
One final cry rang out. Then silence.
No one went after him.
---
The next morning, D.I.S. sent a team into the forest to search.
They found the man's shirt—torn, with blue burn marks. But no body. No blood trail. Nothing proving he'd died.
He just disappeared.
"He went through the Rift," Liam told Ethan later. "The Hollow Wraiths led him to the Rift, then pulled him through to Realm 5—one layer deeper."
"And now?"
"Now he's in Realm 5," Liam answered. "If he's lucky, he dies quickly. If not, he'll mutate. Become a monster. And maybe, months later, return to Realm 6 through another Rift—no longer human."
Ethan felt a chill. "What will D.I.S. do?"
"Nothing," Liam said, his voice bitter. "They've recorded it. Collected the data. That's all they need."
---
Ethan had been keeping notes since yesterday—a small notebook he'd found in his father's old toolbox. He opened it now, staring at what he'd written.
Day three. More than fifty dead birds scattered across the village. Six people sick with severe symptoms. One missing—walked into the forest and never came back. And only twenty-four hours left before C-27—the projected breach window.
He closed the notebook, stuffed it in his pocket. And when he looked toward the forest area, he seemed to see the massive blue streak cutting through the dark sky above the trees. The stabilizers had failed. The rift had escalated overnight—a C-tier Rift, growing wider, brighter, vibrating more strongly.
It's about to reach B-tier, he thought.
And when it reaches B-tier, not just Hollow Wraiths will come through.
But worse things.
Things that break people without touching them.
---
That night, Ethan made his decision.
He couldn't run. Couldn't abandon Maria, Lyra, Liam, and seven hundred people in Grayridge.
But he also couldn't sacrifice himself—not yet. Not when he didn't know if it would actually save anyone.
Need another plan, he thought. A plan no one has thought of.
He took out the ARC-KEY fragment and examined it closely. He knew it could communicate—every night those faint sounds echoed in his head from it. Sometimes the whispers almost sounded like him, like his own thoughts twisted into something else. And for the first time, he communicated with it directly.
He asked:
"Show me how to save Grayridge. I know you can communicate."
Silence.
Then, very slowly, a voice sounded—a very familiar voice echoed in his head.
It was Ethan's own voice, somehow resonating directly in his mind:
"There is a way. But dangerous. And uncertain."
"Tell me."
"Severance. If you learn the technique I teach—Axiom I: Severance—if you can cut space—you can close the Rift from within. No sacrifice needed. Just enough strength."
"But I haven't awakened—"
"Then awaken. You have 24 hours. Enough time if you don't waste it."
Ethan lay still, pulse hammering.
Awaken and master a technique in twenty-four hours? No one did that. Even the most talented took months to learn it.
But he wasn't ordinary. Since childhood he'd realized he was different from other kids.
He could sense oscillations that ordinary people couldn't detect, and he could learn everything very quickly.
I have to succeed, he thought.
Because if he failed, there was nothing left to bargain with.
---
The next morning—the final day before C-27—Ethan woke with new determination.
He knew what he had to do.
He didn't look away this time.
Learn Severance. Close the Rift. Save Grayridge.
And if he died in the process—at least he'd tried. At least he wouldn't spend the rest of his life wondering if he could have made a difference.
He looked out the window at the massive blue streak in the sky—now bright as daylight, wide as a river, shaking like an earthquake.
24 hours left.
And the clock was still counting down.