Mio
The barrier didn't feel like stepping through cold water this time.
It felt like swallowing something alive.
The green shimmer clung to Mio's skin for a full second after she crossed—longer than it should have, longer than any barrier she'd felt before. When it finally released her, the air inside tasted like soil after rain.
Rich. Heavy. Like breathing through earth.
"You feel that?"
Aoi glanced back. "Feel what?"
"The barrier. It was..." Mio touched her arm. The sensation was fading. "Never mind."
[Entering Incursion]
[Grade: F]
The first floor looked almost normal. Fluorescent lights flickered in familiar patterns. Shelves stood in neat rows, stocked with chip bags and bottled water that hadn't quite finished becoming something else.
The slimes came in the second room. Three of them, translucent blue, oozing between shelving units.
"I've got left," Aoi called. She flickered—there, then not—and her dagger popped the first membrane before it could react.
Rin caught the second on her shield, let it splatter against the metal, then crushed what remained under her boot.
The third lunged at Shiori.
"Mio!"
Mio's hands came up before she could think. Warmth drained from her chest—
But Rin was already there, shield intercepting. The slime burst against steel.
"Save it," Rin said. "You've got one cast in you, maybe two. Don't waste them on fodder."
Mio lowered her hands. Her heart was still pounding.
Aoi appeared at her side, cleaning her daggers on a dead slime's membrane. "You okay?"
"I didn't even do anything."
"You tried." Aoi bumped her shoulder. "That's more than last time."
They moved through the first floor in loose formation. Rin at the front, shield humming. Aoi ranging ahead, checking corners. Shiori in the middle, fingers already moving through buff patterns. Mio at the back.
Watching.
The fourth room had goblins. Five of them, grey-skinned and dim-eyed, clustered around something on the floor.
"Contact," Rin said. "Standard formation. Shiori, haste on me first."
Shiori's hands blurred. Blue light rippled across Rin's armor.
The goblins looked up. Shrieked. Charged.
Rin met them like a wall. Shield bash, sword thrust, shield bash. Mechanical. Efficient. The first two died before they touched her.
Aoi materialized behind the third, daggers finding the gap between shoulder blades.
The fourth swung a rusted cleaver at Shiori. Mio tensed—
Rin pivoted, caught the blow on her shield's edge, and opened the goblin's throat in a single motion.
The fifth hesitated. Looked at its dead packmates. Looked at Rin.
Then it ran.
Aoi's dagger took it in the back before it reached the doorway.
"Nice throw," Rin said.
"I've been practicing." Aoi retrieved her blade, cleaned it on the goblin's rags. "Mio, you're doing the count thing again."
"What?"
"Your lips were moving. You were counting Rin's cooldowns, weren't you?"
Mio felt heat rise to her cheeks. "I wasn't—"
"She was," Shiori said, eyes tracking data Mio couldn't see. "Eight seconds between shield pulses. Three-hit buff duration. She's been watching since Setagaya."
Silence.
Mio stared at the floor.
"I can't spam anything," Mio muttered. "One cast and I'm done."
Rin was already moving. Didn't respond.
Aoi caught Mio's eye. Shrugged.
They cleared the rest of the first floor without incident. By the second floor, Mio's mana had crawled back to full. Small mercy. The migraine was fading. She could actually think.
Which meant she noticed things.
The products on the shelves weren't arranged right. Chip bags faced inward. Water bottles lay on their sides, labels peeled away. Small things. Wrong things.
The temperature had dropped too. Not dramatically—enough that Mio could see her breath if she exhaled slowly.
"How many rooms was that?" she asked.
Shiori checked her phone—Bureau database, cross-referencing incursion layouts. "Eight total, across both floors."
"That's high for an F."
"Some incursions run long." Aoi shrugged. "We're getting paid by the clear, not the hour."
But Mio was counting something else. The slimes on the first floor had been translucent blue. Normal. The goblins on the second floor had been grey-skinned, dim-eyed.
Also normal.
But there'd been one goblin in the corner of the last room—the one Aoi had killed before anyone else saw it clearly—crouched with its back to them. Not attacking. Not moving.
Hiding.
Goblins didn't hide. Goblins swarmed. That was the whole point.
"Hey." Mio cut in, sharper than she intended. "Has anyone seen a goblin run away before?"
Rin paused mid-step.
"The one in the corner. Last room. It wasn't attacking. It was—"
"Dead now," Shiori said. "Does it matter?"
Yes. It matters. Something's wrong.
"Let's just keep moving," Aoi said. "The sooner we clear, the sooner we get paid."
They kept moving. Down the stairs. Through two more rooms of fodder that barely slowed them down.
Then they reached the third floor, and the convenience store was gone.
Fluorescent lights had given way to darkness. Tile floor had become rough stone.
The walls—when Mio could see them—weren't walls at all. They were vines. Thick, dark green, almost black, crawling over everything in patterns that might have been writing.
"What the hell is this?" Rin's voice echoed in the sudden silence.
"Nested incursion." Shiori's face had gone pale, her phone casting harsh light across her features. "I've heard of these. A hidden layer inside an incursion. They're rare."
"How rare?"
"Rare enough that most delvers never see one." Shiori was scrolling through Bureau records, searching for anything useful. "We should go back. Flag this for the Bureau. Let them send a real team."
"And give up the clear bonus?" Aoi's jaw tightened. "We've already done two floors. If we leave now, someone else gets the bounty."
"If we go deeper and die, no one gets anything."
"It's an F-Grade, Shiori. Even if there's something extra down here—"
"F-Grades don't have nested incursions." Rin's voice was flat. "That's not how this works."
Silence.
Mio looked at the vines on the walls. At the darkness ahead. At her party—one D-grade and two E-grades, arguing about money while she counted exits in the back.
We should leave. Something's wrong. Something's—
Her mana shifted.
The same sensation as before, at the barrier. A pull. A whisper too low to hear.
Come.
She took a step forward. Then another. Her legs moved without her permission.
"Mio?" Aoi grabbed her arm. "What are you—"
Mio kept walking.
"Rin! Stop her!"
Rin stepped into her path, hands on her shoulders. Tank strength. Grade D muscle. She could have held Mio in place. Could have tackled her, pinned her, broken both her legs if she had to.
Mio walked into her, and Rin gave ground.
"Something's wrong." Rin was backpedaling now, hands still on Mio's shoulders, guiding instead of stopping. "She's not—I can't just—"
She couldn't hurt her. That was the calculation. Stop the F-grade healer by force and maybe break something that didn't heal right. Let her walk and figure out what was pulling her.
"I can't feel anything," Mio whispered. Her voice came out wrong. Distant. "I can't stop."
Please, she thought. Please, I have a sister. I promised I'd come back.
The pull didn't care.
"If she's going, we're going with her." Aoi's voice had gone hard. "We're not leaving her."
"This is insane!"
"Yeah. It is." Aoi drew her daggers. "Stay behind Rin."
They followed her into the dark.
The passage went on longer than it should have. Sounds echoed from nowhere.
Then the passage opened, and the cathedral swallowed them whole.
[Unique Scenario Triggered: Trial of Genesis]
"What the hell?" Rin's voice cracked. "Did everyone get that?"
"Trial of Genesis." Aoi was scanning the chamber, daggers already drawn. "Shiori, what does that mean?"
Shiori's phone hung limp in her hand. Bureau databases had nothing. Logic had failed.
"I don't know. I've never—there's nothing in the logs. Nothing."
Fifty feet to the ceiling. At least. The walls were breathing—vines expanding and contracting in a slow rhythm, synchronized with something Mio could feel in her chest.
Her heartbeat. Or something else's.
The pull released her.
Mio stumbled, nearly fell. Rin caught her.
"You okay?"
"I—" Her voice cracked. "I don't know what that was."
"Doesn't matter now." Shiori had gone still. "Look."
They looked.
In the center of the cathedral, a massive emerald pulsed with light. The incursion core—but swollen. Overgrown. Ten times the size it should have been, veins of light threading through it like a circulatory system.
And beyond it, sitting on a throne of living vines—
Something looked back at them.
She descended slowly, bare toes pointed like a diver's, skin the color of moonlight through leaves. Foliage wrapped her like a living gown, blooming and rotting in the same breath. White flowers threaded through dark hair, opening and closing to a rhythm Mio couldn't hear.
Mio knew better than to look directly at her eyes.
She watched them the way a child watches ants.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
When her feet touched the stone, flowers erupted beneath them—tiny white blooms that opened, withered, and crumbled to dust in a single heartbeat.
Then the pressure hit.
Her presence, unfolding.
Gravity tripled. The air turned solid.
Rin and Shiori hit the floor instantly, armor clanging against stone. Aoi made it two steps before her legs folded.
But Mio's mana surged against it.
Not resistance. Recognition.
For one wild second, she stayed standing. The pressure washed over her, her blood growing hot, singing in tune with the room. Something in her chest pulled toward the Entity—toward the core.
The Entity's eyes snapped to her.
Then the weight doubled.
Mio hit the ground. Knees cracking against stone, breath leaving her in a sharp wheeze.
The Entity raised a casual hand.
Behind them, the vines surged. They knitted together in seconds—weaving, thickening, sealing the corridor into a wall of living green.
Rin pushed herself to one knee, shield raised toward the Entity. A tank's instinct. But there was nothing to block. Nothing to fight.
Shiori was still scrolling. Searching for an answer that wasn't there.
[WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[Grade: ???]
She looked at them.
Her head tilted—the slow pivot of something that had never needed to hurry. The flowers in her hair opened. Closed. Opened again.
When she spoke, her voice was the sound of earth shifting. Roots cracking stone deep underground.
"Three may leave."
She let the words settle.
"One must die."
Somewhere behind her, Shiori made a sound—small, strangled, not quite a word.
Aoi's hand found Mio's. Squeezed once. Hard.
Mio's pulse beat in her throat. Too fast. Too loud.
We're going to die.
But the Entity wasn't looking at the others.
She was looking at Mio. The one who had stayed standing. The one whose mana had sung back.
There you are.