The rift didn't tear open.
It decayed.
Reality peeled away in layers, space rotting as if it had been left too long in the void. The sky dimmed into something unnatural — neither dark nor light — a color that felt wrong.
Jinyoung stood still.
Black/Purple aura churned violently at his right side.
White/Grey hovered quietly at his left, stabilizing the distortion around his body.
This isn't a dungeon, he realized.
It's a fracture between universes.
Behind him, Haru stiffened, mana flaring instinctively.
"This place… the mana density is unnatural. It's refined. Filtered."
Riyomi's presence vanished into shadow without a sound.
Riku blurred in and out of sight, instinctively testing the space-time flow.
Then—
A step echoed.
Not loud.
Not heavy.
Authoritative.
A figure emerged from the decayed rift.
Humanoid. Tall. Its armor looked grown rather than forged — fragments of shattered realities layered into a single form. Where a face should have been, there was only a vertical slit of faint golden light.
Haru swallowed.
"That's not a hunter."
Jinyoung nodded slowly.
"I know."
The figure tilted its head.
"Designation: Vaelrix," it spoke, voice layered — many frequencies overlapping.
"Ascended Fragment. Survivor of collapse."
Images bled into the air behind it — dead universes, stars folded into nothing, worlds consumed by entropy.
"I hunt evolving concepts," Vaelrix continued.
"Duality registered. Yogaroth lineage detected. Status: incomplete."
Jinyoung's chest tightened.
It can read my evolution stage.
"I don't care what you hunt," Jinyoung said calmly.
"You crossed into my world."
The slit widened slightly.
"Correction," Vaelrix replied.
"Your world crossed into mine."
The pressure spiked.
Riku vanished — reappearing instantly as space snapped shut where he had been standing.
"Movement is unstable!" Riku shouted. "It's overriding causality!"
Riyomi struck from the shadows.
Her blade passed through Vaelrix like mist.
"No physical anchor," she hissed.
Vaelrix turned its head.
"Assassin acknowledged."
A pulse expanded outward.
Shadows didn't disperse.
They were deleted.
Riyomi was thrown back, blood at the corner of her mouth.
Jinyoung's white/grey aura expanded instinctively — stabilizing the space before it collapsed entirely.
It's not overpowering concepts…
It's replacing them.
Haru raised his staff, eyes burning.
"Then we overload it."
Mana compressed — violent, controlled destruction.
The blast hit.
Space detonated.
For the first time—
Vaelrix moved.
It slid aside as reality folded, the explosion tearing through what used to be the sky.
"Destructive mana," Vaelrix observed.
"Primitive. Efficient."
Black/Purple aura surged violently.
Jinyoung clenched his fists.
No.
If I let it loose, I won't come back the same.
He stepped forward anyway.
"Team," he said quietly, aura balancing.
"We test it. We don't dominate."
Vaelrix's presence deepened.
"Decision threshold reached," it said calmly.
"Evolve—or be consumed."
The battlefield destabilized.
For the first time since Silad—
Jinyoung didn't feel fear.
He felt clarity.
This is what comes before Monarchs, he thought.
And I'm not ready… but I'm not prey anymore.
White/Grey stabilized the fracture.
Black/Purple sharpened.
Jinyoung raised his gaze.
"Then come," he said.
"And see how far I've come."