— A Path That Leads Only to Death —
Inside the helicopter cabin, the roar of the spinning blades made the whole frame shuddered. Red warning lights flashed in the dim interior like a frantic, chaotic heartbeat.
Ethan's face was pale and grim as he pressed a black file folder stamped with "SSS-Class" into Eren's hands.
"The situation is critical, Eren!" he practically shouted over the engine's din. "Another tactical unit entered the Black Fog... and all of them have lost contact."
Each word hit like metal on metal.
"Another one?" Eren's brow twitched as his fingers began to flip through the icy-cold pages.
Numbers and blank spaces stared back at him. A chill crept up his spine—swift, cold, and inescapable.
Black Fog: Origin—Unknown.
Expansion: Exponential.
Areas Subsumed: Over forty villages and townships confirmed.
Three Elite Vigil-Wyrm Order Units: Presumed no survivors.
Below the satellite imagery was a landscape being devoured by absolute darkness. Its edges writhed slowly, like some beast crouched at the edge of the world, calm in its hunger, relentless in its bite.
"The Vigil-Wyrm Order set up a 'Nine Palaces Mystic Gate Formation' at the periphery," Ethan said, his expression like forged iron.
"That barely contained the expansion. But the pressure on the formation is skyrocketing. We can't hold it much longer."
As if in response, the aircraft suddenly jolted—not from turbulence, but from a heavy, invisible pulse emanating from deep within the Fog, striking their bones.
Eren looked up. The porthole window rippled from the vibration. In the next moment, he froze completely.
At the horizon, a solid wall of ink-darkness churned, surged, and heaved—in utter, absolute silence.
Cold seeped in as if through the very seams of the aircraft.
This wasn't fog. It was a living, breathing malice.
The helicopter descended. The temporary command base was dotted with lights.
Blue-helmeted soldiers patrolled with weapons ready.
Vigil-Wyrm operatives stood silent guard at the formation's edge in their black cloaks.
The air smelled of oil, dust... and something else. Damp. Rotten. Like a breath seeping in from the other side of the world.
Eren's boots had barely hit the ground when—
A sharp, stabbing pain exploded from deep within his chest!
His gaze snapped toward the Black Fog.
At that exact moment—
a single point deep within the Fog trembled. A minute, almost imperceptible vibration, yet perfectly synchronized with his attention.
Not the wind.
Not a current.
It was—a response.
A call.
A wait.
A welcome.
It seemed to say:
You belong here.
Cold sweat instantly soaked through the back of his shirt.
"You don't look well," Ethan said, having approached without a sound. His gaze was sharp, alert. "Altitude sickness? Or... just nerves?"
"...No." Eren forced down the restless dark energy churning in his chest, making his voice level. "The air... it's just disagreeable."
But the voice in his mind tightened like an iron chain around his throat:
I just escaped one dead end... only to be led straight into another, perhaps even more inescapable one?
---
— Whispers in the Fog —
The command tent blazed with light but was as chaotic as the moments before a catastrophe.
Personnel rushed between holographic screens, adjusting frequencies, shouting over alarms—a cacophony of dissonant noise.
A scientist with eyes red from lack of sleep stared fixedly at a 3D energy fluctuation graph, his fingers digging into the screen's edge, knuckles white.
"See it...?" His voice was hoarse, trembling, yet clear as if whispered right into one's ear.
"These aren't random fluctuations. Look! The rhythm... the rise and fall..." He lifted his head, pupils contracted to pinpricks. "It's breathing. The Black Fog—it's breathing!"
The air seemed to freeze around him.
Another Vigil-Wyrm member was inscribing a talisman. The moment the special ink touched the paper—
Hiss—crackle!
The paper ignited without flame, curling into a wisp of black ash.
"W-what?!" He stumbled back, face pale. "It's... rejecting even the talisman? This thing won't allow any external intervention!"
In a corner of the tent, an elderly mystic arranged coins for a divination. The moment he cast them—
Clang!
All the coins scattered as if struck by an invisible force.
The old mystic's face changed drastically. He coughed up a mouthful of dark blood and crumpled to his knees.
"Cannot be divined... unprecedented... it shrouds the workings of fate..."
For a moment, the entire command center fell into a despairing silence.
...
In a partitioned area of the medical tent, a young girl huddled beside a cot, hands clamped over her ears, crying uncontrollably.
"Stop it... please... make them stop talking..." she sobbed. "They're calling me... inside the Fog... someone's calling me to come in..."
The nurse beside her went cold with dread, too afraid to even ask for clarification.
...
Watching scene after scene, the chill in Eren's chest deepened, as if he were being pushed inch by inch toward the edge of an abyss.
If even the Vigil-Wyrm's "Nine Palaces Formation" can't hold...
If the Fog keeps expanding...
If all of this is really waiting for—
"No."
Eren closed his eyes tightly. His nails dug into his palms, the pain a thin blade that briefly severed the fear.
"I can't... listen to that feeling," he muttered, his voice low and strained, as if wrestling something within. "I must not... be led by it."
Yet the moment the words left his lips—
that faint, dark energy field deep in his chest quivered once more.
A response.
A whisper.
A soft chuckle in the dark.
---
— When the Forbidden Zone Reveals Its Face —
Eren stepped out of the suffocating command tent alone, walking toward the very edge of the isolation zone.
The churning wall of ink was less than a hundred meters ahead. The air here was tainted—putrid, damp, oppressive—thick enough to choke on.
The blue-helmeted soldiers patrolling the outer perimeter were visibly tense despite their advanced gear. Their eyes kept flicking toward the darkness—
knuckles white as frost where they gripped their rifles.
Then—
without any warning,
the drifting surface of the Fog coalesced into a defined shape.
A massive hand woven from shadow.
A face stretched and distorted.
As if something inside had moved on a whim—
a casual, offhanded display.
The soldiers' faces went deathly pale, stepping back almost in unison.
Ethan materialized silently at Eren's side. His voice was barely above a whisper, yet each word landed like iron:
"You see. The inner domain of the Black Fog and its extended buffer zone have been officially classified by the Vigil-Wyrm Order as—
an 'SSS-Class Absolute Forbidden Zone.'"
He paused, his gaze heavy. "No one enters.
At the same time—no one leaves."
The latter part of the statement fell like a slamming iron gate.
But Eren wasn't looking at him.
His entire awareness was captured by the devouring abyss ahead.
The dark power within his chest still vibrated, undiminished by the distance.
If anything, its resonance with the distant "pulse" of the Fog grew clearer, more perilous.
Disgust. Resistance.
Yet he felt pulled by invisible threads, unable to break free.
Eren finally spoke.
His voice was quiet, but sharp as a blade cutting off all retreat:
"—What if I choose to go in anyway?"
The moment the words left his mouth—
Deep within the Black Fog,
at its absolute dark core,
a pulse beat out. Sudden. Clear. Unmistakable.
No sound.
Yet it felt like a soft, mocking chuckle right beside his ear:
"You?
—Try it."