He waited until night.
When the dorms were quiet.
When the hallway lights flickered to half-power.
When even the system had stopped speaking.
Elias slipped out of his room, book tucked under his arm, hoodie pulled low.
He found his way back to the third-floor stairwell—the one with the cracked window and the slanted light—and sat.
Only then did he open it again.
The black book.
His name hadn't disappeared.
Still there. Same strange, slanted handwriting:
"Elias Ward – Pending Retrieval"
His fingers hovered above the page.
"Who wrote this?" he whispered.
No answer.
Not from the room.
Not from the system.
He turned the page again, slowly.
This time, the symbols weren't diagrams. They were letters—or something close. Arranged in vertical lines, written in red and silver ink. They shimmered faintly, the way hot air bends sunlight.
He didn't recognize the script.
But his body did.
Something inside him pulled toward it.
Like a magnet.
His eyes narrowed.
The markings rearranged themselves.
No—more like they reached forward, changing as he stared.
Then a phrase burned itself across the top of the page, in English:
"SPEAK TO AWAKEN."
His breath caught.
Then another line appeared beneath:
"Do not let it see you read."
He looked around.
Still alone.
"System?" he whispered.
Silence.
Not even static.
"Are you there?"
Still nothing.
The coin.
The silver coin from the girl—it was in his pocket, still cold.
Was it blocking the system completely?
His fingers hovered over the page again.
He leaned in.
Then the air changed.
It folded.
No sound, no warning—just pressure.
Sudden. Crushing.
"DISENGAGE."
The system's voice came roaring back—distorted, loud, not human anymore.
"DO NOT READ THAT LANGUAGE."
Elias's head snapped back. Blood dripped from his nose. His eyes stung.
"LANGUAGE PRE-DATES CONTAINMENT."
"PATTERN CORRUPTION LIKELY."
"SHUT THE BOOK OR I WILL."
He gasped for breath. His vision blurred.
But he didn't close it.
He stared harder.
The letters twisted on the page—
—and something inside him snapped.
A line tore open across the wall.
Not drawn.
Torn.
Like someone had ripped the air apart, seam to seam.
Beyond it: darkness.
Worse than darkness.
Depth. Endless depth.
And something moving within it.
His arm surged with pain. The mark flared red-hot. The silver coin in his pocket turned black.
The book slammed itself shut.
The tear disappeared.
So did the air.
Elias collapsed.
He woke to silence.
And the system's voice, low and calm again:
"Reality Rift unlocked."
"Passive instability increasing."
"You will be hunted now."