"Arata! Fall back to the secondary line!" a cleric shouted through the storm, reaching for his arm. "Your shoulder—your posture—you're in no condition to stay on the vanguard! Please!"
"Don't touch me," Shin'ya said.
His voice wasn't loud. It carried no grand authority. It was just a dry, flat rasp that made the cleric freeze in his tracks. Shin'ya pulled his arm away with a stiff, unnatural motion, his fingers frozen tight around the hilt of the Ketsugai.
He didn't turn back toward the safety of the rear command tents. He didn't look at the makeshift field hospital where wounded men were screaming under the green glow of low-tier recovery spells. He dragged his heavy, mud-caked boots back across the bloody dirt, stepping over the trampled grass and ruined clothes, heading directly toward the pulsing central rift.
Inside his head, the usual noise had completely died out. There were no inner complaints about his imaginary stamina bar, no light novel tropes, no sarcastic commentary on the weather. Just a cold, suffocating silence that made his own heartbeat sound uncomfortably loud behind his ears.
I can't go back there, his shattered mind whispered in the dark quiet. I can't sit in a tent while people get torn apart outside. I can't look at my own blood-stained hands. Honestly... if I die right here, it's fine. It's better. There's no way we're winning this anyway. It never ends.
Up on the elevated stone bastions, high-ranking battle-mages were chanting in unison, their voices amplified by wind magic to echo over the thunder.
"THE GRAND SEALING INCANTATION IS AT EIGHTY PERCENT! ALL UNITS MAINTAIN THE PERIMETER! THE RIFT IS PREPARING TO DISPLACE ALL MATTER WITHIN ITS EVENT HORIZON!"
A high-tier mage captain leaned over the wooden railing, screaming down at the frontline commanders through the torrential downpour.
"THE MONSTERS ARE ANCHORING THE ANOMALY FROM THE INSIDE! THEY ARE OCCUPYING THE POCKET SPACE WITHIN THE TEAR TO PREVENT THE ARCANE LOCK FROM CLOSING! IF SOMEONE DOES NOT ENTER THE GATEWAY INTERIOR AND CLEAR THE POCKET ENVIRONMENT, THE SEAL WILL BOUNCE AND DESTROY THE ENTIRE VALLEY!"
"It requires a vanguard entry team!" a lieutenant yelled back, his voice cracking from exhaustion. "Who is going to go into the threshold?!"
"I'll do it," Shin'ya murmured.
He didn't wait for permission. He didn't look back to see Seraphina's horrified face or the wide-eyed shock of the surrounding Imperial Knights. Step by heavy step, he walked straight past the defensive shield wall and plunged into the swirling, static-laced tear of the Calamity Gate.
Passing through the event horizon through the Gateway felt like stepping into an inverted world.
The roaring rain and thunder of Oakhaven Valley vanished instantly, replaced by a eerie, low humming sound that vibrated directly inside Shin'ya's skull. The space inside the Gateway was vast—a hollow, cavernous pocket dimension suspended between realities. The ground beneath his boots was made of smooth, obsidian-like glass, wet with a thin layer of luminescent golden fluid. Above him, the sky was a bruised, silent void filled with floating jagged landmasses and static purple lightning.
Dozens of pristine white Cherubims and heavy obsidian Stalkers were packed inside the pocket interior, their bodies rooted to the ground to keep the dimensional tear forced open. As Shin'ya stepped onto the glass floor, every single featureless porcelain head turned toward him in unnatural unison.
Shin'ya didn't waste his stamina on ranged attacks. He knew a single Shadow Slash would completely drain his remaining physical energy and leave him paralyzed on the ground.
Instead, he channeled his shadow magic directly into the blade of the Ketsugai.
The dark steel hummed violently, wrapped in a dense, shimmering aura of razor-sharp shadow that extended the blade's edge without firing a projectile. Shin'ya stepped forward, his eyes hollow and unblinking, swinging the enchanted blade with cold, mechanical precision.
Because the shadow aura did the heavy cutting, it required almost no physical force from his aching arms. The blade slid through white porcelain limbs, shattered obsidian carapaces, and severed golden-blooded tendons like hot metal through ice. He moved in silence, stepping through the golden fluid, ignoring the dark liquids splattering across his already blood-stained clothes.
He swung once. A Cherubim's arm detached.
He stepped sideways. The shadow edge severed a Stalker's knee joint.
He was a ghost moving through a silent hall, acting purely on survival instinct while his mind remained completely detached from his body.
"THE INCANTATION IS AT NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT!" the mage's voice boomed from the portal's entrance, distorted and warped by the collapsing spatial boundaries of the pocket space. "CLEAR THE THRESHOLD IMMEDIATELY! ONCE THE LOCK ENGAGES, ALL MATTER TRAPPED INSIDE THE POCKET WILL BE PERMANENTLY ERASED!"
Shin'ya turned his head toward the glowing tear leading back to the valley.
For a brief, terrifying second, he stopped moving. He stared at the opening, feeling the heavy temptation to simply stay where he was—to let the portal close and erase him along with the monsters, ending the physical pain, the terror, and the iron smell of blood once and for all.
No... move, you idiot... a small, stubborn spark of primal survival instinct hissed from the darkest corner of his gut.
He forced his legs forward, turning to run toward the spatial exit.
SPRECH!
A sudden, blinding spike of pain shot up his right leg.
Out of the shadow of a fallen Stalker, a new variant of the Calamity—a lean, needle-limbed stalker with a jagged, bone-white scythe arm—thrust its appendage forward like a harpoon. The razor-sharp bone tip drove cleanly through Shin'ya's right calf, pinning his leg straight to the glass floor.
"Ngh!"
Shin'ya gasped, his knee slamming into the slick floor as the creature began violently pulling back, trying to drag him deeper into the dark interior of the pocket space.
The edges of the dimensional entrance outside began to warp and shrink, snapping closed like massive jaws.
"ONE SECOND UNTIL TOTAL SPATIAL LOCK!"
"Get off me!" Shin'ya snarled through gritted teeth.
He didn't panic. He didn't try to pull the barbed bone tip out of his flesh, which would have shredded his leg entirely. Instead, Shin'ya spun his torso around, raised the Ketsugai high with both hands, and brought the dark, shadow-enchanted blade down with every ounce of physical weight he had left.
CRACK-SPRECH!
The razor-sharp shadow edge hit the monster's bone arm directly above the entry point, cleanly severing the creature's limb mid-shaft.
The monster shrieked, releasing its tension, leaving the severed bone shaft sticking out through Shin'ya's leg. Without hesitating, Shin'ya grabbed the protruding bone with his left hand and ripped it free from his muscle with one violent tug.
Blood welled up from his leg, but the path was open.
ZIIIP!
Using the absolute final, microscopic reserve of willpower lingering in his soul, his body dissolved into the shadow beneath his boots a fraction of a second before the pocket dimension collapsed in on itself.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The spatial rupture violently closed. The sudden displacement of atmospheric pressure created a massive shockwave that tore through the air outside the gate like a heavy bomb detonating.
Shin'ya materialized mid-air ten feet above the muddy slope of Oakhaven Valley, caught dead-center in the explosive airburst.
His battered body was flung through the freezing rain like a ragdoll. He tumbled through the sky, crashing hard against the wet, rock-strewn earth, skidding through the mud before coming to a painful halt on his back.
He lay there in the mud, staring up at the dark, rain-soaked clouds. His right leg was bleeding heavily, his right shoulder throbbed with a sickening heat, and his vision was swimming wildly, narrowing into a dark, tunnel-like haze.
The air around him was filled with chaotic shouting, but the sounds felt far away, as if he were buried deep underwater.
"CALAMITY GATEWAY 04 IS OFFICIALLY SEALED!" a commander's voice boomed across the defensive lines, followed by the weary, exhausted roars of hundreds of surviving vanguard soldiers. "GATEWAY 04 IS SECURE! ALL UNITS REFORM THE PERIMETER!"
Through his blurry, failing eyes, Shin'ya could see several running figures—clerics holding green-glowing staves, heavy knights, and Seraphina—scrambling down the slippery hill directly toward his position.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid gasps. The rain washed over his face, diluting the blood on his skin and running into his mouth, tasting of dirt and copper.
Gateway 04, huh? Shin'ya thought, a faint, bitter realization echoing in his fading mind. Four... 'Shi'. It means 'Death' in Japanese.
A weak, hollow smirk briefly touched the corner of his wet lips before his expression returned to a blank, lifeless mask.
How ironic... I'm literally going to die right here... in front of the Gateway of Death.
His eyelids fluttered shut, and the heavy darkness swallowed the battlefield whole.