Yuki’s ears twitched slightly. Her gaze swept across the landscape, a faint frown settling onto her face.

"Something is wrong," she murmured.

Damon raised a brow. "What do you mean?"

He looked around, trying to see what she meant, but found nothing beyond the same endless grey stone and glowing fissures stretching into the distance.

For a few moments, Yuki didn’t answer.

Her eyes remained fixed somewhere ahead, distant and focused, as though listening to something he couldn’t hear.

Then a realisation flashed across her face.

"This world... It’s dying."

Damon frowned slightly. "Dying?"

Yuki slowly nodded, her gaze drifting toward the pale blue light leaking through the cracks beneath their feet.

"The mana flow is collapsing," she explained quietly. "Worlds naturally circulate mana through everything inside them. The air, the ground, living creatures..." She paused briefly. "But here, it feels broken. Like everything is being drained faster than it can recover."

Damon glanced around again.

Now that she said it aloud, the landscape felt different.

Not just empty, it felt almost exhausted.

The stone beneath them looked brittle, almost starved of colour, while the pale blue glow inside the fissures no longer resembled light as much as exposed veins beneath dying skin.

"I’m guessing that’s not a good thing," Damon said.

Yuki looked at him flatly. "Yes, Damon. Worlds dying are generally considered bad."

"...Right."

A faint smile tugged briefly at her lips before disappearing just as quickly.

"We need to leave sooner rather than later," she continued. "If the mana collapse gets worse, the rifts here could destabilise completely."

"Then let’s find one before that happens."

Damon rolled his shoulder slightly before continuing forward.

The farther they walked, the stronger the strange pressure in the world became. The vibration beneath the stone no longer felt distant now. It pulsed rhythmically through the ground every few seconds, subtle enough to ignore at first glance, but impossible to forget once noticed.

And with every pulse, the purple sparks around Damon’s fingertips grew more active, as if reacting to it.

He clicked his tongue softly and forced the lightning back again.

"...Still having trouble?" Yuki asked without looking at him, her mana sense taking quick notice of what was going on.

"Feels like my mana wants to attack something before I do."

"It’ll get better... Just try not to kill us before then."

A low growl suddenly echoed from somewhere ahead.

Both of them stopped instantly.

Several shapes slowly crawled out from between the cracked stone ridges ahead of them, creatures resembling the Stone Stalkers from before, except these ones were larger.

And thinner.

Their rocky bodies looked stretched unnaturally tight over elongated limbs, while pale blue light leaked constantly from the cracks covering their bodies.

Damon narrowed his eyes slightly.

"...Those things look worse."

Yuki’s ears flattened slightly. "Because they are. With nothing to kill, they are basically starving"

The creatures noticed them a second later and charged with newfound energy.

Damon exhaled slowly.

This time, he didn’t even bother raising his arm fully.

Lightning exploded outward almost casually.

Purple light tore across the wasteland with a deafening roar before crashing into the approaching monsters.

The first three monsters disappeared instantly.

The remaining creatures barely managed to react before Damon flicked his fingers slightly, redirecting the current mid-motion.

The lightning curved unnaturally through the air before tearing through the rest of them one after another.

By the time the echoes faded, nothing remained except the shattered stone and drifting sparks of purple lightning.

For a few moments, neither Damon nor Yuki moved.

The wasteland had gone silent again.

Not peaceful silence, but the kind that came right before collapse.

And right on cue, the ground around them pulsed.

A deep tremor rolled beneath their feet, far stronger than before, and several fissures nearby widened with sharp cracking noises. Pale blue light burst upward violently from the openings, no longer a soft glow but an unstable torrent.

Yuki’s expression changed instantly.

"We need to move. Now."

Damon didn’t argue.

The two immediately broke into a sprint across the cracked landscape.

Another tremor followed only seconds later.

This time, the stone beneath them split completely somewhere in the distance, the sound echoing across the dead world like a mountain collapsing in on itself.

Damon glanced sideways briefly.

Entire sections of the grey wasteland were beginning to sink.

The glowing fissures spread rapidly across the ground like fractures in glass, devouring everything in their path while violent waves of mana burst upward into the black sky.

"...That seems bad," Damon muttered while dodging over a widening crack.

"You think?" Yuki snapped back. "The world’s core is probably collapsing!"

Another pulse shook the ground.

Far ahead, one of the massive stone ridges suddenly crumbled inward before vanishing into a growing abyss beneath it.

The air itself had started distorting now.

Ripples spread through space irregularly, twisting the pale blue light into warped streaks.

Damon’s instincts screamed at him.

This place wasn’t just dying anymore.

It was coming apart. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"There!" Yuki suddenly shouted.

Damon followed her gaze instantly.

Roughly a kilometre ahead, space itself twisted unnaturally around a massive circular fracture suspended above the ground.

A rift.

Unlike the unstable cracks surrounding the world, this one remained intact, pale blue energy spiralling steadily inside it despite the destruction around it.

Relief barely had time to settle before another violent tremor erupted beneath them.

The ground split directly across their path.

Damon reacted instantly.

Void Edge shifted from gloves into a spear mid-motion as he slammed the weapon into the stone and launched both himself and Yuki over the widening abyss.

They landed roughly on the opposite side just as the previous section of ground collapsed entirely into darkness.

Yuki glanced back once, ears twitching sharply.

"...Remind me never to travel worlds with you again."

"No promises."

Despite the situation, a small laugh escaped her.

Then another deafening crack echoed across the world, and the black sky above them fractured.

Damon’s eyes widened slightly as pale blue lines spread across the darkness overhead like cracks in glass.

The pressure in the world had become unbearable now.

Mana surged wildly through the air in unstable waves, enough for Damon’s lightning to begin sparking violently across his arms without his permission.

The rift distorted violently ahead of them, its edges flickering in and out of existence.

"We’re not making it if it destabilises!" Yuki shouted.

Damon pushed harder.

Another pulse erupted behind them, but neither dared to look back, both focused on their only escape.

The rift stood directly before them now.

Its surface rippled chaotically, unstable but still active.

Barely.

Yuki reached it a second before him, and as she turned her already pale face turned even paler.

Behind Damon’s back, the world had completely shattered.

"Hurry!" she screamed.

Another crack split the sky overhead.

And the ground beneath Damon shattered completely.

He lunged into the air at the last moment and crashed straight into Yuki, pushing him and her right into the rift at the last second.