They followed the path traced by the wounded steel-plated beetle, moving through the wasteland in a steady silence broken only by the faint crunch of sand beneath their steps and the distant whisper of wind sliding across stone.

The terrain stretched without end in every direction, an expanse of fractured desert that refused to form anything resembling comfort or familiarity. Scattered rock formations rose like broken teeth from the ground, while shallow ridges cut across the sand in long irregular lines, each one resembling an old scar left behind by some forgotten violence. Above them, the sky remained starless and wrong, its pale unnatural glow spreading across the world in a muted haze that provided visibility without warmth, clarity without reassurance, light without source.

Everything felt observed but unprotected.

After a long stretch of travel, the ground ahead began to shift upward, and the landscape eventually gave way to a small cliff that overlooked a vast basin carved into the earth. The drop was not sheer, but steep enough to create a sense of separation, as though the world had been split into upper and lower layers, each holding its own version of emptiness.

Yuto slowed as they approached the edge.

At first glance, the basin below appeared unremarkable, just another hollowed stretch of broken terrain filled with shadow and uneven stone, the kind of place that seemed to swallow detail rather than reveal it. For a fleeting moment, he considered turning away, assuming that whatever had injured the beetle had long since moved on, leaving only silence behind.

But something resisted that assumption.

A subtle tension in the air.

A feeling that the emptiness below was not truly empty.

He stepped forward, cautiously closing the distance to the edge of the cliff, and leaned just enough to see past the lip of stone.

And then he stopped completely.

His breath caught so suddenly it it felt as though it had been taken from him rather than held.

His eyes widened, fixed on the space below.

The basin was no longer empty.

In the dim, starless glow of the Astral Realm, something immense stood within the hollowed terrain, its presence distorting the sense of scale itself as if the space it occupied had been redefined by its existence alone.

Yuto had expected something dangerous.

Something large.

Something capable of tearing through armored creatures.

But what stood below him erased every expectation he had carried into that moment.

Coldness spread through his body, sharp and immediate, as though fear had bypassed thought entirely and gone straight into instinct. For an instant, he felt disconnected from movement, as if even the simple act of stepping backward required permission from something deeper inside him.

It was a beast.

But not in any way that resembled the creatures they had encountered before.

Below them stood a towering humanoid monstrosity, its form both decayed and grotesquely preserved, as if life and death had failed to decide which one of them had final claim over it. Its skull-like head was exposed and skeletal, the hollow structure fractured and uneven, while within its depths burned a pair of faint green eyes that glowed with a sickly, unnatural intensity.

Its mouth hung open in a permanent suggestion of hunger, filled with jagged fangs that caught the faint ambient light and returned it in broken reflections.

The rest of its body was even more disturbing.

Rotting flesh clung unevenly to its frame, overgrown and intertwined with thick layers of moss and creeping vines that wrapped around its limbs like parasitic extensions. Tendrils of plant life and decay merged together across its torso and shoulders, giving the impression that the creature had not simply decayed over time, but had been reclaimed by the environment in a slow, deliberate fusion of life and ruin.

Its arms ended in massive clawed limbs that looked capable of crushing stone without effort, each finger elongated and heavy with unnatural weight.

And yet, despite its overwhelming presence, it was not moving.

It stood perfectly still.

Like something asleep.

For a moment, Yuto felt as though he had not been looking at a living creature at all, but rather he had stared into your eyes of death and he was still alive only because those eyes were shut.

He stumbled backward without thinking, his foot slipping slightly against loose stone as he retreated from the cliff’s edge, forcing himself away from the sight before instinct fully caught up with awareness.

Shinny appeared beside him a second later, his expression remained mostly unchanged, calm in the way it always was, but beneath that calm there was something subtle that Yuto had not seen before, a faint tightening around the eyes, a restraint in his posture that suggested awareness of danger rather than ignorance of it.

Yuto did not need a mirror to know what his own face looked like.

He could feel it in his breathing.

In the tightness of his chest.

In the way his thoughts struggled briefly to organize themselves into anything coherent.

Pale.

Wide-eyed.

Unsteady.

He forced himself to inhale slowly.

Then exhale.

Again.

Gradually, control returned in uneven fragments.

He raised a hand and gestured sharply for Shinny to follow.

"We’re going back," he said.

Shinny tilted his head slightly. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"Back to the others?"

"Yes," Yuto replied immediately, voice firm despite the tension still lingering in his body. "We need to warn Maya and Tami. There’s a giant beast ahead of us."

Without further hesitation, they turned away from the cliff and began moving back the way they had come.

The wind felt colder on the return.

The silence heavier.

After a while, Shinny glanced sideways at him, his steps matching Yuto’s pace with effortless ease.

"Master," he said lightly, though there was a faint edge of teasing beneath it, "don’t you still want to kill it like you said earlier?"

Yuto did not slow his pace.

He kept his eyes forward, jaw tightening slightly as he muttered under his breath.

"Traitorous summon."