Alone. Endless. Adrift.

So many words to say the same thing: I was isolated.

A stranger in a strange land.

A land of hunger. A land of sand.

I shook my head sharply. Stop. You aren't Vex. Don't start composing lyrical nonsense in your head like some desert-wandering poet on the verge of heatstroke.

Focus.

Every step was calculated. I rationed my energy without even meaning to—each breath controlled, each footfall measured. The salt-crusted wind whipped across the dunes, stinging my cheeks, drying out my lips. This realm wasn't just unwelcoming. It was hostile at a fundamental level. It didn't want me here.

The Realm of Hunger.

It had no name, not one I had been given anyway. Only its attributes. Sand. Salt. Starvation. My aura had told me enough, and the Hollow's earlier assault confirmed the rest. This realm fed on the concept of emptiness. It was a plane where want was not an inconvenience but a law. Nothing here was ever full. Not the ground, not the air, not the monsters—not even the sky, which stretched endlessly above me like a mouth that had forgotten how to close.

Every time something emerged from the dunes—something small, twitching, chittering—I didn't hesitate.

My grip tightened on the odachi.

Step. Stance. Thrust.

The long blade drove downward, impaling through brittle bone and soft brain matter. No hesitation. No theatrics. Just precision. One kill. Then another. And another. Like chopping weeds in a garden of sand.

No time to think. No time to mourn. They weren't people. They weren't even beasts.

They were warnings.

Some were blind, drawn to aura and movement like moths to flame. Others had hollow sockets filled with black glass. They looked up at me like I was a mirage. Their limbs were thin, like they'd never touched nourishment.

I impaled them anyway.

One tried to burrow beneath me—fast little thing with a crown of bone like a crustacean's shell. I felt the vibration beneath the sand. My foot snapped forward and down, heel slamming its head into the ground before I split it apart with the odachi, the blade whistling low and cruel through the air.

My breathing had picked up. I could feel the salt drying my tongue.

"Water," I muttered to myself. "Need to ration the water."

That was mistake number one.

Speaking aloud.

A sound. Carried on wind.

Whistle—snap.

A bullet flew past my cheek, hot enough to sear the skin. The second embedded itself into the sand beside me, spraying granules against my ankles.

I immediately dropped to a crouch and threw out a spread of paper—wide, quick folds turning sheets into dozens of triangular panels that spiraled outward midair and clicked together into a kinetic shield disk. It slammed into the ground between me and the bullet's origin, embedding itself like a thrown discus.

"Dammit."

I hadn't heard a rifle cock. I hadn't heard footsteps. These things—whatever passed for goblins in this realm—were quiet. Efficient. Organized.

"Lumivis," I whispered.

A shimmer in the corner of my vision. He responded silently, understanding the situation.

"Deploy scatter bugs," I murmured. "I need eyes and noise."

He nodded and dispersed a dozen shimmering lights into the sand. The paper at my hip folded mid-air into buzzing, origami locusts, each one emitting clicking sounds, bouncing over the terrain, and detonating with muffled pops.

The enemy responded.

Another shot. Then another. Gunfire tracked the sounds, not the sources. They were hunting by sound and vibration.

"Adaptive bastards…" I breathed.

I moved low, zig-zagging between the dunes, my footsteps light, weight spread evenly. I was beginning to learn the rhythm of the sand—where it held, where it collapsed. Every gust of wind, I moved. Every distant crack of thunder—real or imagined—I repositioned.

One of the goblins revealed itself briefly: scaled, hunched, dark bronze skin, lean and angular. It looked like it had been carved from broken weapons and leather belts. Its rifle was long, bolt-action, crudely made but effective.

I killed it with a paper dart to the throat.

Step. Thrust. Silence.

I collected the body and buried it under sand. No trophies. No signals.

I wasn't here for conquest. I was here for survival. And to find the anomaly.

Except, I was beginning to suspect I had already found it.

The Hollow. That thing—assembled from discarded goblin corpses like some macabre jigsaw puzzle—wasn't native. It was a parasite. It had arrived through something else. Or someone had opened a path for it.

And that someone might still be here.

I kept walking.

Dunes rose and fell like the slow inhale of a sleeping beast. At the top of one, I spotted it.

A structure.

No—a skeleton of a structure. Black stone, partially buried, eaten away by sand. Obsidian pillars and sun-bleached ribs of architecture. Not quite a temple. Not quite a tomb.

I descended toward it carefully, odachi drawn, origami wasps circling overhead. Lumivis manifested again beside me, his form casting no shadow in this sunless realm.

"That looks like a ruin from the early Demian period," he commented casually. "Perhaps even pre-unification."

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"Goblins don't build like that."

"No. They scavenge. They don't honor their dead. That was built by something else."

Inside the ruin, I found bones.

Giant ones. Human-like in shape, but far too large. Each rib the size of a boat hull. Skull split open. Dried blood stained the walls around the corpse, as if the room had exploded outward from some violent magical discharge.

At the center of the chamber was a glyph. Circular. Incomplete. It had the feel of a Gate, or maybe a failed summoning circle. Its mana residue buzzed against my fingertips—not Demeterra's weave.

"Something opened something," I said aloud.

"Or something tried to escape," Lumivis added grimly.

Whatever it was, it failed. Or perhaps it succeeded too well.

Then I felt it.

The aura. Cold. Thin. Hungry.

Something still lingered here.

Not the Hollow.

A second one.

I turned, eyes scanning. The paper at my side folded instinctively, forming into a fan-shaped pattern across my back. I took a stance. Shallow. Defensive. Ready to counter.

The floor cracked.

Then split.

Out came fingers—long, white, bone where skin should be.

Then came the second Hollow. This one different.

Not a horde. Not pieced together from goblins.

This one wore a mask.

It rose like a marionette, its limbs clicking into place with unnatural precision. Its body was humanoid—entirely so—but every joint was reversed, every bone curved slightly wrong.

Its voice was static. Whispering in reverse.

I lunged first.

The fight was immediate and savage. Odachi met claws. Origami insects slashed like saw blades. Lumivis tried to interfere, but the Hollow's mask gleamed with a mark from the Spirit Sovereign—no interference allowed.

I took a slash to the hip. Then a backhand to the jaw that rattled my skull.

It lunged forward. I twisted low, slicing across its thigh. The leg came off, but it floated—no gravity, no pain. The Hollow reattached it in midair like a puppet rearranging its limbs.

Then it bit me.

Right on the shoulder. Hard enough to pierce the cloth. I screamed, more in surprise than pain, and slammed my blade into its collarbone.

Finally, I found its weakness.

The mask.

With one clean upward slash, I split it down the middle.

It fell to its knees, then collapsed into ash, leaving behind nothing but the shattered mask and a pool of tar.

I staggered back, panting.

"Are you well?" Lumivis asked.

"I've been better," I grunted.

Bite wound. Bleeding. But no curse. Not spreading. No miasma injection. It had wanted to eat me, not infect me.

Think.

What is the anomaly here?

Why is this Otherrealm sending Others into ours at such an aggressive rate? Breaches are common—but not this common. Not with this kind of consistency. This isn't random.

What are we missing? What do we need to find?

Why was I sent in alone?

The question burned the back of my mind more than the sand in my boots or the bite still weeping blood beneath my sleeve. Being a newly certified Walker was one thing, but even greenbloods don't get thrown into an unstable gate solo, especially not with a report of Hollow activity.

So who signed the recommendation?

Gin?

…Spiteful enough, sure. But even he doesn't move without reason. If he wanted me dead, this would've been cleaner. No Skillcubes. No signs. Just a disappearing act. No one questions a loss in a dead realm.

Too convenient.

I knelt beside the patch of corrupted ash where the Hollow had fallen. The air around it still tasted acrid, like ozone and rotted sugar.

Then it happened.

The black tar—what remained of the Hollow's false flesh—shifted.

It quivered. Bubbled. Then drew inward as if it were being inhaled by an invisible core. Inch by inch it collapsed in on itself until it compressed into something… structured.

Solid.

Shaped.

A perfect cube. Pitch black, ridged at the corners, softly pulsing with dim inner light like there was something alive inside.

"Lumivis," I called, without turning. "Does the Spirit Sovereign care if someone uses a Skillcube that comes from a spirit?"

There was a faint ripple of light beside me as he manifested again, arms crossed and posture aloof, as always.

"No," he answered simply. "Skillcubes formed from spirits are considered a bounty—a gift from the spirit, intentionally or not. A marker of triumph."

"Doesn't feel like a gift."

"Feelings are irrelevant. It's yours, whether the spirit offered it or bled it into being through defeat. The Sovereign's laws are clear."

I narrowed my eyes, not reaching for it just yet. The cube pulsed again, just once. Like a heartbeat. Or a breath.

"And if I absorb it?"

"Unwise," Lumivis replied smoothly. "Not until it's identified. Spirit-formed Skillcubes can be unstable. Parasites. Cursed bindings. Echoes of trauma. It would be best to wait until you're within range of a Gloss Beacon. Your connection to the Network is—" he tilted his head as if listening to static, "intermittent, at best, right now."

Of course it is. This realm was practically built to sever ties.

I pulled a sheet of folded paper from the pack at my hip and gently coaxed it into an extraction chrysalis, a containment unit used for unknown Skillcubes. With a flick of thought, the cube hovered gently off the ground and nestled into the protective folds. The paper hardened with a soft click as it sealed shut.

No signature. No glyphs. Not even a whisper of its function. That made it worse. Most cubes—especially those from Hollows—leave something. An aftertaste of aura. A mnemonic impression. This one? Nothing. A black box, in every sense of the word.

I stood slowly, my thoughts coiling tighter.

Why send me here?

Why send anyone?

And why now?

Unless…

Unless this was never about eliminating the Hollow.

Unless this wasn't a cleanup mission. It was observation. Maybe even a test.

I turned my eyes back to the ruin in the distance. Half-buried bones. Dead gods. A failed summoning or a successful escape. The Hollow had been waiting. Not for me. For bodies. For material. That's what Lumivis said, wasn't it?

"For every body in their pile, the stronger they are."

Then what if this wasn't about me at all?

What if someone else sent it here?

What if someone was feeding it?

My hand clenched involuntarily.

This realm might be unstable, but it wasn't mindless. It had direction, even if I couldn't see it yet. Something wanted the gate opened. Something wanted the Flayed pushed into Demeterra. And maybe someone back home—someone in the system—knew.

That made me the loose thread.

"Walker Alexander Duarte," Lumivis said calmly, "you're spiraling."

"I'm theorizing."

"You're spiraling loudly. Your aura is curling inward. Tighter. You're about to give yourself another nosebleed."

I took a slow breath. Then another. Forced the swirl of anxious thought to still. Not vanish, just…pause. I could pull the thread later.

For now, I was still inside the realm.

And this wasn't over.

"Bag the cube. Update my logs," I said. "Log the Hollow as Class Delta. Confirmed intelligent. Confirmed use of corpsecraft and spiritual masking. Logged behavior as predatory. Status: eliminated."

"Logged," Lumivis confirmed. "Would you like to send a compressed dispatch back through the Walker beacon?"

"Only if the gate stabilizes," I muttered. "Right now, no one's getting in or out."

I turned back toward the ridgeline. The heat hadn't gone anywhere. The salt still clung to my face like a second skin. But something had changed.

A wind picked up. Sharper. More focused. Less random.

Direction.

The realm had noticed me.

And somewhere, something else had, too.

I wasn't alone anymore.

And whoever—or whatever—was watching…

They were waiting for me to move.

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