The world shattered around them. One moment Lin and Keller were braced against the oppressive pressure of the Seam's heart, the strange hum drilling into their skulls, and the next the ground fell away beneath their feet. There was no sense of falling, no wind tearing at their clothes, only a cold, crystalline silence that pulled everything apart.

When Lin blinked, he was standing alone.

The Seam's horizon—those twisting ribbons of light and shadow—had splintered into jagged panes like glass. Each shard floated in a void, separated from the others by swirls of gray mist. For the first time since stepping into the Seam, Lin felt truly isolated.

"...Keller?" His voice was swallowed, muffled, as if the air itself rejected sound. "Keller!"

No answer came.

Lin flexed his hands, grounding himself. The glove on his right hand glowed faintly, responding to his agitation. The fragments around him shimmered, like reflections in broken mirrors, each holding a different version of Seoul—distorted, impossible, yet recognizable. Skyscrapers bent at odd angles. Streets stretched into infinity. Subway tunnels spiraled upward into the sky.

This place isn't just breaking… it's dividing us.

He turned slowly, scanning the shard he stood upon. It resembled a rooftop—cracked concrete beneath his boots, the skeletal outline of a railing ahead—but when he peered over the edge, there was no drop. Just swirling mist and shifting lights below.

"Damn it," Lin muttered. "This thing wants to split us apart."

Far away, Keller slammed against an alley wall. He coughed, bracing himself as a heavy weight pressed on his chest. The Seam's fragment had spat him into a narrow street, the kind of old Seoul alley that smelled of rain-soaked stone and stale smoke. Except here, the buildings leaned inward, their windows flickering like eyes.

"Keller," he growled under his breath. "You've been through worse."

Still, the unease settled quickly. Shadows shifted unnaturally, as if watching him. His hand went to his holster, and he pulled the gun free, checking the chamber out of habit. But the weapon looked wrong in this light—elongated, too heavy, as though the Seam wanted him to doubt the reality of even his tools.

He forced himself to steady his breathing. "Lin's out there somewhere. Just move. Find him."

Every step he took seemed to echo endlessly down the distorted alley.

On another shard, Hana stumbled to her knees, clutching her side. The Seam's collapse had hurled her into what looked like a subway platform, but the tiles glistened like wet scales, and the tracks hissed as if something alive crawled within them.

The platform lights blinked erratically, bathing everything in sickly green.

She pushed herself up with a grimace. Her comm unit sparked, giving only bursts of static. "Lin? Keller? Anyone?"

Nothing.

The sound of screeching metal echoed down the tunnel. Hana spun, raising her blade. Out of the darkness, a subway train emerged—but its cars were twisted, melted into each other, and its windows were filled with blank-faced passengers who stared with empty eyes.

The train roared past her without stopping, the air whipping at her hair and jacket, leaving behind only the stink of ozone and something rotting.

Hana clenched her jaw. "Not real. Just another trick."

But the pounding of her heart betrayed her certainty.

Lin crouched low, touching the cracked concrete of his fragment. His mind raced, analyzing. If the Seam split us into separate shards, there has to be a point where they overlap. A junction.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the faint thrum in his glove. The energy responded, resonating like a tuning fork. He followed the pull, moving carefully across the rooftop shard. Every step felt like walking across glass suspended over an abyss.

Halfway across, the air shimmered. A figure appeared—tall, indistinct, cloaked in threads of static. Lin froze.

It wasn't the suited figure that had confronted them earlier, but something else. This one had no face, only a smooth void where its features should be. Its head tilted, studying him.

Lin raised his stance, ready. "If you're another trick, you'll regret standing in my way."

The figure didn't move. Instead, it lifted a hand and pressed it against the air. A soundless ripple spread outward, striking Lin like a blow to the chest. He staggered back, barely holding his ground.

The shard beneath him groaned, cracks spiderwebbing outward.

Lin bared his teeth. "So that's how it is." He surged forward, letting the glove flare. His strike hit the ripple dead-on, shattering it into shards of light. The faceless figure dissolved, but the shard beneath him continued to crack, pieces breaking away into the mist.

"No time to waste," he muttered, leaping toward the edge—straight into the void.

The glove flared, and instead of falling, he landed hard on another shard—this one a distorted crosswalk, the white lines stretching far too long, leading to a horizon that bent into itself.

Keller's alley narrowed until it ended at a crooked doorway. He didn't hesitate. He kicked it open and stepped through—

—only to find himself standing in the middle of an apartment. A lived-in place, warm lighting, the smell of food drifting from a kitchen.

And there, sitting on a couch, was a woman.

Keller froze. His throat tightened. He knew that face.

"...Aya."

She smiled faintly, the same way she always used to when she wanted him to relax after a long day. "You look tired."

Keller's grip on his gun trembled. He knew this wasn't real. Aya had been gone for years. This was the Seam twisting his memories, digging into the wounds he thought he'd buried.

Still, his knees felt weak.

"Come here," she said softly. "You don't have to keep fighting. Just stay with me."

For one terrible moment, Keller almost believed it. Almost set the gun down.

Then he shut his eyes hard, forcing the image away. "You're not her. And I don't need your lies."

He fired. The apartment shattered like glass, and the alley swallowed him again.

Back on her platform, Hana stalked forward, blade ready. Another train screeched past, this one slower, its cars splitting open to reveal writhing shadows inside. One of them spilled out onto the platform, rising into a humanoid mass of black tendrils.

Hana didn't wait. She struck fast, her blade cleaving through the nearest appendage. The creature shrieked, its voice like metal tearing apart.

"You'll have to do better than that!" she spat, lunging again.

The fight was brutal, the platform cracking under their struggle. Each blow seemed to ripple through the shard itself, destabilizing it further. Hana's mind raced. If I stay too long, this whole fragment will collapse.

She finished with a clean upward strike, splitting the creature in two. The remains melted into the tiles, leaving only silence.

Breathing hard, Hana pressed two fingers to her comm. Still only static. But beneath it, just faintly, she thought she heard Lin's voice calling her name.

She smiled grimly. "Then I'm not alone after all."

Lin pushed forward across his shard, following the pull of the glove. The crosswalk bent and warped, but ahead he saw a faint shimmer—like a window into another shard. He sprinted, diving through.

He landed hard on tiled floor—Hana's platform.

Her eyes widened as she spun toward him. Relief washed across her face, tempered by urgency.

"Lin!"

"Glad you're still breathing," he said, offering a hand to pull her up. "We need to find Keller."

Before she could reply, the platform shook violently. The Seam groaned, its voice like the tearing of mountains. Shards around them began collapsing into the void.

Lin tightened his grip. "No more hesitation. We move now—before this place decides we've overstayed our welcome."

Somewhere else, Keller steadied himself in the shifting alley, the echo of Aya's false smile still burning in his mind. He clenched his jaw.

"Hold on, Lin. Hana. I'm coming."

Above him, the shard sky split open, light pouring down.

The hunt through the fractured Seam had only just begun.

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