Lin awoke to a city that felt wrong from the first breath. The sky above Seoul, or what resembled it, was fractured glass, sunlight refracted into sharp, stinging beams that cut across streets lined with twisted buildings. Cars crouched at impossible angles, their windows flickering with faint silhouettes of drivers who weren't there.

Hana groaned beside him, pulling herself to a kneeling position. Her eyes were wide, scanning the warped streets. "Where…?" she muttered. "This isn't…"

"No," Lin said, voice low, as he forced himself up. The fragments of the ground beneath their feet shifted slightly with every step, like walking on the surface of a living puzzle. "This is the Seam. And it's… eating Seoul from the inside out."

The air pulsed with static, the faint vibration pressing against their skulls. Each step sent ripples through reality itself. Shadows flickered along the walls, sometimes tall and thin, sometimes impossibly short and wide. Every distorted figure whispered fragments of memory—people they had known, friends lost, enemies slain, all droning in a chorus of accusation.

Hana's hand went to her blade. "We need to move. Keller—he's still out there. Can you feel him?"

Lin focused, eyes narrowing. The seam of energy he could sense before, Keller's presence, was faint but persistent. A pulse of light in the distance marked his friend's struggle. "Yes. He's… farther than we thought. And the Seam is feeding on him. We need to reach him before it drags him deeper."

A sudden ripple of the streets made both of them stagger. Neon signs twisted, painting words in reverse and gibberish, the glow refracting into impossible angles. For a fleeting second, Lin saw himself reflected in the glass of a building—not his own image, but that of a younger version of himself, wide-eyed and untested, the memory of his first encounter with the Seam.

"Lin…?" Hana's voice was sharp. "Don't get caught looking!"

He tore his gaze away, shaking off the eerie pull of nostalgia. "Right. We move."

The path ahead was no longer solid. Streets converged into corridors of shadow and broken pavement, leading into the heart of the fragment. The hum of the Seam grew louder with each step, carrying distant echoes—Keller's voice cutting through the chaos.

"Lin! Hana! Hurry! Don't let me—"

The words were fragmented, stretched thin like elastic. Lin felt a pang in his chest. The pulse was faint but real, a tether they could follow—but fragile. If it broke, they could lose Keller forever.

Hana reached out, grabbing Lin's arm. "You have to tell me," she said, urgency in her eyes. "What's happening? How bad is it?"

He swallowed, glancing down the warped street. "The Seam isn't just a space between dimensions anymore. It's bleeding into Seoul. Real Seoul. We're walking inside a memory of the city, but it's starting to overlap with reality. Every step we take could collapse a building outside—or trap someone inside here."

Her jaw tightened. "So people could be—"

"Yes," Lin cut in. "Caught in it. Disappearing. The Seam isn't selective; it doesn't care who survives. That's why we have to reach Keller before it… before it fully consumes this layer."

The corridor ahead pulsed violently, buildings bending toward each other as if the streets themselves were hungry. Shadows surged forward, forming indistinct shapes that mimicked civilians from the city—faces familiar yet wrong. One figure stepped forward, wearing the jacket of Lin's old comrade from a mission that had gone wrong years ago. The eyes were hollow, the mouth stretched into a scream that echoed inside Lin's skull.

"Not real," he muttered under his breath, voice shaking. He raised his glove, energy coiling like a living whip. Sparks of light lashed outward, shattering the apparition into shards of mist.

Hana followed immediately, swinging her blade with precision, slicing apart another shadow that lunged from a side alley. The fragments scattered into the void, leaving streaks of flickering light across the warped pavement.

But for every figure they destroyed, two more emerged, each whispering Lin's failures, Hana's doubts. Every step felt like moving through a storm of accusation and memory, and the pulse from Keller's tether grew weaker.

"We're losing him," Hana gasped.

"Not yet," Lin said, teeth gritted. He closed his eyes briefly, focusing, feeling the faint pull of Keller's essence through the fragment. He reached out with his glove, sending a pulse of energy that carved a corridor through the illusions. The shadows recoiled, howling, then dissolved into thin air.

They emerged onto a wider street that shimmered with strange light. Broken storefronts flickered between reality and memory, showing the Seam's bleeding into Seoul in subtle, terrifying ways—reflections of pedestrians that weren't there, cars floating a few inches off the ground, traffic lights reversing colors in impossible sequences.

Lin's pulse quickened. "We're close. I can feel him."

Hana's grip tightened on her blade. "Then we keep moving. Whatever comes next, we face it together."

The street ahead split into a massive plaza, the surface fractured like a shattered mirror. In the distance, Keller's presence flickered again—stronger this time, but tethered, as if the Seam was holding him just out of reach. A gust of wind tore across the plaza, bringing whispers and laughter from corners that didn't exist.

Suddenly, the ground beneath them groaned. Fragments of the plaza began to shift, separating into floating shards suspended in mid-air. Buildings around them twisted violently, the glow of windows refracting into ribbons of light.

"The Seam's trying to merge this fragment with the real world," Lin said, voice low. "It's unstable… we need to stabilize it before we move further, or it could collapse entirely."

Hana scanned the warped skyline. "How?"

Lin's glove flared, energy coiling outward, sensing the stress points in the fractured streets. "We have to anchor the fragment. Tie it to our pulse, our presence. It won't hold for long, but it'll give us a path to Keller."

They moved quickly, placing energy nodes at intervals—gloves and blades sending pulses into the streets. Each connection rippled outward, stabilizing portions of the warped plaza long enough for them to advance. The Seam screamed around them, shadows and reflections twisting violently, but Lin and Hana pushed forward.

Finally, they reached a jagged edge where the tether of Keller's pulse became tangible—a shard of light hovering in the void, suspended between memory and reality. Lin reached toward it.

"Almost there," he whispered.

Hana glanced at him, eyes wide. "If we touch it, are we sure we can hold him? Or will it rip him away again?"

Lin's lips tightened. "We have to try. We don't have a choice."

A sudden surge of energy threw them backward, the plaza tilting violently. Shadows lunged from every direction, screaming, clawing, twisting the fragment toward collapse. Lin pushed his glove harder, focusing on Keller's pulse, anchoring the path with every ounce of strength.

The tether pulsed brightly, illuminating Keller's position like a lighthouse in the storm. Hana followed, extending her hand toward the glow, ready to reach across the fractured streets.

The Seam howled, a wave of static and shadow threatening to pull everything apart.

"Now," Lin shouted.

And together, they leapt toward the pulse—toward Keller—just as the fragment beneath them cracked wide, tearing the warped plaza into the void.

For a single heartbeat, everything hung in perfect suspension: Lin, Hana, and the distant shimmer of Keller's essence.

The Seam waited.

And then the world moved again.

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