Nova walked silently across the crystalline plains, Lunaris walking beside him. The horizon stretched endlessly.

Beastaria's Expanse was infinite, or so he'd thought. An unending tapestry of chaos, blending geography and nightmare into one, yet the farther he walked, the more the air began to change.

It wasn't just thicker, it felt alive. Each gust carried static, faint and dangerous. Lunaris stopped suddenly, its ears twitching. The creature let out a low, guttural trill, not a growl, but a warning.

Nova glanced down. "You feel it too, huh?"

The cat's silver-black fur rose in faint waves, light rippling across its spine. The mana density here was climbing, folding over itself like overlapping storms.

Nova's instincts sharpened. The air pressure was wrong. Gravity was fluctuating. It wasn't heavy or light; it was shifting, as though Beastaria itself was breathing in sync with him.

"This doesn't feel like the same layer," Nova murmured. "Feels like we crossed into something new."

He crouched, scooping up a handful of dirt. It wasn't dirt at all; it was ash mixed with fine red grains that shimmered like crushed gemstones.

When he let it fall through his fingers, it hissed faintly, vanishing before it touched the ground.

"Entropy residue," he whispered. "This entire area's saturated with decayed mana."

He looked ahead. The plains ahead seemed to warp upward, into vast floating ridges of rock suspended by some invisible current.

Water, or something resembling it, cascaded upward instead of down, shimmering like molten glass. Trees grew in impossible formations, their roots spiraling into the sky and branches digging into the ground.

Lunaris purred softly, its golden eyes narrowing at the sight. The Harlequin Cat leaped up onto Nova's shoulder, tail wrapping loosely around his neck.

"You want a better vie,w too, huh?" Nova smirked faintly. "Alright, partner. Let's see what this new 'continent' of yours has to offer."

He stepped forward, each stride measured, cautious. His boots barely touched the ground before faint motes of red light erupted beneath them, the afterimage of decay reacting to his divine energy. The world didn't just acknowledge his existence here; it seemed to respond to it.

After a few miles, the air became quieter. No creatures. No wind. Just silence thick enough to make his heartbeat sound alien.

Even Lunaris stopped purring. The creature's fur bristled, its tail stiff. Then, a distant vibration. Not loud, but deep. Rhythmic, like the beating of a planetary heart. It pulsed through the ground, up his legs, through his spine. The world here wasn't stable.

Nova clenched his jaw. "We're not in the Expanse anymore," he said under his breath. "This… this might be something else entirely."

He looked out toward the horizon. Far beyond the rising ridges, faint outlines of obelisks pierced the sky, enormous spires of dark crystal reflecting nothing.

No light, no color, no shadow. Just black silence. The closer he stared, the more the edges blurred, bending the landscape like melted glass.

Lunaris let out a sharp meow, snapping him out of the trance.

"Yeah, yeah, I see it," Nova muttered. "Let's not touch those yet."

He continued onward, letting his senses expand through his Circle of Pillars. He could feel Beastaria's mana flow beneath his feet like rivers, but here, the current was reversed, dragging everything inward. It was feeding toward the obelisks.

"Feeding the land itself," he mused. "This continent is alive."

He wasn't wrong. The ground beneath him pulsed faintly, like muscle contraction beneath flesh. The hills flexed, the air hissed, and from somewhere deep below, a single resonant hum filled the silence.

Nova paused, lowering himself as he examined a crack in the terrain. Inside the fissure, he saw faint veins of red-black energy threading through the rock like capillaries. They pulsed in tandem with his own mana flow.

Lunaris tilted its head, mewing softly. "Yeah. I feel it too. Whatever this is, it's not rejecting us. It's welcoming us."

He stood upright again, gazing out toward the far horizon. "So… a continent that breathes, consumes, and mimics. Fitting, for a place called Beastaria."

Nova smirked faintly, though his tone carried unease. "Let's call this place the Fellgrove Expanse. A new continent. Or at least something pretending to be one."

Lunaris purred quietly, accepting the name with a single blink.

---

Hours passed. The skies dimmed, though no sun set. Instead, the world inverted again, red sky turning violet, violet turning void-black, until the only illumination came from the faint glow of entropy veins scattered across the land.

Nova built a temporary camp by a ridge of floating stone, driving his entropy blade into the ground. The weapon hummed, creating a small field of stability, a calm zone in an otherwise chaotic current.

Lunaris settled atop a patch of hovering moss, curling up in a small ball, eyes still open. Nova sat beside the entropy blade, resting his elbows on his knees.The faint hum of the land continued beneath them, steady, patient, eternal.

"You know," Nova said quietly, "the first time I came to Beastaria, I thought this place was endless chaos. No order, no direction, just wild mana and monsters. But now it feels like it's evolving."

Lunaris flicked its tail. "Yeah, I know," Nova continued, smiling faintly. "You think I'm reading too much into it. Maybe. But something tells me these 'continents' are more than terrain. They're stages, layers of understanding. Maybe every time I adapt, Beastaria does too."

He looked at his hands. Faint red-black cracks glowed beneath the skin, remnants of the Absyalling's mark. It pulsed in rhythm with the continent's hum.

He frowned. "You did this, didn't you?"

He clenched his fist, focusing. For an instant, he could feel every flow of energy across the land, rivers of entropy, ancient mana currents, and faint signatures of life scattered across impossible distances.

The Expanse wasn't one landmass. It was an infinite ocean of living worlds stitched together by mana and will. But now, he was part of it. The realization didn't comfort him. It terrified him.

"Guess I'm the intruder who became the infection," he muttered.

Lunaris stirred, lifting its head slightly. The cat's golden eyes shimmered like miniature suns, locking onto his. It meowed once, then twice, softly, reassuringly.

Nova chuckled. "Yeah. You're right. Infection or not, we move forward."

He stood, retrieving the entropy blade and sheathing it across his back. The landscape in front of him seemed to respond immediately, ridges shifting, gravity bending, as if making a path just for him.

"Alright, Beastaria," Nova said under his breath. "Let's see where your little game leads next."

He took a step forward, and the world moved. The floating ridges rotated, aligning themselves like a spiral corridor leading toward the far-off obelisks.

Each one emitted a faint, pulsing tone, deep, melodic, almost mechanical. The sound waves vibrated in his bones, aligning with his mana field.

The ground split open briefly beneath his feet, revealing streams of crimson light moving beneath like rivers of living fire. The continent was guiding him, calling him deeper.

He glanced at Lunaris. The cat's fur shimmered again, mirroring the light of the fissures. "You feel that, don't you?" he whispered.

The creature nodded faintly, a sentient gesture that made him pause.

"So even you're awakening," Nova murmured. "Looks like this 'continent' isn't the only thing evolving."

He stepped forward again, each motion drawing him closer to the obelisks that pierced the horizon. The land twisted around him, reshaping its geometry like clockwork cogs aligning for a grand mechanism.

In the distance, a faint light rose, not from above, but from beneath the world itself. A towering glow that pulsed once every few seconds, like a cosmic heartbeat.

Lunaris hissed softly, fur bristling. Nova looked down at it, his eyes narrowing.

"Yeah," he whispered. "I see it too."

The pulse wasn't mana. It wasn't entropy. It was something older. Something that shouldn't exist in the Expanse at all.

He took a slow breath, tightening his grip on the entropy blade.

"Welcome to a new continent," he said quietly. "Let's hope it doesn't try to eat us alive."

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