Sleep wasn't happening. Not after ancient phones and desperate messages and definitely not after whatever that training session had become. Ren lay on his narrow bed, staring at the ceiling while his brain replayed every moment in excruciating detail.
The bio-luminescent fruit pulsed in what might have been sympathy or mockery.
"Don't judge me," he told it. "You try maintaining dignity while being straddled by someone who could kill you with their pinky."
The fruit pulsed again. Definitely mockery.
He sat up, giving sleep up as a lost cause, and noticed something wrong immediately. The light was off. Not gone—the fruit still glowed—but wrong. Purple-tinged, like the world had applied an Instagram filter without permission.
Then he saw it through his window. A crack in the sky.
Not a cloud or aurora. An actual crack, like reality was glass and something had struck it hard enough to fracture. Purple light bled through, pulsing in rhythm with heartbeats that weren't quite human.
"Oh, that's not good."
He dressed frantically, grabbing the corrupted phone on instinct. The crack was spreading, spider-webbing across the night sky in slow motion. As he watched, fragments of something fell through—not rain or debris but concepts. Ideas. Pieces of elsewhere that had no business being here.
The door burst open. Elanil again, but this time her expression held no irritation. Just fear.
"You're seeing it too?"
"Kind of hard to miss the sky breaking." He followed her into the corridor where other elves were emerging, all staring upward in horror. "Is this the dimensional cascade? Are we out of time?"
"I don't know. Mayfell will—"
The tree shuddered. Not an earthquake—earthquakes moved horizontally. This was vertical, reality hiccupping as something fundamental shifted. Throughout the city, alarms began sounding—bells and horns and sounds that predated language.
They found Mayfell in the council chamber, but she wasn't alone. The artifact from Goldenvale sat before her, active and screaming data into the air. Holographic displays filled the room with information in a dozen languages, but the Japanese caught Ren's eye immediately:
次元アンカー状態:危機的 カスケード開始まで:47:32
警告:プロトコル七失敗 警告:第八プロトコルを開始してください
"Dimensional Anchor Status: Critical," he translated, voice hollow. "Time until cascade begins: 47 hours, 32 minutes, 16 seconds. Warning: Protocol Seven failed. Warning: Please initiate Protocol Eight."
"You did this!" Tyrael burst in, pointing at Ren with trembling fury. "The human's presence activated it! He's brought doom upon us all!"
"No," Mayfell said quietly, not looking away from the displays. "This was always coming. Ten thousand years of degradation, of anchors failing one by one. Ren just gave us warning."
"Forty-seven hours," Elanil said. "Two days before..."
"Before the barriers collapse completely." Ren approached the artifact, drawn by terrible certainty. "Before whatever's on the other side breaks through."
"The Void King," Tyrael whispered, fear overcoming anger. "The Hunger That Walks. The First Mistake."
"Then we have forty-seven hours to find this Protocol Eight," Mayfell decided, standing with determination that belied her small frame. "The bunker beneath the tree. It must be there."
"That area is forbidden," Elder Sylvaine protested, appearing with other council members. "Sealed by the founders. Breaking those seals—"
"Will save us or damn us." Mayfell's green eyes blazed with resolve. "But doing nothing definitely damns us."
Through the windows, the sky crack pulsed larger. Purple light painted everything in shades of ending.
"So," Ren said, trying for humor despite the cosmic terror clawing at his chest. "Who wants to break into a forbidden bunker and possibly save reality? I hear it's lovely this time of apocalypse."
Nobody laughed. But Elanil stepped beside him, hand on her sword.
"Where you go, I follow. Guardian's duty."
"Even into forbidden archives that definitely have murder-guardians?"
"Especially there. Someone needs to witness your inevitable dramatic death."
Despite everything—the cracking sky, the countdown to oblivion, the weight of cosmic responsibility—Ren smiled.
"Rating: 10/10 for terrible timing, 10/10 for company on the way to doom."
The countdown continued its relentless march: 47:28
47:28
47:28
Above them, reality prepared to break.
And somewhere in the spaces between dimensions, something ancient and hungry felt the barriers weakening at last.
Soon, it whispered in languages that predated thought. So very soon.