The red glow from the wrist screen throbbed so violently, it washed the entire junkyard in pulses of warning light. Riko stared at it, feeling his stomach knot. One boss monster was already too much. A new enemy was absolutely not on his to-deal-with list.
The boss monster in front of him snarled, confused by the sudden illumination, its massive head shifting left, right, trying to locate whatever threat the screen was detecting. For one tiny second, Riko hoped the creature might get distracted enough to leave.
It didn't.
Instead, something else did.
A flicker.
Up above.
First, Riko thought it was just dust floating off the collapsing trash piles… but then the flicker repeated. Sharp. Sudden. Wrong. Like a frame of reality had glitched and reloaded an inch out of place.
The air above them shimmered, but not like heat haze. This distortion had edges. Chunks. Jagged rectangular pieces misaligned like broken pixels on a corrupted screen.
Riko blinked hard, squinting up at it.
The boss did too-its massive eyes narrowing as it tracked his gaze.
Again, the sky jittered.
A shadow moved across the distortion, as though something enormous was behind a digital curtain, pressing against the fabric of the world. The light bent around it, like how an old TV flickered whenever the signal cut out midscene.
Riko swallowed. "What. what is that.?"
He stepped backward in a tiny, unconscious move. His body had begun to shake again—fear mingled with disbelief in a way that left everything feeling too real and too impossible all at once. His legs felt like rubber. His breath felt caught somewhere between his chest and throat.
The distortion widened.
Within it pulsed a black shape, glitching in and out, as if it were a creature caught between frames of animation. Every time it did, it was different: bigger, sharper, more chaotic. A cluster of limbs one moment, a long serpentine silhouette the next, then something vaguely humanoid before it flickered out once more.
Riko's skin crawled with cold.
"Nope," he whispered. "Nope nope nope. We don't need a second monster. One is… plenty."
The boss monster beneath the distortion let out a low rumble-a sound like metal does when it bends under too much weight. Its body tensed, claws digging into the ground like anchors. For the first time since Riko saw it, the creature looked uncertain.
A new flicker cut through the sky—harder, louder.
Then the distortion ripped sideways, like someone had grabbed the edge of space and dragged it violently.
An enormous, rectangular rent ripped open above the junkyard, edged all round with light that crackled like white fire. The darkness behind pulsed forward, crashed against the opening with enough force to make the sky itself throb. The barrier bent inwards as if resisting.
Reality strained like it might snap.
"What is happening?" Riko breathed. His knees touched the ground without his realizing he'd knelt.
The sky returned with a violent glitch again.
A shard of darkness forced itself halfway through: a mangled limb made of shifting frames and shattered geometry. It twisted unnaturally, flickering from one impossible shape to another. Its texture wasn't skin or metal or anything normal; it looked like corrupted code, like a creature rendered in the wrong format.
Riko's breath stuttered. It felt like someone had iced the inside of his lungs.
The creature above them wasn't in their world yet.
But it was trying,
Hard.
More of the shadow pushed through. Its form vibrated as if the world rejected its existence, trying to eject it like a bad file. Sparks of white light crackled along the edges of the tear, sending waves of distortion downward.
Riko clutched his wrist screen. "Okay. Okay. You said 'new enemy detected.' But that? That's not an enemy. That's— that's a glitch demon from a horror game. We need a different word. Something way worse."
The screen didn't respond.
It just kept flashing red.
Below the tear in the sky, the boss monster abruptly stepped backward. Its claws etched deep trenches into the ground. Its giant chest heaved as it drew in a trembling breath-one that almost sounded like fear.
Riko blinked. "Wait… are you scared?
The boss growled softly-not at Riko, but at the sky.
The other piece of the shadow forced itself through this time, its mouth open in a jagged maw full of static. Its teeth reformed every half-second, cycling through shapes that stung Riko's eyes just to glance at.
The tear stretched wider.
The junkyard trembled.
The boss monster threw its head back and roared in a deafening, furious challenge that echoed across the entire zone. The sound was primal and shook chunks of metal loose from nearby piles onto the ground. It was the kind of roar creatures used to declare war.
Riko covered his ears, overwhelmed by the sheer force of the sound.
But the moment the roar ended, something else happened.
The boss snapped its head downwards.
Straight to Riko.
Its eyes locked onto him-not with hunger, not with instinct, but with something sharper. Accusing.
As if he caused this. As if the glitching monstrosity in the sky was somehow his fault. The boss roars at the sky, then snaps its head toward Riko, like blaming him.