It didn't happen loudly.
No explosion.
No scream across the multiverse.
Just… delay.
Jinyoung felt it first.
A sudden resistance in the Duality's grey side—like something that should have flowed… didn't.
He stopped walking.
"Did you feel that?" he asked.
Riku halted instantly. "Yeah. My movement skipped half a beat."
Haru's expression darkened. "Mana circulation lagged."
Riyomi said nothing—but her hand had already gone to her blade.
The First Symptom
They stood on a ruined world—one long dead, its sky frozen in twilight.
Below them, the battlefield remnants stirred.
Not monsters.
Not armies.
Souls.
They hovered above the ground, indistinct, trembling—unable to pass on.
Jinyoung's chest tightened.
"…They're stuck," he muttered.
Haru crouched, placing his hand near one of them without touching.
"The law is still functioning," he said slowly. "But it's no longer smooth."
Riku frowned. "Meaning?"
"It's compensating," Haru replied. "Like a machine doing the work of a living thing."
Jinyoung remembered the archive.
Baran didn't process souls.
He guided them.
Enemy Interference
The air twisted.
Shadows folded inward.
Riyomi moved first. "We're not alone."
Chains burst from the ground.
Blackened, rune-etched metal snapped toward them.
Vorlath's mark.
"Bound Ones," Riku hissed.
Cursed knights emerged, dragging chained titans behind them.
Their eyes weren't hostile.
They were commanded.
Jinyoung stepped forward, Duality flaring.
"Why attack now?" he demanded.
The answer came not from the soldiers—
But from the chains themselves.
"The cycle weakens."
"Opportunity arises."
Haru's eyes widened. "They sensed the delay."
Ambush in Motion
Riku vanished—reappearing behind a knight, shattering it in a single strike.
Riyomi slipped between shadows, blades severing bindings instead of bodies—freeing enslaved monsters mid-combat.
The battlefield turned chaotic.
Jinyoung raised his hand.
Grey and white intertwined.
He didn't destroy.
He overrode.
The chains snapped—not broken, but invalidated.
For a split second—
The hovering souls reacted.
They drifted toward him.
Not obeying.
Recognizing.
Jinyoung staggered.
Haru caught him. "You can't take that role—not yet."
"I'm not trying to," Jinyoung growled. "They're coming on their own."
A Message from the Chains
The last titan collapsed.
The remaining chains recoiled into the void.
Before vanishing, they left one final imprint in the air:
"If the guide does not exist…"
"Then the strongest will be forced to replace it."
Silence followed.
Riku exhaled sharply. "That didn't sound like a threat."
Riyomi sheathed her blade. "That sounded like a warning."
Haru looked at Jinyoung—really looked this time.
"…If the law fails completely," he said, voice heavy,
"someone will be dragged into the role Baran once held."
Jinyoung clenched his fist.
"I won't let the system decide that."
Above them, the twilight sky cracked slightly—
Not breaking.
But straining.