This is a world lost in time itself.
Humanity, at last, peered into its fissures, and devastation came without warning, unraveling everything.
Their failures condensed into crystal, layer upon layer, heaped into a
"How much longer must we wander through this spiral of life and death?"
And when from that spire's peak a pale presence unfurled without end, everything—whole and shattered alike—crumbled to nothing in an instant.
Afterward, silence. The land never spoke again.
But somewhere deep within the ruins, a tiny heart refused to stop beating.
That is the origin of "
Light is gone.
Behind them, the Hetero Tower's core melts down. A glaring white light swallows the world. Then comes the violent ejection.
There's no grace to it. They're wrung from the folds of that domain like excess water, a colossal hand flinging them down into the earth.
A cough breaks the silence.
No one knows who started it. It spreads—one voice, then another, then a ragged chorus. Constructs shouldn't need to cough. But their frames, already ruined, have shattered further. Conduits are split open. Vital fluid seeps into cavities it was never designed to fill.
They've been thrown into a half-collapsed ruin. A fractured ceiling leans overhead at a precarious angle, barely sheltering a small pocket of space.
No one is missing. Twelve bodies strewn across the rubble, each wearing their own shape of ruin.
The white-haired woman hauls herself up through sheer will, trembling with the effort. She sways, then starts her check on her team.
...Is everyone alright?
Voices rise one after another. With each response, her shoulders ease a little more.
Nearby, a man with a scruffy beard drags his sleeve across his face, smearing away the vital fluid.
...Did we... make it?
His voice echoes through the ruins. There is no answer yet.
Julian, anything on Agent Zero?
Julian's visual module sweeps their surroundings, streams of information cascading across his sight in rapid pulses. Then he speaks, the words dragged through ruined vocal cords, emerging as a weary, metallic crackle.
Signal's... gone. Completely. Not even residual radiation...
His report comes slowly, haltingly. Every word carries the weight of disbelief, as though he's speaking to make it real to himself.
......
We made it... We actually made it.
A laugh escapes No. 2. Then the forced strength drains from his body all at once. He collapses back against the floor, head tilted, and releases a long, relieved sigh.
On December 25th, 2197, Chaos Contamination fell upon the world.
Within a single year, humanity witnessed the birth of its brightest
Those who ventured into
Time and again, they reached for the light. Time and again, they were plunged back into darkness.
These twelve weary souls have long been as scarred and broken as the homeland they swore to defend.
But today, their dimmed eyes finally catch a glimpse of dawn breaking through the abyss...
Wordless smiles bloom across every face... They smile, as though every failure along the path has just been forgiven.
No. 4's gaze drifts to the corner, where a pale young man rests against the wall.
Nemo, the core?
The young man, Nemo, uncurls his fingers. There, against his right palm, sits an eerie cube. Its surface shivers and pulses, as though still straining against some unseen restraint.
The Hetero Tower's sealed core. The only remnant left behind after the tower was scoured from existence.
Here.
Alright... Professor Dominik, you should come take a look at this...
The girl's voice rings out across the fractured landscape, unanswered.
Wait... Professor Dominik...?
Their laughter cuts short, strangled into silence, as though an unseen hand has clamped down over it.
Professor? What's going on...?
Nemo! What happened to Dominik?!
......
Before he can offer any explanation, the young man collapses from exhaustion.
Nemo!
No. 5 moves on instinct, catching Nemo before he hits the ground. That's when he sees the cracks webbing across Nemo's entire frame, the unmistakable signature of
...Let him rest. We made it back from that place thanks to him and the "Key" he carries.
Leora... where's Dominik?
Your guess is as good as mine. After we were thrown from the Hetero Tower, Dominik was just... gone.
No. 2 pivots sharply. His eyes sweep the group, locking onto each face as he counts.
Twelve. He knows every one of them. Dominik is not here.
...No, that's not right.
He starts ripping into the wreckage, hurling slabs aside, shouldering through collapsed beams—
Dominik could be buried under here.
Give it up, Chris. Dominik must've been thrown into the Fog. You remember that hellhole, do you...
The cold voice from across the rubble snuffs out Chris' hope in an instant.
......
His hand freezes on a broken slab. No. 8 is right. Chris knows. He saw himself that the moment they tried to pass through the Gateway, Dominik was already...
Chris' hand slips away from the stone.
Silence floods the space. That brief, swelling joy from just moments ago collapses in on itself, soundless as a punctured balloon.
...But we pulled it off, right? We got the core, and Agent Zero's gone.
This is... what Dominik staked everything on.
So, at least...
A tremor runs through his voice. He wrestles it back, forcing each word into something resembling calm.
At least the world is saved now. Right?
Not a single voice rises against him. They all need this to be true as much as he does.
Yeah. It has to be... As long as Chaos Contamination's erased, we can work with the survivors... we rebuild our city.
Everyone will have a place to call home again.
Then we can finally leave that godforsaken base. Life goes on.
...Let's check outside.
They rise, one after another, and file out beneath the half-collapsed ceiling into the open air.
Familiar, sickening crimson light seeps through the cracks in the walls.
Devastation stretches out before them.
Roads reduced to rubble. Buildings stripped to skeletal frames. Rebar twisted toward the sky like snapped bones.
No city remains. No survivors call out. Nothing left to defend.
...?
Crimson crystals that they know all too well carpet the corpse of the city. The ruins roll outward in every direction, an unbroken wasteland to the edge of sight.
And there, the Hetero Tower still stands, grotesque and unyielding.
Chaos... Contamination...?
How...? But we already took the tower's core...
Above the tower, a menacing rift tears through the sky.
That's... from the Gateway. When it opened...
From the rift, pale fog spills in eerie silence. Creatures—inhuman, innumerable—come with it, flooding down onto the land in an endless tide.
The horror all points to a single, crushing truth:
Someone retches. Someone sobs. The sounds are faint, and the dead world devours them instantly, leaving only silence behind.
No... This can't be right... There have to be survivors.
She drops to her knees and starts digging, bare hands prying at broken slabs, clawing through the wreckage.
A body, face down, already cold.
She rises and moves to the next pile of debris.
Another body. Curled inward, arms wrapped around something that's no longer there. They died protecting nothing.
She rises, moving on again. One, two, three... too many. Then, at last, she finds one still breathing—
...!
▆▇█▆▅▅▄▄▃▇▇█▅▄▄▄
Chaos Contamination.
Crimson crystals have devoured half of the man's body, creeping across flesh like a living disease. Blood pulses from the gash in his abdomen. His breath scrapes in and out in wet, ragged gasps. In his eyes, those inhuman patterns are dying, flickering out like spent embers.
How can this...?
He heaves another concrete slab aside.
The two of them work without speaking, each taking a side, sifting through the wreckage.
Pile after pile after pile. And each one gives up the same things: corpses, or worse, the contaminated ones, still breathing but already lost to Chaos Contamination.
Leora... we need to go.
Something's coming through the rift. Multiple contacts, closing fast. We can't fight like this... If we don't move now...
Julian's voice comes from behind, trembling with unease.
Give me a second.
Leora—
We have to face it. We lost. We were crushed! The moment that Gateway opened, everything was destroyed!
Just a little longer... There has to be someone...
She rips at the ruins with desperate, bleeding hands. Every slab she heaves aside splits her wounds further open. But she doesn't stop. One survivor, just one, might make all of it mean something.
Is there anyone left? Anyone who can prove her heart didn't die for nothing? It broke long ago, when the world did. She's been standing in the ruins ever since.
She tears into another pile.
Beneath it lies a child.
...!
Dust blankets her small body from head to toe. Her eyes are pressed shut, her lips cracked, her skin a ghostly pale.
Her chest is still.
Leora's hand freezes in midair. This is the only child they've found.
She begins clearing the rubble, each stone lifted with unbearable gentleness as though the child could still feel pain.
When the last shard of rubble is lifted away, the child is fully revealed... She rests on her back without a word, impossibly docile.
Leora lifts her into her arms. She weighs almost nothing, like the final forsaken thing this world forgot to take with it.
Her skin is deathly pale and ice cold.
...I'm sorry.
The words slip out, fragile and quiet. She isn't speaking to be heard.
I'm sorry... I'm so sorry...
They were the ones who opened the Gateway. They tore the rift wide open. They explored recklessly, without a care. They lost humanity's leader. It was everything they did—
I'm sorry...
Chris, crouching beside her, turns his face away.
...
Then, a tiny movement in her arms, or so it seems, no more than a finger stirring.
Leora's every muscle locks.
...Cough.
The sound is so small that the wind nearly stole it.
—Leora hears it anyway. She catches the flutter of the child's lashes, and her heart stutters along with them, unable to settle.
...Cough!
Her tears land hard on that pale, dust-covered face. Leora's voice trembles.
She's alive... She's still alive!
The wounds within her, broken open for so long, begin to close.
Thank goodness... Thank goodness...
Her body trembles with a joy she cannot contain, as if the one being saved isn't the child at all... but herself.
Chris turns. He sees those tiny lips moving, barely, and stares for two full seconds before his hands come up to cover his face.
From the rear, No. 8 surges forward. Her leg was injured back in the Hetero Tower, and she's been dragging behind the team ever since. Now she limps through the rubble, but she's moving faster than anyone with that wound has a right to.
Put her down. Let me do a quick check.
Leora eases the small body onto the ground.
No. 8 kneels—her right hand goes straight to the carotid, her fingers finding the familiar groove. She strips back an eyelid, pinches for turgor, drives a thumbnail into the flesh and counts the seconds until pink returns. It is a ritual of efficiency, every motion worn smooth by repetition.
Helga, how's she?
Severe dehydration. Hypothermia. Vitals barely registering... By every metric, she looks dead.
She snatches the final vial from her waist, cradles the child's head, and feeds the liquid one drop at a time.
Mm...
The child's arm lifts slowly, drifting up beneath the gray sky, waving faintly as if searching for something.
Lu... Lu...
Luna!
Easy now. Easy. Your body's still very weak.
The child heaves herself up, but her arms give out almost at once and she crumples back down. Her brow knots, a flicker of fury at her own powerlessness.
Leora catches her shoulders before she can try again. Around them, the vanguard members rush over, as if they've just found a lifeline.
Who are you...? Where's Luna?
Luna?
...My little sister.
Her voice sharpens with sudden urgency.
She was with me...
I was holding her hand when the place collapsed... and then... then...
Her words quicken, but her voice shrinks, as if clawing through the rubble of memory itself.
Then she stops abruptly. She stares at her hands, only to find them empty.
She can't piece it together: when her grip failed, when consciousness broke, when her sister disappeared.
...I have to find her.
She fights to rise one last time, but her body gives out all at once, folding like a wind-up toy mid-step. She falls into Leora's arms. Whatever fierce resolve had held her upright is gone now, emptied in a breath.
Sob...
(Julian. Take a look around and let me know.)
............
(She's the last one alive and uninfected.)
(I see...)
Kid... Listen to me. Your sister might still be alive...
It isn't a convincing lie, but the light that had died in the child's eyes flares back to life in an instant.
Where is she?
We're having trouble finding her right now. But we know for certain that she's not in this area anymore.
She shifts slightly, and the wreckage behind her comes into full view.
...What... What happened...?
It's dangerous near the Hetero Tower. We... I'm sorry.
He looks at her, his eyes heavy with regret and a confusion he can't shake. How did a child end up in a place like this?
There's no food left at home... Nothing nearby, either.
I could only... find some here. I just shared a cookie with Luna, and now she's gone.
Miss... What happened? Where did Luna go?
We're so sorry...
Leora lowers her head, her fists clenching ever so slightly.
The world has become... very sick. We're doing everything we can to cure it.
When the world recovers, and when you recover, you'll find your sister. I promise.
But this place is too dangerous for you to stay. Would you like to come with us?
Who are you...? What do you do?
We are...
Leora hesitates, searching for the right words.
She opens her mouth to answer, then stops. The question is so simple, yet it catches her off guard. What are they, exactly?
"Vanguard"... the word might be too grand for a child to grasp. "Rescuers"... but have they really saved anyone? "Researchers"... that wouldn't explain why they're out here in the ruins.
...Warriors. Right, we're warriors.
The child's gaze drifts, faint and unsteady, across the devastation surrounding them, then over the twelve battered adults standing before her. Understanding settles in, and she quietly places her hand on Leora's arm.
I see... Thank you... for saving me... I'll come with you.
The child weighs almost nothing, frighteningly light. At Helga's nod, Leora lifts her carefully.
Oh, right... We never asked. What's your name?
I'm...
Beneath the boundless night sky, the vanguard team makes its way back to base. They trudge across collapsed bridges, through shattered streets, past the skeletal remains of a city consumed by Chaos crystals.
Everything they fought so desperately to protect has become a silent procession lining the road, mourners at an endless funeral.
The ashen sky holds no promise of dawn, as though it has forgotten how to brighten at all.
Now and then, they glance down at the small figure sleeping in Leora's arms.
This cruel world offers them nothing. No victory. No answers...
A single flickering light, fragile and faint, still breathing.
