"I know you won't listen," Verdna kept her gaze focused on Lynka, who was gathering up the Sharecite crystals in a circle, "But I have to say it one last time. Stop, before it's too late."

Without looking back, Lynka put her own shard down. Only now did Verdna realize how dim its light was, surrounded by all the other crystals that were glowing like miniature stars in the dark underground space.

"You kept saying you didn't want to sacrifice innocent people." Verdna drifted in front of her, "So, would it hurt to at least fly her out of this place, before you made your final attempt? Or perhaps you want gravity to do your dirty job for you?"

Lynka picked up the stone with a trembling hand, and turned back. Their gaze met. Slowly, her lips curved into the pale shadow of a smile.

"You've lost someone too."

"Well, talking about a question that came out of nowhere," No, it wasn't a question. Lynka sounded way too certain about that statement. "To answer your question, yes, but you don't see me abducting witnesses on my way to resurrect the dead, with zero regards for the consequences of my actions, do you?"

"I know regret when I see it," Lynka clutched the Kadorto stone to her chest, "And it's written all over you. What are you regretting?"

Verdna hesitated for a few seconds. She had no interest in answering these abrupt questions that seemed to be the result of a deteriorating mind, torn apart by grief, but just for the sake of stalling time, maybe she should...

"The more immediate one? Agreeing to help you. Everything after that is a chain of events that can be traced back to my arrival in Lowee, and I don't feel like sharing the more personal ones with my kidnapper, thank you very much. Even if I did, it wouldn't validate your reasoning for this foolish endeavor—"

"You wanted to be useful. To be of use to someone. Even if you were just a powerless, useless nobody that got left behind," Lynka reached out her other hand, and pressed it firmly against the Sharecite crystals, "Tell me you've never thought about how pleasant it would be, if you could just disappear without a trace. No one would miss you, and you wouldn't feel a thing anymore."

"I...I know one thing. The person sleeping in the cell above definitely doesn't share your sentiment, young lady."

"But you've found something to hold onto, haven't you? Someone, perhaps? Even if all you had were memories?"

One thing was certain. Lynka was just talking to herself right now, and hadn't heard a single thing she said. One of the Sharecite crystals dissolved into tiny light particles, flowing straight into Lynka's shard. Followed by another. Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead, as she bent forward, twitching and trembling.

"Memories...of how a-awful you've been," A pained gasp, "How you didn't deserve...how you've hurt..."

The ground was shaking again. Cracks crawled along the floor tiles and walls with each tremor. More Sharecite crystals fizzled out, the faith inside siphoned into Lynka's shard. It wasn't new, but Lynka only had so many crystals left after her failed attempts. Verdna could only pray with every inch of her being that this attempt would also end in failure, leaving no more Shares for future usage.

"...A burden, dragging everyone down..."

The last Sharecite crystal was gone. The light emitted by Lynka's shard had become a blinding flare, as it got yanked out of her hand by an invisible force, towards the phantom of a child that was beginning to materialize in front of her, her red hair and black hoodie becoming more real with each passing second.

Then she vanished, as abruptly as she came. Lynka stopped twitching, and collapsed onto the ground in a heap. Even as Verdna drifted closer and poked a finger through her body, she didn't stir.

That was it. She failed. Right?

But the shard didn't fall back down, and the earthquake had only gotten stronger—

Crack!

Dark blue flames burst out from the ground. They soon took on a wispy, tendril-like form, slithering all over the solid surface, tearing the stone pillars and ceiling into fragments, devouring everything in Verdna's vision. Yet they didn't touch the shard, which was glowing brighter and brighter, as smaller shards flew out from the dark blue rifts below, and—

Verdna couldn't look away. Even though she should be trying to escape, to warn her fellow captive on the level above, she was frozen in place.

This...she was witnessing the answer to her question, right here, right now.

What would happen to the shard of a Sharecite from another dimension, when the time started flowing backwards?

It would literally tear a hole in the space-time fabric. To get the rest of its fragments back.

"Okay, take a deep breath," Rei mumbled, as she trudged her way through ankle-deep snow, a map in hand, "T-There was a fight, everyone was missing, but you didn't know who they were fighting, you just heard this radio message, pressed the emergency button, and headed out, a-and now you have no idea where you are going..."

She clutched the winter jacket even tighter, as she spoke the next sentence, "But everything will turn out f-f-fine! As, as long as you believe in yourself!"

...She was never going to walk out of this forest.

Yeah. She was so going to starve to death in the wilderness, without even getting close to her destination.

If the cold wasn't threatening to freeze every bit of moisture on her into tiny icicles, she'd have burst into tears by now. Instead, Rei kept walking, even though her trembling hands could barely hold onto the map. She had been heading uphill so far, so eventually, she would reach a high point where she could see...wherever she was going, right?

After another round of what she suspected to be aimless wandering in circles, Rei finally stopped walking, and leaned against the nearest tree.

This was a bad idea. No, a horrible idea. She could get lost in cities, even with all those sign posts and landmarks, and just what made her think that she could find her way through a snowy forest full of identical trees—?

The branches above her trembled. Snow fell on the sleeves of her jacket. She thought it was wind at first, until another tremor came, and the trunks of nearby trees started shaking too. It was weak, but definitely there.

This wasn't an earthquake, right? Or an avalanche? Dameko got caught in one of these, and she really wasn't confident in her ability to outrun a natural disaster...

Rei was still glancing around, towards the wide stretch of forest downhill, when she spotted a flash of dark blue. It quickly disappeared behind the trees and snow, followed by a stronger tremor.

Without thinking, she sprinted into the shadowy woods, trying her best not to slip and fall. The map in her hand had disappeared at some point, seized by the wind, but she didn't need it anymore. No, the feeling of sheer terror in her chest was enough to guide her, growing stronger and stronger as she moved in the right direction.

It was so familiar; she'd definitely witnessed something like this before. Even though every inch of her body was screaming in protest, telling her to turn away and hide, she kept running, running, until she was out of breath—

Her boots stepped right through what looked like a patch of solid, snowy ground.

Screaming, Rei tumbled down the low cliff in a cascade of powdery snow. Rocks, fallen logs—she bumped into quite a few of these on the way down, but none of them stopped her fall, until she slammed head-first into a flat surface.

Snow got into her eyes and the collar of her undershirt, melting into freezing water that sent shivers down her spine. With how much her forehead hurt, Rei kind of expected to pass out at any second, until it became clear that she was still conscious and couldn't lie in a pile of snow indefinitely.

So she climbed up from the ground, despite the protest of her joints.

The first thing Rei saw was the dark blue vortex, swirling inside a huge depression in the earth. Fissures were forming at its edges. Before long, another tremor came, strong enough to send her sprawling.

This time, she didn't climb back up. She didn't scream when tendrils of energy snaked out of the fissures, eating away at the earth and rock in their paths, moving closer and closer towards her.

Rei certainly wanted to, but the dread froze her up, pinned her down like a curious specimen of insect, and made her watch herself fall.

If someone else was here, they'd be giggling, giggling at how stupid and helpless she was, just like...just like...

That fairy.

She hit the ground, and the ground clawed back at her.

Immediately, her blade was out, stabbing into the shadow phantom's formless blob of a face. Even after it dissolved into an ink puddle, she kept stabbing the wet book piles in a panic, before more inky hands reached through the gaps—

"Go!"

A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her away. Mind still blank from shock, she started running too. She didn't even recognize it was Brøø, until the girl leaped across one of those giant holes in the ground, she followed, and almost knocked Brøø over upon landing.

Wait, why was she back in this place again, after that weird blue energy...

No. No no no. This couldn't be.

"I'm not dead, right?!" She gasped, "Tell me I'm not!"

"Yep, you aren't," Brøø said. "But if we don't start running, we may very well—"

The books below them trembled. As if shaken by some invisible force, the mass of books shifted and churned in waves, sending pages flying everywhere, and only now did she realize that the towers and structures were gone, replaced by a sea of chaos.

Then, a shadow fell over them from behind. Brøø grabbed her again and bolted in the opposite direction, before she could turn and take a glance.

She wasn't exactly eager to find out what that was. However, it soon became obvious, as the books next to them collapsed into another giant hole, and a giant limb reached out from the darkness below.

No. It was countless limbs, torsos, wings...appendages, all glued together in the barest form of a claw. Both of them ducked down in unison when it made a clumsy swing in their direction, before resuming their run. This time, she hesitated just long enough to see a similarly deformed head poking out of the same hole, looking up towards the sky.

Without thinking, she also glanced up.

There was a bleeding bullet hole in the grey sky. No, a dark blue eclipse. And it was growing larger.

"Okay, I have a theory—" Stab, jump, run like hell, "We gotta' find that blue book, yeah, that's gonna be soooo easy in a sea of them, but—"

"It's right there!" Brøø pointed towards the sky, as she shook the ink off her scimitar.

"...What?" She squinted as hard as she could, which proved to be an impossible task when the ground below was constantly shaking.

"Right after I put the newest page in there, it floated out of my reach," Brøø paused, to catch a breath, "I probably wasn't supposed to do that, 'cause the entire place started to break apart right after—"

With another slice, Brøø reduced a shadow phantom to a puddle of ink. Her speed was getting slower, however, and her hands were indistinguishable from one of those shadowy claws now. She hoped, with every inch of her being, that it was just ink from the destroyed phantoms.

More of these hulking...fusion...things were visible in the distance. Her heart skipped a beat as they took a turn, and nearly slammed right into one that looked like a malformed crab, concealed behind a huge book mound. But it didn't notice them. No, it kept crawling forward, and as they ran up the nearest slope, she saw more of these big ones on the horizon. All moving in the same direction.

"Look," She shouted to Brøø, "These giant things aren't attacking. Only the smaller ones were!"

"Well, that's for the best! I love a good challenge, but—"

"You think we should follow them?" She tugged at Brøø's sleeves, just as the girl was about to start running again. "They might've sensed a way out."

"Or there could be a bigger, scarier ink monster that was calling out to them?"

"For what?" She paused, "Wait, gimme a sec, I think I get it, I just need to put it into words—"

Even without looking up, she could see the hole in the sky now. That was how large it had grown.

"These shadow people attacked us, because they were trying to exist again, right?" She turned to the crawling form, "If they were ignoring us, they must be seeking something that will give them a bigger chance of, uh, existing. Something like..."

"A passage to the real world." Brøø finished her sentence for her.

"...Oh."

She should've pieced everything together, after she got out of that well. Their bizarre time reversal ritual thing was messing up the space-time around it, like what happened during a Resonance event, and if the fabric of reality breaking apart didn't get everyone in the vicinity, a giant hoard of shadow phantoms coming out of the rifts sure would—

"Fuck fuck fuck! We need to get back to the real world!" She screamed, and before she knew it, she was on the move again, dashing down the slope, with Brøø closely following behind her.

The single pillar in the distance appeared to be the only tower of books that remained standing.

It didn't take her long to see what it really was.

The giant amalgamations of shadowy phantoms were losing their distinctive forms, as they approached the base of the pillar, breaking apart into a mass of individual phantoms that writhed along the ground, like a giant blanket of sentient mold. Waves after waves, they were absorbed into the pillar, which was growing longer and longer, extending towards the hole in the sky—

"Ewwww."

"Wow. It's like a giant ant bridge!"

She didn't know which one was more unsettling, the accuracy of that comparison, or Brøø's complete lack of disgust at the sight. "Well, excuse me for feeling a little queasy, since we'll be climbing up...that, in a moment."

"We?"

"Yeah. What's the matter?" She paused, "Wait, you mean...you aren't planning to come with me?"

"It's not like I have a body to go back to. I'll just stay down here and keep an eye on you! Your climbing skill's good, but that thing looks super slippery, so, just in case—"

"You'll go down with the rest of this place if you stay, and you know it!" She grabbed Brøø by the shoulder, "Think about the best result, maybe you won't disappear, maybe you'll just become a ghost, I've met one and she seemed pretty chill..."

Brøø wasn't smiling now. "I've lost their books."

She stared at Brøø. Indeed, the belt on her back was empty. With all the fighting and dodging and running, she wouldn't have noticed it, even if the books had come loose right in the middle of their escape.

While she was still struck wordless, Brøø rolled up her sleeves again. Then, her shirt. There were no patches of bare skin left on her torso now. Only ink marking, so thick that it looked shadowy, almost ethereal, under the dim light.

"I'm gonna turn into one of these things soon. Best case scenario, I get sucked into the big thingy. Worst case scenario, I'll hurt you real bad, maybe even stopping you from getting out of here," Brøø said, "So c'mon, stop dallying, and go. You have a lot more to live for, don't you? More than my scraps of memories and my dead friends."

"No. Hell no." She gritted her teeth, "Now get onto my back. I'll literally tie you to me if you don't."

"Wow. You are a little scary when you talk like that."

"If you kept insisting that I left you behind, I can safely say you haven't seen the worst of me yet. So hurry up."

"Okay, okay," Brøø sighed, after a long silence, and reached into her pocket, "But only if you agree to keep these pages for me? Just in case?"

This time, she snatched the pages right out of Brøø's hands, before pulling her into a tight hug.

"We are getting out of here. No, I'm getting you out of here, because you deserve better than being a piece of scattered memory, and you know it too!"

Don't look down, don't think about what you are grabbing onto, ignore the writhing and wriggling and just climb—

The inky substance under her fingers had the consistency of half-melted chocolate. Yet it was still solid enough that she could feel a finger here, a limb there, and some of the things sticking out of this giant shadow phantom ant bridge didn't even look remotely human.

No, they looked monstrous. If her guess about the stone was true, perhaps these phantoms were monsters.

Say, if the monster civilizations had access to this place too...how many of them would have died in here, a thousand years ago, when the entire PC Continent broke apart?

She shuddered at that realization. Brøø must've felt it, for she hugged her tighter. Both of them didn't have enough energy left in them for words. Just how far up did this thing go?

Her arms were going numb, together with her mind. She didn't even know how fast she was climbing right now, as it all faded into a blur of mechanical repetition, until the little blue dot above became a square in her vision. That book. Yeah, she was almost there.

That "almost" felt like "never" in reality, to the point that she couldn't quite believe it when she finally reached the top. The top of this structure was very slippery, despite how wide it was, and she had to muster all her concentration to pull her upper body over the edge.

But the sky was still far above, and out of her reach. Should she wait for this thing to grow further upwards? For how long—?

Without warning, the hole in the sky started spinning. The next second, a blast of wind hit, sending the structure swinging left and right like a grass stem in the wind. Her fingers dug into the surface, right before the torso of a shadow phantom broke away, and flew into the sky.

"Hang on tight!" She shouted, before the entire structure shook, and she just barely avoided getting thrown off.

Like an upside-down whirlpool, the hole in the sky was pulling everything into its center, and the strain was finally getting too strong for the structure to bear. Entire chunks of writhing bodies broke off, some falling downwards, some flying upwards. Before she knew it, the surface she was grabbing onto split apart, too.

But she didn't fall. She didn't fly up, either.

No, she was floating, along with many other blobs of shadow phantoms, caught in this in-between zone. The book was directly above her now, flying further and further up, towards the center of the hole, and despite her best effort to move upwards, she was still suspended where she was.

No, she was sinking, albeit at a very slow speed.

"Darn," she gritted her teeth, as she began to kick the air and wave her arms, in a futile attempt at air-swimming, "Almost there, almost there..."

"Guess coming up here with you was the right choice, after all." Brøø suddenly broke the silence, "Need an extra push?"

Before she could react, the arms wrapped around her neck loosened. Letting out a yelp, she turned back, just in time to see Brøø grabbing onto an inky blob nearby, balancing herself with the grace of a master acrobat.

"What are you...?"

Her eyes widened, as Brøø pulled herself up and leaped on top of three phantoms, tangled together in a gross mess, using the kick to propel herself upwards. Just like how she leaped between the falling books before, Brøø was using these floating blobs as stepping stones, gaining momentum with each jump and kick.

"Come back here! I swear, if you are quitting right now—!"

Before she could finish her sentence, Brøø rammed into her, giving her a kick so forceful that it knocked the wind out of her. It pushed her out of the in-between zone, and the pulling force exerted by the hole above soon caught up with her. She zoomed upwards, with barely enough time to make a backward glance—

Brøø wasn't going in the same direction. The girl was falling, with a smile on her face.

Her white robe soon faded into a blurry dot, along with the rest of the landscape below. She was being tossed around at a nauseating speed, like a piece of clothes in the dryer, and just before the dark blue energy engulfed everything again, she saw a flash of red and black—

Then someone grabbed her by the wrist, and the dark blue aura was replaced by a brilliant explosion of golden light.