The trees in the Verdant Expanse whispered as though they remembered things people had long forgotten.
Luma ducked beneath a low-hanging vine, brushing moss off her shoulder. Her gauntlet hummed gently like it was sniffing the air—suspicious and curious.
"Does it ever stop doing that?" she asked, flicking the device.
"No," Ion said without looking back. "It's reacting to phase instability in the terrain. This part of the forest is… confused."
"Confused?" Luma arched an eyebrow. "Like it forgot it was a forest and started auditioning to be a fever dream?"
Ion gave a thin smile. "Something like that."
Around them, the environment shimmered faintly—tree trunks pulsing in and out of focus, leaves flickering like frames in a broken animation. The air itself had a taste, like burnt sugar left in the sun too long.
Luma stopped suddenly and pointed. "Why is that rock… breathing?"
Sure enough, a boulder nearby seemed to be expanding and contracting slightly, as if inhaling. A squirrel ran past it and promptly turned upside down in midair before continuing as if nothing had happened.
Ion crouched and picked up a stick. He tossed it gently toward the rock. The stick bounced once… then flickered out of sight, reappearing ten feet away with a soft pop.
"Phase shift," Ion said. "The layers of matter here aren't stable. They're sliding past each other."
Luma scratched her head. "So, like... the world here is made of pages that forgot how to stay in one book?"
"That's—actually—a pretty good way to put it."
"Ha! I knew binge-reading fantasy novels would pay off one day."
They pressed deeper into the forest, following a trail that only Ion seemed to recognize. He held a compass-like device Kaelen once built—its needle spun in slow, confused loops.
"Are you sure that thing even works?"
"Not really," Ion admitted. "But it's either this or wandering into a pocket of reversed gravity."
As if on cue, a bird flapped past them, only to float sideways and vanish into a shimmering wall of air like it had flown into a mirror.
"Right. Definitely following your broken compass."
Eventually, the path opened into a clearing scattered with crumbling stone columns. Symbols etched into their sides glowed faintly, as if they too were trying to remember something.
"Ruins," Ion murmured. "This must be one of the phase-tear zones the resistance mapped."
Luma stepped cautiously over a fallen slab. As she passed one of the walls, her hand brushed the stone—and her vision bent.
She gasped.
For half a second, the world looked different. The trees were taller, cloaked in crystal-like leaves. The ruins were intact, glowing with energy. She saw people—figures in robes—moving through the clearing, chanting in deep rhythmic pulses. Then it was gone.
She stumbled back. "I just… I think I saw the past?"
Ion's eyes widened. "Temporal leakage. That shouldn't be happening this far out."
"So either I have super-vision or the forest just flashed me a history slideshow?"
"Probably both."
Luma looked back at the stone, her voice quiet. "Do you think… this place used to be one of theirs? Kaelen's?"
Ion nodded slowly. "Maybe. Or even older."
Just then, a rhythmic tapping echoed from the forest edge. Three pulses. Pause. Two pulses. One.
Luma tensed. "That's not a bird."
From behind a fern-covered ridge, a figure emerged wearing a suit patched with copper wires and moss-stained cloth. They raised a hand in greeting.
"Identify yourselves," came a voice—female, calm, deliberate. "No digital devices allowed past this point. If you're broadcasting, shut it down now."
Ion raised his hands. "We're not broadcasting. Just passing through."
"Spire?"
"No," Luma called. "Well… formerly. Ish."
The woman stepped forward. She wore a cracked visor helmet and a belt of handmade tools that clinked when she moved. "I'm Toma. Leader of the Riftwalker camp. You're standing on unstable grounds. And I don't mean metaphorically."
Luma blinked. "You're the resistance?"
"We're one of the branches. We study phase tears, protect this area, and try not to get melted by quantum surges."
"Fun job," Luma muttered.
Toma smirked. "Follow me. We don't talk out here too long. Sound doesn't always reach where it's supposed to."
As they walked through the glitching forest, Luma leaned close to Ion. "She seems cool."
"She's also been exposed to raw phase energy for years. Cool might mean 'mildly glowing inside.'"
The camp sat atop a series of layered platforms built into the trees, like a suspended city stitched from found tech and old rope. Lanterns glowed with thermal light—no electricity, only stored heat.
"We can't rely on digital anymore," Toma explained. "Too much interference. Our comms are acoustic. Everything else—analog."
She brought them to a circular chamber strung with threads of copper, crystal, and water-filled tubes. The room buzzed faintly, like a sleeping brain.
In the center stood a group of young people gathered around a floating slab of shifting images.
"These are the Riftwalkers," Toma said. "They study how reality breaks. And maybe how to fix it."
The slab displayed overlapping maps—of the forest, the continent, and something stranger: zones marked in blue that pulsed and shifted, as though reality were breathing there too.
"We believe these are tears," one of the young Riftwalkers explained. "Places where quantum coherence breaks down. Normally, everything stays in sync—particles know how to behave. But here? The universe forgets its script."
Luma frowned. "So particles… go off-book?"
"Exactly."
Another Riftwalker nodded. "Like soup ingredients randomly turning into cake halfway through."
"That is… horrifying and delicious," Luma whispered.
Ion crossed his arms. "Have you seen any major collapses recently?"
Toma's face darkened. "A village north of here vanished last week. Left a crater where gravity still loops. We had a scout watching it. She didn't make it back."
Luma looked at the map, her gauntlet pulsing gently. "Is it connected to the Entropy Engine?"
Toma turned to her, surprised. "You know about that?"
"We've seen one. A prototype. And we think the Masters are building a bigger version."
A long silence.
Then Toma stepped forward. "Then we'll need you with us when we move to the Fractured Veil."
Ion tensed. "You've found it?"
Toma nodded grimly. "It's growing. And if the Riftwalkers are right… it's where the rules stop mattering entirely."
Luma looked toward the edge of the glowing map.
A place where waves go to die.
And for the first time in a long while, she felt not just afraid—but necessary.