August spent the next two days walking through landscape that couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
Hills that shifted between stone and sand when he wasn't looking directly at them. Trees that grew normally until he approached, then suddenly became abstract sculptures of wood and leaf. A sky that was blue most of the time, but occasionally forgot and turned green or purple before correcting itself.
"Unstable reality," August said, making notes in his journal. "Zone 38-C must be really messed up if it's affecting the surrounding area this much."
His Foundation monitor flickered green constantly now, adapting to minor reality shifts every few minutes. Each adaptation was small, but they added up. August's immunity list was down to just the basics: temperature, pressure, fall damage, and a few recent additions like conceptual attacks and directional confusion.
Everything else had been deleted to make room.
The worst part wasn't the shifting landscape.
The worst part was how normal it was starting to feel.
Three days ago, August would have been fascinated by trees that changed species when he looked away. Now he barely noticed. Reality being flexible was just another environmental hazard to navigate.
"I'm getting used to impossible things," August realized. "That's probably not good for my mental health."
But what choice did he have? The world around him was impossible. Getting used to it was either adaptation or insanity, and August preferred to think of it as adaptation.
Even if he wasn't entirely sure there was a difference anymore.
August found Arthur's next trail marker carved into a boulder that was simultaneously granite and marble.
Zone 38-C cleared. 15 Forsaken eliminated. Zone King (Reality-class) destroyed. WARNING: Zone collapse created regional instability. Reality distortions spreading. Recommend immediate evacuation of all personnel within 20km radius. Proceeding to Zone 39-A despite command protests. - A.S.
"Command protests," August read aloud. "So Arthur does answer to someone. But he's ignoring their orders."
The message was different from Arthur's earlier notes. More defensive, like he was justifying his actions to people who weren't there to argue with.
"Going rogue," August said. "That's… actually exactly what I would have written for Arthur's character arc."
But the moment he thought it, doubt crept in. Was this really Arthur following a character arc August had created? Or was this just what happened to people who did impossible work alone for too long?
The landscape became more unstable as August traveled deeper into the affected area.
Roads that led uphill in both directions. Streams that flowed in circles. Patches of ground that were simultaneously solid and liquid, requiring August to walk carefully to avoid falling through himself.
His Foundation was working overtime, burning through its limited storage to keep him functional in an environment that couldn't agree on basic physics.
"This is what happens when a Reality-class Zone King dies," August realized. "It takes local reality with it."
The implications were sobering. Arthur hadn't just cleared Zone 38-C - he'd destroyed it so thoroughly that the surrounding area was becoming uninhabitable.
"No wonder command wanted him to evacuate," August said. "This whole region is becoming a dead zone."
August made camp that night in a grove of trees that had at least agreed to remain trees.
His Foundation monitor was flashing yellow warnings about system strain. Too many small adaptations were adding up to serious overload. August needed to either find a stable environment soon, or risk complete immunity system failure.
"Great," August said, checking his dwindling immunity list. "I'm one reality shift away from being vulnerable to everything again."
As if summoned by his complaint, something howled in the distance.
But this wasn't the familiar sound of the wolf-pack from his early zones. This was something new, something that sounded like it was in pain and angry about it.
"Reality-warped predators," August guessed. "Because of course there are reality-warped predators."
The first one appeared at the edge of his firelight about an hour later.
It had probably been a wolf once, but the regional reality instability had done things to it. It now had too many legs, positioned at angles that shouldn't have been able to support its weight. Its howl came from three mouths, creating harmony with itself.
"That's deeply unsettling," August said, his Foundation monitor flicking green as it analyzed the new threat.
More shapes appeared in the darkness. An entire pack of reality-warped wolves, all transformed in different ways by exposure to unstable physics.
"Okay," August said, standing slowly. "This is probably going to hurt."
The pack attacked with coordination that transcended normal pack tactics. Some of them moved through space normally. Others teleported short distances. One appeared to be attacking from several directions simultaneously.
August's Foundation adapted as fast as it could, but it wasn't fast enough.
Claws raked across his back from a wolf that was somehow attacking from above and below at the same time. Another one bit his arm with teeth that existed in more dimensions than strictly necessary.
Each injury forced his Foundation to adapt to new types of reality-warped attacks, deleting more of his existing immunities. Within minutes, August had lost his protection against conceptual attacks and directional confusion.
"This is really not sustainable," August gasped, dodging a wolf that was trying to bite him with temporal displacement.
His Foundation monitor was flashing red now, warning of imminent system failure.
That's when August made a desperate decision.
Instead of letting his Foundation adapt to every reality-warped attack, he started running toward the most unstable part of the landscape he could find.
"If reality is broken," August said, leaping over a stream that was flowing upward, "maybe I can use that."
The reality-warped wolves followed, but they were having trouble with the increasingly unstable terrain. Gravity kept changing direction, space folded back on itself, and several of the wolves got caught in temporal loops.
August's Foundation was still adapting to the environmental instability, but at least he wasn't being actively mauled while it happened.
The chase ended when August ran directly into a reality fracture.
The air in front of him was cracked like broken glass, showing glimpses of different landscapes through each fragment. August dove through the largest crack without thinking, tumbling into…
Somewhere else entirely.
He landed hard on stone floors in what appeared to be an abandoned building. Normal physics, normal gravity, normal air that didn't taste like possibility and confusion.
"Stable reality," August panted, checking his Foundation monitor. Still red, but no longer critical. "Thank whatever cosmic forces are listening."
The reality-warped wolves were on the other side of the fracture, unable or unwilling to follow him through.
August looked around his new environment.
He appeared to be in some kind of research facility - clean corridors, fluorescent lighting that still worked, and signs on the walls pointing toward "Lab Sections A-D" and "Secure Storage."
"This is definitely not a zone," August said, examining the very normal, very human architecture. "This is a Foundation facility."
That made sense. If people were studying the zones and developing countermeasures, they'd need research bases in stable areas. This was probably one of the installations that supported people like Arthur.
"Maybe they have maps," August said hopefully. "Or equipment. Or answers about what's happening to the zones."
August explored the facility carefully.
Most of it appeared to be abandoned in a hurry. Papers scattered on desks, equipment left running, coffee cups still sitting half-full in break rooms. Whatever had happened here, it had happened fast.
In what appeared to be a command center, August found something that made him stop cold.
A wall-mounted map showing the entire zone network, with different areas marked in various colors. Green for "Stable," yellow for "Monitor," red for "Active Threat," and black for "Lost."
Most of the map was black.
"Oh," August said quietly. "This is really bad."
According to the map, the zone situation was far worse than August had realized.
Hundreds of zones scattered across the continent, most of them marked as "Lost" - meaning they'd either collapsed catastrophically or grown beyond any hope of containment.
Only a handful were marked green. Maybe two dozen were yellow. The red zones - active threats - numbered in the dozens.
And in the center of the map, a single white marker with a name tag: "A. Solvain - Active."
"Arthur's position," August realized. "They're tracking him."
But Arthur's marker was deep in an area where the map was almost entirely black. Lost zones, collapsed reality, places where the research teams had given up entirely.
"He's working alone in the worst possible areas," August said. "No backup, no support, just… endless impossible work."
August found more disturbing information in the facility's computers.
Mission reports that painted a picture of steadily worsening conditions. Zone Kings that were getting smarter, more aggressive, more capable of coordinating with each other. Forsaken populations that were growing faster than they could be eliminated.
And scattered throughout the reports, references to "The Solvain Protocol" - a last-resort strategy that nobody seemed to want to discuss in detail.
"The Solvain Protocol," August read from one file. "Implementation requires total commitment from primary operator. Success probability: Unknown. Survival probability: Negligible. Recommend exploring alternative solutions before authorization."
"They have a protocol named after Arthur," August said. "And it's basically a suicide mission."
August spent hours reading through the research files.
What he found painted a picture of a situation spiraling completely out of control. The zones weren't just random anomalies - they were part of some kind of larger pattern that nobody understood. They were growing, spreading, evolving.
And Arthur was the only person still actively working to contain them.
"This isn't a job," August realized. "This is a war. And Arthur's been fighting it alone while everyone else gave up."
No wonder Arthur's messages had become harsher, more isolated. He wasn't just clearing zones - he was holding back an apocalypse while the people who were supposed to support him retreated to safer positions.
"And I thought I could just walk up to him and offer to help," August said. "Like this was some kind of adventure story."
August found sleeping quarters and decided to spend the night in the abandoned facility.
His Foundation monitor had finally settled back to blue, but his immunity list was critically short now. Just core protections and a few recent adaptations to reality distortion.
Tomorrow he'd have to leave the safety of stable reality and continue following Arthur's trail toward the deep zones. Toward the black areas on the map where even the researchers had given up.
"Maybe Lyka was right," August said, staring at the ceiling. "Maybe I didn't create this world. Maybe I just wrote a simple story that somehow became… this."
The thought was becoming less disturbing and more comforting. If he hadn't created this nightmare, then he wasn't responsible for all the suffering and horror.
He was just someone trying to help fix a problem that had grown beyond anyone's ability to control.
August fell asleep in the abandoned research facility, surrounded by evidence of humanity's retreat from an impossible war.
Outside, reality fractures continued to spread across the landscape. Zones continued to evolve and adapt. And somewhere in the black areas of the map, Arthur Solvain continued his work alone.
Tomorrow, August would leave the safety of stable reality and continue following that trail.
Not because he was the creator of this world, but because someone needed to help carry the weight of an impossible job.
Even if that someone was just another character in a story that had grown too big for its author.
The facility's lights hummed in the darkness, a small island of stability in an ocean of chaos that was spreading wider every day.