"Your turn now. They've started to see the disappearing acts. We have to direct their attention."
He looked at Elsa first:
"You will warn them. Tell them that the Rift is coming. That the portents are growing, and the air is becoming different. Tell them these are fading cases. Rift echo phenomena, like what happened in the south."
Mir's eyes flashed towards him, as if something cracked inside her.
"We. we're feeding their madness, Naiv. Sowing terror into people who can't even afford to run."
Elsa went into her directly, knelt down, took her quivering hand, and spoke in a hushed tone:
"I know. But they'll die if they know. At least with terror, they can survive. We're not lying to them, we're. protecting them from a truth they can't handle."
Naiv strolled away from them, scribbling on as he laid out some papers:
"Make the people fear the Rift rages beneath their feet. Offer them a reason to cling to life, no matter how bent. or untrue."
Elsa stood up, then looked at Mir and said:
"We'll say that those who vanished became dizzy first. That some began hallucinating. then vanished into nothing. That we'll say."
Mir growled, as if she was attempting to reassure herself:
"So they. weren't destroyed. Not torn apart. Not eaten."
Elsa breathed quietly:
"Right. Nothing at all occurred."
But their gazes intersected for a long, unspoken moment, in which their stare communicated all that had not been spoken.
In seven days, fifteen people had disappeared.
The disappearances were no longer isolated events to be explained away or rationalized as mistakes. Folks began whispering, then arguing, then yelling. But throughout it all, Elsa and Mir stood resolute like the only dike standing between the deluge.
In the town square, where dozens had gathered after a woman and her children vanished at once, Elsa climbed onto a rickety wooden platform.
Her clothes were plain, her eyes heavy with lack of sleep, but she stood up straight, with strained calm:
*We told you, over and over, when the Rift draws near, it does not announce itself with a storm. it claims the people who feel it first.*
*These people did not go missing because we failed them. But because we are closer than ever to a rent in reality. These are the omens.*
One man in the crowd shouted:
"This is madness! My sister was fine! She was walking, she was laughing! What is 'rupture in reality' even supposed to mean?!"
Mir stepped forward. She didn't scream, didn't try to command, but looked at the man through vision drenched in memories and said:
"I dreamed of her last night. She was on the threshold. and cast no shadow."
"The Rift does not kill. It drains."
"Please. protect whoever you have left."
The man went quiet, as if Mir had never spoken, but implied a worse destiny than he dared to dream.
In the following days, restraint grew. Folks stopped going out in the evenings. Children clung to mothers. Others began to scrawl foreign marks on walls in hopes of safeguarding themselves.
And whenever an individual disappeared, Elsa would post a hand-written announcement, declaring:
"We must stay sane. This is not a plague. it is a test. And the more we fear, the more we welcome it."
Evening, Mir cried quietly by her window, clutching her notebook, writing the names of the missing, and underneath them, notes:
"Missing after a fight with his wife. was he weak?"
"The girl went missing after a night of recurring nightmares. does the Rift like weakness?"
But she never speaks.
As the panic epidemic reached a boil, as unseen deaths accumulated, the two women were the public face soothing the city inward.
The final voice to whisper in the ear before breaking apart.
In the city's underworld, the next evening—
Despite the exhaustion lines on their faces, the five came back once more to sit at the old wooden table. There lay the same old map, but now the eyes were not searching for way out—instead, it scanned new red marks and new circles.
Naiv:
"Because we have some days left before departing, I thought it was reasonable to study what he left behind. just before he disappeared."
(pauses)
"The man did not travel alone. There was a company with him, and they had these repeat kinds of creatures. we were able to recover their logs and some remains."
He gestured to a cluttered heap of papers.
Naiv (continues):
"But I am not the one to describe this. Ashura. you battled like them, and saw those things with your own eyes."
Ashura
(sits up, looks at all of them, then pulls out a small dagger and cuts a line across the table):
"Demons are not the same. Not knowing about them is why we keep losing."
"Statistically, we can divide them into five main types."
1. Crawlers
Difficulty: Low.
Description: Small creatures, fast on floor or ceiling, with twisted limbs and stretching jaws.
Strong points: Lots of them, speedy, use poisonous surprises.
Weak points: Direct light, loud noise, clumsily coordinated.
2. Wailers
Difficulty: Medium.
Description: Disfigured, human-like faces, let out wails which shatter concentration.
Strengths: Mental effect, induce hallucinations, distort reality in limited areas.
Weaknesses: Silence paralyzes them; blindness works to their advantage.
3. Pulsers
Difficulty: Medium to High.
Description: Giant-sized bodies, pulsate like they have a heart on the outside.
Strengths: A single hit can splinter bones, immune to pulse magic.
Weaknesses: Slow pace, susceptible to unreliable surfaces.
4. Splitters
Difficulty: High.
Description: Physically splits into smaller replicas on being hurt.
Strengths: Hard to kill, deadly if split.
Weaknesses: None.
Weaknesses: Heat prevents it from splitting; electric shock immobilizes new growth.
Even I haven't seen one of these yet.
### 5. Deceivers
Difficulty: Very High.
Description: Replicate humans perfectly—speech, walk, crying.
Strengths: Manipulation of the mind, perfect impersonation, can see others' intent via "Rift reflection."
Weaknesses: Distorted mirror reveals their truth; "anti-wail" symbols freeze them for a short time.
This beast made only one appearance. You could say it was an exceedingly bad day for them.
They remained silent after Ashura's explanation, as if his words weighed heavier than the names of the beasts themselves. They were not actually surprised—most had already encountered demons or heard tales of them—but just thinking that they may be faced with what that man's team did send a chill down their spines, especially as they remembered how that team came to its end.
Zoreem muttered to himself:
— "What's the purpose of classifications? When you are faced with a demon that devours your pain, you will not inquire whether it is a climber or a screamer."
Naiv spat out, not looking at him:
— "The difference between us and the bodies consumed by the Rifts is that we prepare. We do not gamble on chance."
Elsa raised her eyebrows in silence, then bent forward to Mir and whispered:
— "He talks of order. but he'll be the first to break the rules if things go wrong."
Mir kept quiet. She looked at the ground, as if waiting for something.
Ashura stood up slowly and said:
— "We can do strategy later. We're not at the stage where we can plan an attack anyway. we're not even staying awake."
Elsa exhaled heavily, stroked her weary face with her hand:
— "No need to worry now. You're tired. and so am I. Let's wait till tomorrow. We'll be deciding with clearer minds then."
Ashura nodded, and the others did the same in grave silence.
Then, as if in unspoken understanding, they left the basement separately. leaving an air that was thicker than ever before.
In the city days later, its atmosphere was no longer the same.
At first, others thought it was a coincidence. Missing kids, elderly folks who never returned from their spring vacations, a shriek in the night and then eternal silence. But after "the disappearances" began to impact every household, Mir and Elsa were no longer able to hide the fissure.
— "Where is my son?!"
— "They said you last saw him!"
— "Who's to say we're not the Rifts?"
In the city square, cries rang out, and all the signs of mass hysteria for the first time appeared. Some of the men clutched rusty axes, accusing anyone who showed no fear of being a secret agent.
Mir trembled, arms crossed over her chest, with tears she fought in vain to hold back.
And Elsa stood between the crowd and those who were standing behind her, her words as dry as her dry throat:
— "Everyone will be accounted for. everyone will be tested. Just stay calm!"
But she did not mean it.
And in the corner of the square, a small boy hugged the pendant of their missing neighbor who went missing yesterday.
He asked his mother:
— "Mom. why was this in our house?"