Morning came slowly to the redwood clearing.
The kind of gradual brightening that felt uncertain—like the sun itself wasn't sure whether it should bother rising today. Gray light filtered through the frosted windows, turning the cabin's interior from dark to merely dim.
Retro stood by the window, one hand pressed against the cold glass.
He'd been there for the better part of an hour, watching the forest emerge from shadow. Watching snow continue its lazy, impossible fall. Trying to make sense of the hollow feeling in his chest where his magic used to be.
His reflection stared back at him—light brown hair slightly disheveled from sleep, yellow-green eyes looking more tired than usual. He looked the same as always.
But he felt like a stranger in his own skin.
Behind him, Lea stirred on the makeshift bed she'd dragged closer to his during the night. Not quite trusting him to stay conscious. Not quite able to let him out of her sight.
She blinked awake slowly, her light blue and yellow hair falling across her face in messy strands. For a moment she just lay there, staring at the ceiling.
Then she turned her head, searching for him with barely concealed panic.
Relief flooded her features when she spotted him by the window.
"You're still up," she said quietly.
Not quite an accusation. Not quite a question.
Retro glanced back, offering a small smile.
"Couldn't sleep much. Too much to think about."
Lea pushed herself upright, her tail dragging across the blanket behind her. She studied him for a long moment—the way he stood, the set of his shoulders, the slight tension in his posture.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
Retro considered the question.
"Strange," he admitted. "Light. Like I'm missing weight I didn't realize I was carrying."
He flexed his fingers against the glass.
"But also heavy. If that makes sense."
Lea stood, padding across the floor on bare feet. She stopped a few feet away, giving him space but staying close enough to matter.
"Your magic..." She hesitated. "Is it still...?"
"Gone." The word came out flat. Final. "Completely."
Silence settled between them—not uncomfortable, but weighted with uncertainty.
Then Lea's stomach growled.
Loudly.
The sound broke the tension like dropped glass, and despite everything, Retro huffed a quiet laugh.
"When's the last time you ate?"
Lea's ears flattened slightly with embarrassment.
"Um... yesterday morning? Maybe?"
Retro turned fully, raising an eyebrow.
"Maybe?"
"I was kind of busy watching you be unconscious," she shot back, defensive. "Food wasn't exactly a priority."
Retro moved toward the small kitchen area—just a counter, a few cabinets, a basin for water.
"Well it's a priority now. Can't have you collapsing on me."
He started opening cabinets, taking stock of what supplies were available. Some dried meat. Preserved fruit. Hard bread that would need soaking. Basic travel rations, nothing fancy.
Enough to work with.
Lea watched him move around the space with practiced efficiency—checking supplies, laying out ingredients, falling into the familiar rhythm of preparing a meal.
Then something occurred to her.
"Dad?"
"Mm?"
"How are you doing that?"
Retro paused, looking back at her with confusion.
"Doing what?"
"That." She gestured at the dried meat he was holding. "You just... tore that apart. Like it was nothing."
Retro looked down at his hands.
She was right. The tough, jerky-like meat had split easily under his fingers—something that usually required either a knife or considerable effort.
He'd done it without thinking.
"I..." He frowned. "I don't know."
Lea stepped closer, her scientific curiosity overriding her worry for a moment.
"Try something else."
Retro picked up one of the hard travel biscuits. The kind that could break teeth if you bit them wrong. He applied pressure with his thumb.
The biscuit crumbled.
Not broke. Crumbled. Like it was made of dried clay rather than stone-hard bread.
They both stared at the fragments in his palm.
"That's not normal," Lea said slowly.
Retro brushed the crumbs off his hand, reaching for the small table nearby. He gripped the edge—gently, he thought—and lifted.
The table came up with no resistance.
No strain. No effort.
Like it weighed nothing at all.
He set it down carefully, his frown deepening.
"No," he agreed quietly. "That's not normal."
Lea's tail swished behind her—the way it always did when her mind was working through a puzzle.
"Your magic is gone," she said, thinking out loud. "Completely gone. You can't feel your aura, can't call any power, can't even sense the world's mana flow."
"Right."
"But your physical strength..." She gestured at the table. "It's still there. Maybe even stronger than before?"
Retro tested the theory, curling his hand into a fist and squeezing. His knuckles went white with the pressure, but he felt no strain in the muscles. No burning. No fatigue.
"It doesn't make sense," Lea continued. "Most of your abilities were magic-based. The spectral sword, the time manipulation, the dimensional stuff—all of that required active power."
She circled him slowly, analyzing.
"But the strength... that's different, isn't it? That's been with you so long it's just... part of your body now. Physical. Not magical."
Retro opened his hand, staring at his palm.
"I never thought about it that way," he admitted. "The strength and the magic always felt connected. One system."
"Maybe they're not," Lea said. "Maybe the magic enhanced it, sure. But the foundation—the actual physical power—that's just you. Your body. Centuries of fighting and training and pushing your limits."
She met his eyes.
"Magic can be taken away. But your body remembers everything it's learned."
The words settled over them both.
Retro looked down at his hands with new understanding—not as tools that had failed him, but as weapons that remained.
"So I'm not powerless," he said slowly.
"Not even close." Lea smiled slightly. "Just... differently powered."
Retro huffed a quiet laugh.
"That's one way to put it."
But even as he said it, unease prickled at the back of his mind.
Because strength alone wouldn't be enough against what was coming. Against things like Phantom who existed outside normal rules. Against cosmic threats that required cosmic power to fight.
Still—
It was something.
"Come on," he said, turning back to the food preparation. "Let's eat. Then we figure out what to do next."
Lea nodded, settling herself at the small table.
But as Retro worked, she couldn't shake the questions building in her mind.
If his physical strength remained, what else had survived the loss of magic? What other abilities had become so ingrained they were no longer truly magical—just part of who he was?
And more importantly—
Why had Gaia taken only his magic and left everything else?
What was the purpose of crippling him this way?
Outside, the snow continued its uncertain fall.
And time—wounded but not broken—continued its slow, inevitable march forward.
The port city of Kael's Landing sprawled along the coastline like a sleeping beast—all weathered wood and salt-stained stone, buildings stacked haphazardly against the hills rising from the shore.
Ships crowded the harbor, their masts creating a forest of bare timber against the gray morning sky.
Nexus stood at the edge of the dock, purple eyes scanning the crowd with methodical precision.
His shadow stretched longer than it should beneath the weak sunlight—active, alert, responding to threats that weren't quite there yet but might be soon.
Beside him, Maris adjusted the pendant of the merfolk that hung at her throat—a beautiful piece of worked coral and pearl that marked her heritage. At twenty-six, she'd spent enough years on land to move comfortably among the terrestrial crowds, but her connection to the sea remained absolute.
She could feel the water even from here—the pull of tides, the movement of currents, the living pulse of the ocean just yards away.
"Anything?" Nexus asked without looking at her.
Maris closed her eyes, letting her True Aura Sense expand outward.
The ability let her read the emotional and spiritual signatures of those around her—truth and lies, fear and confidence, the fundamental nature of a person laid bare if you knew how to look.
Crowds were difficult. Too many overlapping auras, too much noise. But she'd learned to filter, to search for specific patterns.
She was looking for Atlas.
Nexus's adoptive father. A redwood hellhound fox who'd been missing for years now—gone without warning, without explanation. Just vanished like smoke, leaving behind only worried silence.
After several long moments, Maris opened her eyes and shook her head.
"Nothing. If he's here, he's either masking his presence completely or..."
"Or he's not here," Nexus finished.
His jaw tightened.
They'd been searching this town for three days now. Following rumors and whispers, chasing fragments of information that never quite solidified into answers.
Atlas was good at disappearing when he wanted to. His work as a high-ranking archivist gave him access to knowledge most people couldn't even imagine—including ways to hide that were frighteningly effective.
But this felt different.
This felt wrong.
"He would have told me if he was leaving," Nexus said quietly. "He always does."
Maris placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.
"Maybe he didn't have time. Maybe something urgent came up and he had to move fast."
"Then why not send word after?" Nexus countered. "A message. A sign. Anything."
He turned to face her, and she could see the worry carved into his features—worry he was trying very hard to hide beneath determination.
"Something happened," he said. "I can feel it."
Maris didn't argue.
Because she'd felt it too.
That wave of agony three days ago—the one that had brought Nexus to his knees and made her True Aura Sense scream warnings. Uncle Retro's breaking, they'd called it.
A god-tier emotional collapse that had rippled across the world.
"You think they're connected?" Maris asked. "Retro's... whatever that was... and Atlas disappearance?"
Nexus's shadow writhed beneath him, betraying his agitation.
"I don't know. But the timing—"
"Could be coincidence," Maris offered, not believing it herself.
"Could be," Nexus agreed, also not believing it.
They stood in silence for a moment, watching ships come and go. Sailors and merchants moving cargo. The normal flow of life continuing around them, oblivious to the wrongness they could feel building.
"Where do we look next?" Maris finally asked.
Nexus pulled a worn map from his pack—marked with notes and crossed-out locations. Cities searched. Leads followed. Dead ends encountered.
"There's an old archive about two days north," he said, pointing. "Atlas mentioned it once. Said it contained records that most scholars didn't know existed."
"Records of what?"
"He didn't say." Nexus folded the map carefully. "But if he needed information badly enough to vanish without warning..."
"Then we go north," Maris finished.
Nexus nodded, but his expression remained troubled.
Because even as they planned their next move, that feeling of wrongness continued to build. Like standing on the shore before a tsunami—the water pulling back, back, back. Everything too calm. Too quiet.
Warning of something terrible approaching.
"Nexus?"
He looked at her.
Maris's blue eyes held concern that went beyond just finding Atlas.
"That aura we felt three days ago. Uncle Retro's breaking."
She paused, choosing her words carefully.
"Have you felt anything since? Any echo? Any sense of him at all?"
Nexus closed his eyes, reaching out with senses that went beyond normal perception.
Searching for the familiar presence of his uncle—the man who'd been a constant in his life for as long as he could remember. The foundation. The safety net.
Nothing.
Just silence where Retro's aura should have been.
"No," he said quietly. "It's like he's... gone."
"Not dead," Maris said quickly. "I would have felt that. Death has a specific signature. This is different."
"Then what?"
She bit her lip.
"I don't know. But whatever happened to him—whatever caused that scream we felt—"
She met his eyes.
"I don't think it's over."
Nexus's hand found the hilt of his blade—an unconscious gesture of comfort.
"Then we find Atlas fast," he said. "Because if something's coming—if this is all connected somehow—"
"We'll need everyone together," Maris agreed.
They turned from the docks, heading back toward the city proper.
Behind them, the ocean continued its eternal movement—waves rolling in with patient, inevitable rhythm.
And deep beneath the surface, where light couldn't reach and pressure became absolute—
Something stirred.
Something old.
Something that had been sleeping.
But the world's breaking had woken it.
And it was hungry.
Atlas walked through a space that shouldn't exist.
The limbo worlds—gaps between realities, cracks in the foundation of existence itself. Places where the normal rules stopped applying and new, stranger ones took over.
Or sometimes no rules at all.
Just raw, chaotic potential waiting to be shaped by whatever force was strong enough to impose will upon it.
The redwood hellhound fox moved carefully, his rust-colored fur seeming to absorb what little light existed here. At an age he'd stopped counting centuries ago, Atlas had learned patience. Had learned caution.
Had learned that rushing in limbo got you killed—or worse, got you lost in ways that made death look preferable.
His archivist training served him well here.
Years of studying ancient texts, deciphering dead languages, tracking down fragments of knowledge that most scholars believed were myth—all of it had prepared him for navigating spaces like this.
The current "landscape"—if it could be called that—resembled a library that had been shattered and reassembled wrong.
Bookshelves floated at odd angles, defying gravity. Some were upside down. Others existed in multiple places simultaneously, their forms overlapping in ways that made his eyes hurt.
Books drifted through the air like leaves, their pages fluttering despite no wind. When he'd tried to read one earlier, the words had rearranged themselves into languages that had never existed.
Messages from nowhere, warning of nothing, written by hands that had never held pens.
Atlas ignored them.
He'd been searching for three days now—or what felt like three days. Time worked differently in limbo. Hours could pass in seconds, or seconds could stretch into years.
He'd learned to trust his internal sense of duration rather than any external measure.
Three days of searching.
Three days of calling out with every method he knew.
Three days of silence in response.
"Gaia," he called again, his voice echoing strangely in the fractured space. "I know you can hear me. I know you're aware of what's happening."
No response.
Just the soft rustling of impossible books and the creaking of shelves that existed in too many dimensions at once.
Atlas growled low in his throat—frustration bleeding through his usual composure.
He'd felt it three days ago. That wave of agony that had brought him to his knees in a forgotten ruin, that had cracked his frost relic straight through.
Retro breaking.
His brother—not by blood but by every bond that mattered—falling apart with such force that the world itself had trembled.
And then silence.
Complete and absolute.
Retro's aura, which had been a constant presence at the edge of Atlas's awareness for decades, had simply... vanished.
Not faded. Not diminished.
Gone.
Like someone had reached into reality and deleted his brother's existence with surgical precision.
Atlas knew only one being with that kind of power.
Only one entity who could touch a god-level fighter like Retro and make him disappear.
"PHANTOM!"
He shouted it this time, pouring frustration and fear and desperate need into the name.
The limbo world shuddered.
Books froze mid-drift. Shelves stopped their lazy rotation. Even the strange, sourceless light seemed to pause.
Then—
A voice.
Not speaking, exactly. More like meaning impressed directly into his consciousness, bypassing sound entirely.
"You should not be here."
Not Gaia's voice.
Something else. Something that guarded these spaces.
Atlas set his jaw.
"I need to speak with Gaia. It's urgent."
"The World-Mother does not take visitors."
"I'm not a visitor," Atlas shot back. "I'm family. And she's done something to my brother."
Silence.
Then—
"The one called Retro made choices. Faced consequences. The World-Mother intervened only to prevent total collapse."
"What does that mean?" Atlas demanded. "Where is he? What did she do?"
"He lives. Sleeps. Heals. This is all you need to know."
"That's not enough!" Atlas's voice rose, his usual calm cracking. "His aura is gone. Completely gone. I can't sense him at all. If you've—if she's—"
"The seal was necessary. The alternative was annihilation."
The words carried weight that went beyond meaning. Truth so absolute it couldn't be questioned.
But Atlas tried anyway.
"Then let me see him. Let me help. Let me—"
"Your help is not required. Your presence is not wanted. Leave these spaces before you become lost in them."
The limbo world began to shift more aggressively now.
Shelves spinning faster. Books flying with purpose rather than random drift. The geometry of space itself twisting, trying to eject him.
Atlas planted his feet, calling on the frost relic embedded in his glove.
Even cracked, it responded. Ice spread from his palm, anchoring him to the quasi-reality beneath his feet.
"I'm not leaving until I get answers!"
"Then you will be here a very long time."
The voice faded.
The pressure increased.
Atlas gritted his teeth, feeling the limbo world actively working to expel him now. Like an immune system recognizing a foreign body and mobilizing to remove it.
He could fight it. Could use his archival knowledge and his relic's power to maintain his position.
But it would cost him. Drain his resources. Leave him vulnerable in a place where vulnerability meant dissolution.
And for what?
A voice that wouldn't answer his questions. A goddess who refused to show herself. Silence and warnings and cryptic non-explanations.
Atlas cursed under his breath—long and creative, mixing languages from three different eras.
Then he released the ice anchor.
The limbo world grabbed him immediately, spinning him through impossible angles. Space folded. Light inverted. His stomach lurched as orientation became meaningless.
Then—
He hit solid ground.
Real ground.
The impact knocked the wind from his lungs. He lay there for a moment, gasping, staring up at a normal sky with normal clouds moving in normal directions.
He was back in the material world.
Specifically—he looked around, getting his bearings—he was in a forest. Tall trees, regular trees, that followed standard physics and stayed in one place.
His frost relic pulsed against his palm, and he glanced down at it.
The crack had widened.
Another few trips to limbo and it would shatter completely, leaving him without one of his most valuable tools.
Atlas pushed himself to his feet, brushing dirt and leaves from his clothes.
He'd failed. Hadn't found Gaia. Hadn't gotten answers. Had only wasted three days and damaged his relic in the process.
But he'd learned something.
Retro was alive. Sealed somehow, but alive.
And Gaia had intervened directly—something she rarely did without overwhelming reason.
Which meant whatever happened had been catastrophic enough to require divine intervention.
Atlas looked up at the sky, at clouds moving with normal, predictable patterns.
"What did you do, big bro?" he muttered. "What happened that scared a goddess badly enough to lock you away?"
No answer came.
But somewhere—he could feel it in his bones—
The world was still breaking.
And his family was scattered.
Retro sealed and silent.
Nexus and Maris searching blindly.
Lea alone with her father and no way to call for help.
Atlas started walking, orienting himself by the sun's position.
He didn't know where he was exactly, but he knew how to navigate. How to find settlements. How to gather information.
And most importantly—
He knew he needed to find his family.
All of them.
Before whatever was breaking the world finished the job.
Retro stood in the clearing outside the cabin, snow crunching under his boots.
The morning had given way to afternoon while he and Lea ate and talked, trying to make sense of his condition. Trying to plan what came next.
Now he needed to test his limits.
Needed to understand what remained.
Lea watched from the cabin doorway, wrapped in a blanket against the cold. Her breath fogged in the air, but she refused to go inside where it was warm.
Refused to let him out of her sight.
Retro selected a tree—one of the massive redwoods that ringed the clearing. Trunk easily six feet in diameter, bark thick and rough with age.
He placed his palm against it, feeling the texture. The cold. The solidity.
Then he pulled his fist back and punched.
His knuckles connected with a sound like a gunshot.
The tree shook. Snow cascaded from branches thirty feet above. A crack spider-webbed from the impact point, spreading up and down the trunk.
But his hand—
His hand was fine.
No pain. No broken bones. Not even a bruise.
Retro stared at his knuckles, turning his hand over slowly.
"That should have hurt," he said.
Lea had moved closer without him noticing, standing at the edge of the clearing.
"How much force did you use?"
"Enough to break my hand," Retro admitted. "If I were normal."
He punched again, harder this time.
The crack widened. The tree groaned. More snow fell.
Still no pain.
"I don't understand this," Lea said. "Your magic is completely gone. I can't sense even a trace of it. But your body..."
She gestured at the damaged tree.
"That's not possible without some kind of power."
Retro flexed his fingers, thinking.
"What if it's not magic?" he said slowly. "What if it never was—not entirely."
"What do you mean?"
He turned to face her.
"I've been this strong for... centuries. Longer. It became normal. Baseline."
He looked at his hand again.
"But maybe it's not magical strength. Maybe it's just... adaptation. Evolution. My body changing over time to handle the stress I put it through."
"That's not how bodies work," Lea protested. "You can't just—"
"I'm not human," Retro interrupted gently. "Never was, not entirely. And I stopped aging normally a long time ago."
He met her eyes.
"What if my body isn't mortal anymore—not in the normal sense—even without magic? What if centuries of pushing past normal limits rewrote what my baseline is?"
Lea's ears flattened as she processed that.
"So the strength isn't magical. It's just... you. What you've become."
"Maybe," Retro said. "I don't know for sure. But it would explain why losing my magic didn't affect it."
He looked back at the tree, at the damage he'd caused with his bare hand.
"I can't throw fireballs anymore. Can't teleport or manipulate time or summon my sword."
A pause.
"But I can still hit things really, really hard."
Despite everything, Lea almost smiled.
"That's something."
"That's something," Retro agreed.
But even as he said it, unease gnawed at him.
Because strength alone wouldn't be enough.
Not against what was coming.
Not against a world that was breaking.
He looked up at the sky—gray and heavy with snow that fell too slowly.
And wondered how long they had before everything fell apart completely.