The world ended in silence.
No sound.No air.No me.
Just white — endless, weightless, and humming like the inside of a storm.
For a second, I thought I'd actually died. Then again, if heaven smelled like burnt moss and gunpowder, I was probably still alive. My body tingled like every atom was trying to remember its shape.
Slowly, the whiteness thinned. Shadows returned. Sound bled back into the world — the hiss of wind, the distant groan of trees, and Chen Bo's voice, warped and muffled.
"—Han Yue! He's breathing! He's fine!"
Define fine.
I blinked up at a broken sky. The trees around the clearing were gone — no, disintegrated. The ground had been scorched into a perfect circle of glass, steam rising in slow waves. My ears rang like someone had slammed a gong inside my skull.
Li Mei hovered over me, hair singed, eyes wide. "You— what the hell was that?!"
"I… think my rock sneezed," I croaked.
Chen Bo's serpent lay half-uncoiled nearby, scales cracked and glowing faintly from the heat. Jin Tao's fox crouched low, mechanical plating humming like it was trying to cool itself down. The entire clearing looked like a meteor had kissed it.
"What happened?" Chen demanded. "The rabbit's gone, the terrain's gone, and—" he pointed, eyes wide, "—that thing is floating!"
I followed his finger.
Pebble.
Or, well, what used to be Pebble.
It hung a few meters above the ground, glowing from within, cracks webbed across its surface like molten glass. Inside, something moved — slow and rhythmic, like breathing stone. The sound it made wasn't a hum anymore.
It was a heartbeat.
Thud.…Thud....Thud.
The pulses rippled through the air. Each one warped the light around it, bending the forest's color like heat distortion. Even Chen's serpent hissed and backed away instinctively.
"Han Yue," Jin Tao said carefully. "Tell me that's normal."
"Totally," I said, forcing a weak grin. "Rocks do this all the time. They float, glow, and threaten to rewrite the laws of matter."
"Not helping," Chen muttered.
The cracks deepened.Chunks of the pebble began peeling away — not breaking, but unfolding, like stone petals revealing something beneath.
Inside the shell, light gathered, gold and black intertwined. A vague shape began to take form — too small to be called a beast, too deliberate to be random energy. The air grew heavy with pressure, like the dungeon itself was holding its breath.
Then… it stopped.
The light dimmed. The heartbeat slowed. The fragments of stone froze midair — suspended, trembling — and then dropped all at once, clattering harmlessly to the ground.
Pebble was back.
Just… cracked, darker, and eerily quiet.
No one spoke for a long time.
Finally, Chen broke the silence. "So. That… happened."
Li Mei's voice shook. "You vaporized half a forest."
"I did?" I sat up slowly, head spinning. "I mean… that was mostly the pebble, right?"
"Your pebble made a localized mana implosion," Jin Tao said, crouching to examine the scorched ground. "No signature pattern. No known type."
He looked up at me, eyes narrowing. "That shouldn't be possible."
"Well," I said, brushing ash off my sleeve, "lucky me. I specialize in things that shouldn't be possible."
A soft tone chimed through our comms — the instructor.
"Team Four, report. We just lost your vitals for a full minute."
Chen grabbed his badge. "Everyone's alive. Minor burns. The dungeon zone's been… altered."
"Altered how?"
He glanced at the glassed crater. "…Geographically."
The line went silent for a moment. Then: "Return to extraction. Now."
We didn't argue.
As we made our way back through the fractured forest, I kept glancing at Pebble. It was warm again — faintly pulsing, like it was sleeping. Every few steps, I could swear I heard a faint, distorted sound from it.
Like laughter.Or breathing through stone.
When we reached the dungeon gate, the air around it shimmered violently, as if the boundary itself was reacting to us.Or to me.
For a second, the glass ground beneath me reflected not my face — but something else. A silhouette made of gold cracks and shadow, with eyes that glowed like dying stars.
Then the light snapped, and I was back — just a guy with a rock.
Academy Observation Chamber — 12 Minutes Later
The feed replayed in slow motion.
White flash. Crater. Silence.
On the screen, data lines spiked beyond calibration. The system automatically redlined, unable to classify the signature.
Professor Xu leaned closer, voice low. "No elemental origin. No spirit pattern. Not even corrupted resonance."
"What the hell was it then?" another researcher asked.
Xu's eyes narrowed. "A compression pulse. Internalized output. If the reading's right… that boy's Contract Beast folded space-time around itself."
The assistant gaped. "That's impossible."
Xu smiled faintly. "Yes. It is."
He tapped the monitor, freezing the image where the pebble hovered above Han Yue's hand — glowing, cracked, alive.
"Keep an eye on him," Xu said. "If that thing wakes up again, I want to be the first to know."
Later — Dormitory Level B-7
Chen Bo slammed the door behind us, still shaking off soot. "I swear, next time your rock blinks, I'm running."
Li Mei collapsed onto the couch. "I can still hear the explosion in my bones."
Jin Tao sat quietly, typing on his wristband. "The system logged your mana output at 11,000 units."
I blinked. "That's… bad, right?"
"That's impossible," he said flatly. "The highest recorded first-stage Resonance Awakener output is 3,200."
"Oh."
Chen pointed at me. "Dude, you're literally a walking disaster."
"Technically, I'm a sitting disaster," I said, plopping onto the floor. Pebble lay beside me, faintly glowing like a night-light that had seen some things.
I stared at it.
It stared back. Or at least, it felt like it did.
The glow pulsed once. Twice.And for a moment — just a flicker — I saw something in it.
Not a reflection.Not light.A shape.
A pair of eyes opening inside the cracks.
They looked at me, slow and ancient, and then the glow faded again.
I swallowed hard. "Yeah," I muttered. "Totally normal."
Outside, somewhere far below the academy, deep in the energy grid where dungeons met the real world, something stirred.
Stone groaned.Light pulsed.And from the silence between worlds, a voice whispered — faint, curious, almost amused.
"So this is what they call… human."