Lin Yue was choking on ash and ozone.
The city was a graveyard, not of stone, but of shattered existence. The air itself was thick, radioactive dust that burned his throat. His lungs seized up, the pain irrelevant. All he saw was the swirling vortex of the Void, an endless, midnight horror consuming the horizon.
Lian Xiu was directly in its path. Her body was dissolving, not burning, but peeling away into non-existence. Her face, contorted by the final, absolute terror of oblivion, turned towards him.
"You failed," she spat, the sound weak, yet sharp enough to cleave his soul in two. Her eyes, empty of light, burned into his weakness. "I deserved better than this failure, Lin Yue. A better protector."
Then, she was silence. She was nothing. The Void consumed the light and the lingering ghost of her voice.
He had survived ten years of the Cataclysm only to witness this—his purpose, his obsession, his only reason for fighting, judged and erased. The shame was a physical ice pick stabbing his heart.
[DING!] [INITIATING REBIRTH SEQUENCE: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. (YET)]
The cold silence evaporated. Lin Yue crashed back into sensation, hitting the thin mattress of his pre-Cataclysm bed. He was gasping, fighting for air he didn't realize he didn't have, his hands already raw and trembling from the phantom memory of clinging to rubble. He ripped his eyes open.
Clean sheets. Still air. No radioactive dust.
The cheap digital clock screamed the date: one week before the world ended. Ten years of blood, fire, and losing everything—erased.
[VOID MIMIC SYSTEM: "PATHETIC CREATURE DETECTED. WEAKNESS LEVEL: CRITICAL. SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.0001%."]
The mocking, red text seared itself onto his vision. He ignored the System, already scrambling off the bed. He was weak. His body felt soft, fragile, utterly useless. The future wasn't a warning, it was a debt of blood. He could still feel the phantom weight of her hand, slipping from his grasp. I have seven days.
He clawed his way to the floor, pulling out the frayed, dirty map he'd drawn from sheer memory—the locations of the earliest, most exploitable 'cheats.' First stop: The Old Museum.
[WARNING: YOUR CURRENT BODY IS WEAK. ATTEMPTING RAPID MOVEMENT MAY RESULT IN HUMILIATING SPRAIN. DO YOU REQUIRE A NAP?]
"Shut up," he hissed, his voice rough. Lian Xiu. That scornful look was the fuel. He moved with a brutal efficiency born of trauma, shedding his pajamas, pulling on the dark, practical clothes he hadn't worn in a decade. Every second wasted was another inch of the Void swallowing her.
He was out the window, dropping silently onto the cracked pavement. His landing was sloppy, his ankles aching from the minor impact. Pathetic. He shoved the weakness down, replacing it with the grinding focus of a machine. He moved through the pre-dawn quiet like a thief, his breathing shallow, every shadow a potential threat.
The museum's rear utility door was his target. He knew the lock was an antique, a simple deadbolt, but his hands were shaking badly now, fueled by adrenaline and the sheer terror of his impending deadline.
He pulled the tools—a bent hairpin and a stiff piece of wire. His fingers, now soft and unscarred, fumbled.
[VOID MIMIC SYSTEM: "INSUFFICIENT DEXTERITY DETECTED. YOU ARE EMBARRASSINGLY SLOW. TIME UNTIL DAWN: 47 MINUTES. TIME UNTIL DEATH: 7 DAYS."]
"Hold still," Lin Yue whispered to his own hand. He pushed the pin deep, feeling for the tumblers. The faint clink of the metal was deafening. He saw a flash—not a memory, but a sudden, terrifying vision of a Cataclysm-era guard dog, its eyes glowing red, its jaws tearing at his throat. He shook the image off, sweat beading on his forehead. Focus. Lock. Move.
He twisted the wire. The lock gave a final, agonizing SCREEECH—far louder than it should have been.
Click.
He shoved the door open just as his highly-trained instincts screamed a warning.
A cold, heavy pressure fell over the street. Not a smell, but a lack of one—the air went dead and thick, like stepping into a vacuum. Lin Yue didn't look up immediately. He knew that feeling. He knew that power. It was the presence of something wrong.
He risked a glance. Fifty yards away, where the streetlights died, a Riftwalker was moving. It wasn't human. It was a silhouette carved from deep midnight, its movement a sickening, non-Euclidean ripple—too fast, too silent. It was a Tier 1 entity.
Impossible. Riftwalkers don't appear until Day 5 of the Cataclysm.
A low, vibrating hum, like an immense fly caught in a tin can, resonated from the creature. It was already closing the distance to the museum, its form distorting the light around it, marking his exact location. Lin Yue froze, the weight of the future crushing him.
He wasn't alone. He wasn't first. And this time, his enemy wasn't an artifact, but a monster he was too weak to fight...