The canyon turned into a slaughterhouse.

Dante didn’t wait for the three hundred players on the ridges to make a decision. The twelve spatial clones erupted from the jagged tears in reality and completely surrounded him.

"Wipe them out," Dante ordered.

The clones moved as a single and terrifying unit. They didn’t have the mobility constraints of a normal player.

They utilized the sheer verticality of the canyon walls. They launched themselves upward with explosive kinetic force. Their boots cracked the volcanic rock with every step.

The archers and casters of Vanguard’s Legacy didn’t even have time to ready another arrow or prep another spell.

A clone landed directly in the center of a group of twenty mages. It swung its glitching copy of the [Crimson Edge] in a wide and horizontal arc.

[-24,000!]

[-24,000!]

[-24,000!]

The damage numbers were entirely overkill.

The entire group was instantly vaporized. They turned into a massive cloud of blue pixels that drifted over the edge of the cliff!

Another clone blinked directly behind the heavy shield wall blocking the canyon exit. The tanks were facing inward and completely ignored their exposed backs.

The clone unleashed a localized [Abyssal Cleave].

The black shockwave tore through the backline. It instantly deleted forty heavily armored players and shattered their iron shields into digital scrap.

Dante didn’t even participate. He stood in the center of the canyon floor.

The [Sun-Forged Cuirass] gleamed under the violet sky. He watched his afterimages dismantle an entire army in less than ten seconds.

It was a complete route.

The surviving members of Vanguard’s Legacy broke rank and ran. They dropped their weapons and abandoned their gear.

They scrambled frantically over the ridges. They were desperate to escape the canyon before the clones targeted them.

The ten-second duration of [Fractured Reality] expired.

The clones flickered and dissolved into black smoke. They left the ridges completely empty, save for the massive piles of dropped loot and silver coins.

Silence returned to Embercraig Canyon. It was broken only by the bubbling of the magma pool and the crackling of the fading plasma trail of Dante.

Dante slowly sheathed the [Crimson Edge].

He didn’t bother collecting the low-tier loot scattered across the cliffs. He had billions of credits. He didn’t need rusty swords and beginner spellbooks.

"Contract closed," Dante muttered to mock the final words of Malric.

He turned his attention back to his actual objective. He had come here for the reagents of Vespera. The massive battle had completely derailed his gathering.

He checked his inventory. He had collected one [Sunflare Orchid] before the scouts of Malric interrupted him. He needed nine more.

He spent the next hour walking the perimeter of the canyon floor. He avoided the massive pools of liquid slag left behind by the Inferno Behemoth.

He found the glowing yellow flowers tucked into the crevices of the volcanic rock. They usually grew near the hottest thermal vents.

By the time he plucked the ninth orchid, the temperature in the canyon had started to cool down significantly. It returned to its baseline state.

"One more," Dante said. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Even with the mitigation of the armor, the heat was exhausting.

He spotted the final flower growing halfway up a steep and jagged incline near the eastern wall of the canyon.

He used a short [Blink Step] to close the distance. He landed cleanly on a small outcropping of rock right next to the glowing plant.

He reached down and wrapped his iron-plated gauntlet around the stem.

The moment he pulled the tenth [Sunflare Orchid] from the rock, the system didn’t give him a quest update prompt.

Instead, an intense and violent burning sensation erupted against his chest!

Dante winced and stumbled backward. His hand automatically flew to his collarbone.

"What the hell?" he hissed.

The heat wasn’t coming from the environment. It was coming from his inventory!

A notification window aggressively forced itself open in his vision. It flashed a blinding and warning red.

[System Alert: Mythic Anomaly ’Tear of the Forgotten’ is resonating.]

[Warning: Containment failure imminent.]

Before Dante could even process the text, his inventory interface glitched violently.

The endless and scrolling black void of his [Band of the Void-Walker] distorted. It ripped open like wet paper.

A small pile of gray ash shot out of his chest. It completely bypassed his armor!

It was the remnants of the pendant of Lillian. It was the crystal that had shattered to save him from real-world brain death.

The ash didn’t scatter in the wind. It rapidly spun into a tight and swirling vortex of violet light.

The light intensified and grew brighter and brighter until Dante had to shield his eyes with his arm.

The swirling violet light shot forward like a bullet!

It slammed directly into the solid volcanic wall of the canyon just inches from where Dante was standing.

There was no explosion. The impact was entirely silent.

But the stone didn’t shatter. It melted.

A massive and swirling spatial rift tore open in the canyon wall.

It was ten feet tall and completely pitch black. It was rimmed with the same violent violet light that the pendant had possessed.

It looked like a wound in reality itself.

Dante stared at the rift. He was completely frozen.

The Zenith Protocol didn’t have random portals. Rifts were always tied to specific dungeon triggers, raid encounters, or high-tier quest chains.

But this wasn’t a game mechanic. This was the pendant of Lillian forcing a tear in the code of the server.

Aura materialized rapidly by the shoulder of Dante.

The tiny silver fox wasn’t floating happily. She was visibly trembling. Her three starlight tails were tucked tightly against her glowing body.

She let out a low and mournful chime. She stared directly into the black void of the rift.

Dante looked at her. "What is it? Do you know what is in there?"

Aura didn’t respond with a system prompt. She just drifted closer to Dante. Her tiny head pressed against his cheek.

He could feel a profound sorrow radiating from her digital form. It was an emotion so heavy it made his chest ache.

He looked back at the rift.

The violet light rimming the edges was pulsing in a slow and rhythmic pattern. It felt deliberate. It felt like a beacon.

Lillian had left the pendant for him two years before the game even launched. The pendant had saved his life.

And now the remnants of that pendant had torn open a hole in the world. She was leading him somewhere.

"Silas has an army sweeping the map," Dante muttered to himself. He weighed his options.

"Vespera is waiting for her flowers. The global leaderboards are probably exploding right now."

He stared into the pitch-black void.

"None of that matters," Dante decided.

He didn’t pull out a weapon. He didn’t activate a defensive skill.

He simply took a deep breath and stepped off the rocky outcropping. He walked directly into the swirling spatial rift.

The violet light flared and completely swallowed him whole.

A fraction of a second later, the rift collapsed in on itself with a sharp and static crack. It left the solid volcanic wall completely untouched.

Embercraig Canyon was empty again.

Dante didn’t hit the ground. He was falling.

The transition through the rift was completely disorienting. There was no light, no sound, and no sense of direction.

The air was freezing cold. It rushed past him at a terrifying speed.

He couldn’t tell if he was falling straight down or being pulled horizontally through a vacuum.

He tried to activate [Blink Step]. He hoped to stop his momentum or find a solid surface to anchor to.

[Skill Executed: Blink Step]

[Error: Spatial coordinates unavailable. Skill failed.]

"Great," Dante gritted his teeth. The wind roared in his ears.

He was in a completely unmapped and coordinate-free zone. The system didn’t even know where he was.

He kept falling. Minutes passed. The sheer duration of the drop was terrifying.

In the physical world, falling for this long meant he had crossed miles of empty space. He was plunging deep beneath the bedrock of the Overture server.

Just as the panic started to genuinely set in, the absolute darkness broke.

A faint violet glow appeared directly beneath him. It rapidly expanded as he accelerated toward it.

Dante braced for impact. He brought his arms up to protect his head. He fully expected to crash into solid ground at full speed.

He hit the violet glow.

There was no crash. The impact was incredibly soft. It was like landing on a massive and highly pressurized trampoline.

The violet light was a barrier. It caught him perfectly and absorbed all of his kinetic energy.

The barrier slowly lowered him the remaining fifty feet. It deposited him gently onto a smooth and cold stone floor before fading into mist.

Dante stood up. His boots clicked against the stone.

He was standing in the center of a colossal underground temple. The scale of the room was impossible.

It was larger than the entire Outpost 404 safe zone.

Massive and heavily eroded pillars stretched hundreds of feet into the darkness above. They supported a ceiling that Dante couldn’t even see.

The architecture was ancient and completely devoid of the sharp digital design of the Zenith Protocol. It looked primordial. It was carved by hands that predated the system entirely.

"Where are we?" Dante whispered. His voice echoed endlessly across the vast and empty hall.

Aura materialized next to him. Her glow cut through the darkness.

She wasn’t trembling anymore. She floated slightly ahead of Dante and looked toward the far end of the temple.

Dante followed her gaze.

At the absolute center of the room was a grand altar. It sat atop a raised circular platform of white marble.

And resting on that altar was a weapon.

Dante couldn’t clearly see the details from this distance, but he could feel it.

The weapon was radiating a dense and oppressive aura that distorted the air around it. It felt like standing near a black hole.

It wasn’t just heavy. It was gravitational. It actively pulled the light into its center.

Dante slowly walked toward the platform. His hand rested cautiously on the hilt of the [Crimson Edge].

He didn’t trust this place. It was entirely too quiet.

As he approached the steps of the white marble platform, the gravitational pull intensified.

It was a physical sensation now. It tugged at his armor and tried to drag him forward.

He climbed the steps.

Resting on the altar was a sword. It was a broadsword and similar in shape to the ones Dante preferred.

But the design was terrifying. The blade was forged from an entirely light-absorbent and jagged black metal.

It didn’t reflect anything. The edge looked jagged and unfinished. It looked like it had been violently torn from a larger piece of material.

The hilt was wrapped in what looked like dark and fossilized bone. There were three circular and empty sockets carved into the crossguard.

Dante stepped up to the altar.

The gravitational pull was almost overwhelming. It made his teeth ache.

He didn’t trigger an appraisal skill. The system interface was completely silent.

He reached out.

The moment his iron-plated fingers brushed the dark bone hilt of the sword, the world exploded!