The cold touch of Misha's fingertips from the previous night still seemed to linger on the back of his hand. Kenji sat on the edge of the bed, eyes narrowed. Footsteps echoed through the residential corridor. Even through the walls, he could sense the fortress air pulled taut with departure preparations. He tried to check his belongings, then remembered last night's conclusion. He had nothing. It was that simple. Last night, when Lina had asked through the cloth curtain, "Are you sure about your belongings?" Kenji had answered, "I'm fine." Or rather, he meant he had nothing, but Lina had taken it at face value and laughed, "Well, that's convenient then." He'd noticed her voice was forced, and he'd pretended not to notice. Stepping out into the corridor, the pre-dawn air stabbed at his cheeks. The fortress's stone walls had absorbed the night's cold thoroughly, and just walking down the hallway drained body heat gradually. The Iron Tread Plaza—a circular training ground sixty meters in diameter—was where the elite unit had gathered because it was the fastest route southwest to the Silent Forest. Lina was already there. Her water-blue bob cut looked strangely vivid in the pale dawn light. Her golden eyes sparkled as she rubbed her own arms with both hands. The face of someone enduring the cold. "You're late, Kenji," Lina Valt said. "I'm early. The bell hasn't rung yet," Sato Kenji replied. "If I got here first, then you're late," Lina Valt said. Celia stood in the center of the training ground. Her silver hair was braided high, and she wore a cloak over her combat uniform. Her ice-blue eyes glanced at Kenji once, then surveyed the entire unit. The thin sword scar on her left cheek stood out sharply in the lantern light. "We depart. Straight advance to the center of the erosion zone. Once we confirm the Void's core, we break through in one strike," Celia Astrid said. Short. Blunt to the point of being too blunt, but that very brevity spoke to the weight of this operation. --- Once inside the Silent Forest, the sound of footsteps changed. The sensation of dead leaves and soil reached through his shoe soles, and tree trunks narrowed the space left and right. Branches of giant trees exceeding thirty meters in height cut the sky into thin stripes. The deeper they went, the more sound was absorbed—the reason the forest earned its name became clear in the pre-dawn darkness. Even Kenji's own footsteps didn't echo back a few steps ahead. As they approached the outer edge of the erosion zone, the quality of the air changed completely. A blackish-purple haze thinly covered the ground, and tree roots had crystallized and hardened. When he stepped on them, they made a crunching sound. Not normal soil. Gravity wavered. "—!" Kenji gasped. The moment he took a step, his body was pulled diagonally upward. He instinctively grabbed a tree trunk to stay grounded. Beside him, Lina stumbled and grabbed his arm. Their bodies pressed together. Through her combat uniform, Lina's warmth flowed into his arm. Her breathing was fast. The fingertips of her hand on his upper arm were warm—or rather, hot. Whether she was scared or excited, probably both. He could feel her rapid pulse through the thin fabric, transmitted through the skin of his arm. There was no time to think. Gravity returned to normal. Lina released his arm and quickly moved forward. "I'll take the vanguard!" Lina Valt said. She charged forward with a brave shout—and gravity inverted. Lina's body floated weightlessly, flipping upside down in mid-air. Her golden eyes opened perfectly round, and she instinctively released her magical power. Lightning at maximum output—erupted toward the bedrock above. A deep boom resonated through his abdomen. Fragments of shattered rock rained down like precipitation. Gravity returned, and Lina fell to the ground. A heavy thud, followed by "Ow." Celia placed her hand to her forehead. She said nothing, but her silence said everything. "If that bedrock had collapsed, we'd all be dead right now," Kenji said. "Be quiet," Celia Astrid said. --- The center of the erosion zone was far worse. Gravity changed direction every three seconds. Up, diagonal, sideways—it switched randomly, and there was no stable footing. The team's formation collapsed, and one senior warrior crashed into a rock and stopped moving. Celia shouted orders to reorganize. Lina knelt on the ground, pressing both hands against stone, trying to channel her magical power to create a pseudo-gravity anchor. It was intelligent thinking, but the consumption was severe and couldn't be sustained long. Kenji remained pressed against a rock outcropping, continuously moving his precognitive sword. —The noise was terrible. Distorted space scrambled the precognitive sword's imagery, fragments flowing in as fragments. The scenery one second ahead mixed with the scenery two seconds ahead. Information like "an enemy will come here" flowed simultaneously with "gravity will change in three seconds," making it impossible to determine which to process first. (I'm not helping.) That frustration amplified the noise further. The Void Reconstructor—a polyhedron crystal exceeding ten meters in length, floating in mid-air and slowly rotating—was at the core of the erosion zone. It was on a different dimensional level from normal Voids. The distortion of spatial laws around it was this thing's doing. The core was deep within its body, constantly phase-shifted for defense. Hitting it head-on meant nothing. There was only one moment to aim for—when the defensive phase briefly deactivated. Celia knew this. She held her sword ready, timing the moment when the Reconstructor would switch the core's phase. Her ice-blue eyes calmly tracked its trajectory. Kenji found her judgment speed and courage genuinely impressive. With only that thought, he continued moving his precognitive sword. Celia stepped forward. In an instant, the Reconstructor released a spatial alteration wave. The stone floor beneath Celia's feet vanished—or rather, shifted to a different phase. Losing her support, Celia's body lost control and tilted forward. Directly ahead was the Reconstructor's crystal point. The precognitive sword shattered. It wasn't two seconds ahead. Continuous imagery from over ten seconds ahead flooded in all at once. Celia impaled on the crystal point. Silver hair soaked in blood spreading across the ground. The scar on her left cheek painted over by another wound. That worst possible outcome burned vividly into Kenji's mind. The back of his nose grew hot. His vision blurred. His knees nearly buckled. (Don't fall.) —Before falling, he screamed. It wasn't a calculated instruction. Not tactical reasoning. Pure instinct pushed a scream from his throat, shaking the distorted air of the erosion zone. "Celia, left! The rock on the left! Lina, now!" Kenji shouted. Celia reflexively rolled left. She slid into the rock's shadow. In that instant, the Reconstructor's core—for just one moment—deactivated its phase shift. Lina's lightning erupted. "Everything—fly!!" Lina Valt screamed. Maximum output. Lightning channeling all her stored magical power in a straight line pierced the Reconstructor's core. A high-pitched sound. The crystal crumbled. In the next second, the entire polyhedron shattered. The blackish-purple haze spiraled and vanished, and the distorted spatial laws—cracking and snapping—returned to their proper form. Gravity settled in the correct direction. Kenji fell to his knees. His body lost all strength. He noticed something dripping from his nose a moment later. Wiping it with the back of his hand, it was red. Running footsteps approached. Lina knelt down. Directly in front of him. Both her hands cupped his cheeks. They were warm. The same temperature as the heat he'd felt in his arm earlier—Lina's palms. With their foreheads nearly touching, Lina's golden eyes moved, trying to confirm his face. Her breath touched his cheek. The warm breath of rapid breathing, still not completely settled from the battle's exertion. "Are you alive?" Lina Valt asked. "I'm alive," Kenji replied. "Thank goodness—" Lina Valt said. Her voice cracked slightly. Kenji didn't know where to put his hands and kept them floating in the air, frozen. "Um, does a nosebleed stop naturally?" Kenji asked. Lina froze. "Are you seriously asking that right now!?" Lina Valt exclaimed. The taut air released all at once. Celia stood up from behind the rock, heard this, and narrowed her eyes for just a moment. Whether she was angry or exasperated was impossible to determine. --- Post-withdrawal treatment was completed in the medical wing, "The Chamber of Silence." While a healer tended to his nosebleed, they said bluntly, "Overusing the precognitive sword puts strain on capillaries. Don't use it to your limit." When Kenji answered that he didn't know where his limit was, they replied, "That's exactly why you exceed it." It was a fair point. As evening fell, people naturally gathered at the Soot Furnace Pavilion. The long table in the dining hall held an atmosphere mixing the lethargy after yesterday's battle with the relief of survival. The rich mushroom stew Hana had prepared steamed, its aroma simultaneously stimulating appetite and comfort. Celia pulled out a chair and sat directly across from Kenji. It was rare for the war leader, usually in the strategy room or the highest floor of the Dawn Tower, to sit in the dining hall like this. The surrounding warriors kept glancing over. Celia looked at Kenji. Her ice-blue eyes, straight on. "Today's precognitive sword exceeded our imagination," Celia Astrid said. It wasn't criticism. Nor was it gratitude. She simply stated it as fact. That was Celia's way, Kenji thought. "I could see further than usual, so I was surprised myself," Kenji replied. "It's an anomalous power. We still don't understand its true nature," Celia Astrid said. Celia's gaze fell to the stew once. "I am grateful," Celia Astrid said. She added it quietly. Kenji paused for a moment before trying to respond with "You're welcome," but Celia had already looked away, so he stayed silent. Then Misha arrived late. She gathered her long silver-white hair loosely and sat quietly beside Kenji, her white robes trailing. Her clouded eyes didn't reflect light, but her expression was serene. That stillness—perceiving surroundings through senses other than sight—permeated the air. "You returned safely," Misha Arcadia said. She spoke in her slow voice. "Well, yes," Kenji replied. "What you saw today may not have been mere foresight. The branching points of possibility became visible more deeply—that was the moment your gift touched the world's laws," Misha Arcadia said. She spoke gently but with certain weight. "However, if you push yourself—next time you may not return," Misha Arcadia said. As she spoke, Misha's cold, slender fingertips touched the back of Kenji's hand for just an instant. Then withdrew. The sensation overlapped with the touch he'd felt in the Chamber of Silence the previous night. The cold fingers, and the body heat beneath them. Such a brief contact, yet his hand's skin remembered it. Something stirred quietly in his chest. —In that moment, Lina crashed in from the side with her whole body. "Wait just a minute!" Lina Valt said. Her expression was serious. "I think I had the right to hug you before Misha did," Lina Valt said. No one said anything. Lina executed her claim. She threw herself at Kenji's shoulders, burying her face. Her water-blue bob tickled his neck. Through her thin combat uniform, a rapid pulse transmitted. The fast heartbeat from the battle's exertion still hadn't completely settled. "Please don't do anything reckless anymore," Lina Valt said. Her voice trembled slightly. The same tremor as her "Are you alive?" on the battlefield. Kenji kept his hands floating in the air, not knowi