Ryu walked.

There was no telling how long he had been moving. The sky above hadn’t changed, it was not brighter, and not darker. The terrain remained just as barren as before. The only thing he had to mark progress was his own movement and the faint imprint of his methodical reasoning.

But even that was strange. As if every moment was the same, he was there at once, but now he is here, also at the same time.

He could still keep track but it is still hard.

This wasn’t an ordinary place. That much was already clear. The dust reset itself. The environment was too precise, too deliberate in its uniformity. Everything followed a pattern.

Except for the formation, that is.

The structure he had found had been the first inconsistency—the first thing that didn’t fit the rest of the landscape. And anomalies weren’t random. That meant there had to be more.

And he was right.

Ahead, another dark structure rose from the pale ground.

But this one wasn’t the same.

As he drew closer, details emrged. Unlike the first formation, which had been intact and untouched, this one was damaged. A massive fracture split through its surface, jagged and deep, as if something had torn through it.

Ryu slowed his steps.

The air wasn’t different. No lingering energy, no unnatural force pressing against his skin. Whatever had done this, it wasn’t recent.

His gaze moved lower.

The ground around the formation was different as well. The dust was disturbed.

This was new.

He had already confirmed that the terrain reset itself. No footprints. No trails left ehind. Yet here, something had broken the cycle. The layer of dust that should have settled smoothly over time was marked with deep gouges, as if something had been dragged across the surface.

He crouched, inspecting the patterns.

The indentations weren’t shaped like footprints, nor were they the result of something collapsing naturally. They were deliberate. The lines were long, uneven in force, but consistent in direction.

Something had been moved.

Or someone.

He ran his fingers across the ground, testing the depth of the grooves. They were shallow at first, but further away from the structure, they deepened. Whoever, or whatever, had been dragged here had struggled. That much was clear.

And so, his thoughts moved methodically.

‘Something had damaged it long ago, but how long? There was no weathering, meaning it adn’t been left for centuries. And the reset effect hadn’t erased these marks. Either the phenomenon didn’t affect this location for some reason, or the disturbance was more recent than the last reset.’

He wanted answers. But he would very much like if it was the former.

‘And if the gouges in the ground were a struggle, that meant something had been taken.’

And with that, Ryu stood, scanning the surroundings.

There was no body. No remains. Nothing to indicate where whoever had been here had gone. The only direction was the path left behind.

And paths existed for one reason, of course.

And that was to be followed.

He took a step forward. Then another. The gouges led away from the formation, stretching further into the landscape. His pace remained steady, tracking the depth of the indentations, checking for any signs of an endpoint.

And then, after a few dozen meters, they simply stopped.

Ryu halted.

The disturbance cut off abruptly. No fading, no gradual disappearance, it quite literally just ended.

His eyes moved across the area, scanning for anything out of place. There was nothing. The dust in front of the final gouge was smooth, untouched.

It was as if whatever had been moved had simply vanished.

His thoughts sharpened.

Either the reset effect had activated selectively. And so that meant this place was controlled, not random.

Or, something had forcibly removed whatever was here in an unnatural way. And so that probably meant the laws of physics here were not consistent. If there were any.

Neither answer was good.

He stood motionless for a moment, processing. There was nothing else to examine here, nothing new to analyze. He renewed his options and he coincidentally had two as well:

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Stay and keep testing the area.

Or continue moving and find another anomaly.

The first option would yield nothing unless the world reacted to him.

The second option meant risking stepping into something unknown. Maybe even into whatever had caused this.

‘I would not want that, haha.’

But standing still wasn’t an answer.

‘I hate my life.’

He adjusted his stance and kept walking.

As he moved, he took note of his surroundings. The terrain hadn’t shifted yet. No new distortions. But e was aware now, that if things could disappear without a trace, then the environment itself could not be trusted. Who knows? He could be reset himself along with the dust or whatever happened.

He would not be caught off guard.

Ryu wasn’t sure where he was going. But he was certain he would find something soon.

And when he did, he would be ready.

Ryu continued forward, following the path even though it no longer existed.

The gouges in the dust had stopped abruptly, but that didn’t mean the disturbance had truly ended.

He adusted his method. Instead of tracking the marks directly, he studied the terrain itself. If something had been moved, if something had been taken, then the environment would show secondary effects.

He examined the dust first.

Unlike before, it wasn’t just smooth—it was undisturbed at an unnatural level.

Not a single imperfection.

Even his own movement wasn’t affecting it. His boots pressed against the surface, yet when he stepped back, there was nothing—no impression, no trace.

That meant one of two things.

That the reset effect was actively removing any disturbances. And so, if that was the case, then the reset was not immediate, but selective. Meaning that it chose when to remove changes.

Or, a really wild idea that the terrain was not real.

The ground was visible, solid beneath his feet, but if nothing could mark it, was it truly there?

The first possibility meant something was controlling how the world behaved. And the second possibility meant he was walking on an illusion of the sorts.

Of course, neither answer gave him a reason to stop.

He tested further, kneeling to scoop a handful of dust into his palm. This was the first time he had actually held it, rather than just walking over it.

It was fine-grained, softer than sand, but heavier. He let it fall slowly between his fingers, watching the way it scattered.

It did not behave naturally.

Instead of dispersing in random patterns like dust would in any normal environment, the grains settled perfectly evenly back onto the ground.

Ryu straightened.

‘So it isn’t just resetting? But behaving by some sort of design.’

He took a slow step backward, then forward again, watching closely. The same thing happened. His foot pressed down, but when he moved, there was no trace of disturbance.

No natural environment would do this. Of course this world was not natural at all, but it still had a up and down, and it still had a path forward and a path backwards.

But this meant this wasn’t an environment.

It was something.. constructed.

The realization didn’t change his approach. He still had no working theory on what this place was, how he had arrived, or what governed its rules. But now he had confirmation of something critical.

This world was artificial. Going back to his illusion theory, it seemed a little more correct in his mind.

That didn’t mean fabricated in a way that implied a false reality, but engineered. And so, maintained.

And that was useful information.

—

Now that he had confirmed the dust’s properties, he turned back toward the broken formation.

There were two formations so far—one intact, one damaged. The first one had left no visible signs of interference. This one had.

And that meant this one was more valuable.

Why? Unlike the other formation, which had been smooth and untarnished, this one was rough and uneven where it had broken.

The damage was not natural erosion.

Something had struck it.

Or something had torn itself away.

Ryu approached it.

Ryu focused on the fracture, analyzing the way the cracks spread outward. Damage from impact usually left radial stress lines from the point of force.

But these fractures traveled in reverse. Instead of breaking inward, as if something had hit it, the cracks pulled outward.

Like something inside the structure had forced its way free.

Because that meant this wasn’t just a waypoint like he had thought. but that the structure hadn’t simply existed here passively.

It had contained something.

He tapped a knuckle against the broken surface, listening to the sound. Still dense. Still solid. No hollow chamber inside. So where had it been?

It wasn’t stored within the rock itself. That was certain.

It had been part of the structure. Or bound to it.

The first structure had been whole. Intact. It had still been serving its purpose.

This one had failed.

That meant at least one thing had changed since these formations were made—something had been freed.

The gouges in the ground. The missing presence. The structure being compromised.

The three variables connected. But without more evidence, he couldn’t yet conclude how.

Ryu took a step back, scanning the surroundings once again. If something had been bound to this place—if something had been removed from it—then there should have been signs of what took its place.

He turned his focus to the air itself.

—

For the first time since arriving, he tested his sense of pressure.

Wind didn’t move here, but that didn’t mean air was static. In most environments, even the stillest places had a weight to them. Humidity. Temperature shifts. Subtle currents.

Here, there was nothing.

He exhaled slowly, adjusting his stance.

Stillness wasn’t true stillness if something had created it.

That was when he noticed it.

A shift in the atmosphere itself. Something was off by the broken structure. But it wasn’t a visible effect. It wasn’t energy in any mystical sense. It was purely environmental.

There was a pressure void.

In normal conditions, places with no airflow still had atmospheric weight. The air molecules still existed, still pressed against surfaces. And here? There was an absence. A lack of force.

Like something had displaced the air around the fracture.

Or rather—like something had occupied that space and was no longer there.

The air had not refilled it.

It had been some time since this structure was broken, yet the space it left behind hadn’t equalized.

Ryu took a slow step closer.

There was no distortion in vision, no flickering of space. But standing exactly at the center of the damaged structure, where the fractures met—

He felt the difference.

It wasn’t cold.

It wasn’t warm.

It was absence.

Something should have been here.

And it wasn’t

He turned, exhaling. His mind worked through the evidence again.

- The intact formation still had its presence.

- The broken formation did not.

- The world remembered that something had been here, but had not adjusted to its removal.

Meaning this wasn’t a normal absence.

Meaning whatever had been here had not just left.

It had been erased.

And if something could be erased, then it meant—

Something had the power to remove things from this world entirely.

And that was another problem, as if Ryu did not have enough problems at his hands.

Ryu’s gaze moved back to the broken stone one last time.

Then he turned away.

The first structure had been whole. This one had been broken.

Now he needed to find a third.

A pattern couldn’t be identified from just two points.

But three?

Three would tell him everything. At least he hoped it would.

He didn’t dare go back to the first one, though. He did not know what was imprisoned there, but he would not want to find out.

And if this was a sequence instead of an isolated event, then there was only one thing left to do.

He started walking.

And Ryu had started hating walking.