The transport vehicle was a reinforced all-terrain truck designed for breach zone operations, with thick armour plating and windows that could probably stop a rifle round. Colonel Martinez sat in the passenger seat while a young Concordat driver navigated the rough terrain leading toward their destination. Erel and Lyra occupied the back seats, their gear secured in the cargo compartment.
The morning sun cast long shadows across the corrupted landscape as they drove deeper into the breach zone. Here, the Imaginarium's influence was more pronounced; trees twisted into impossible spirals, patches of grass that glowed faintly purple in the daylight, and rock formations that seemed to shift.
"Planes have been growing more frequent lately," Martinez said, breaking the comfortable silence. Her voice carried the weight of someone who'd seen too much. "We've detected seventeen new formations, mostly cracks and breaches, in the past two months alone. Most of them are manageable, but the pattern is concerning."
She turned slightly to address them. "I heard there was even one that opened in Seoul recently. Can you imagine? A breach forming inside a sovereign zone. That's not supposed to be possible with the little Imaginarium levels there."
Erel felt his stomach drop. His eyes immediately found Lyra, who gave him the slightest shake of her head; a clear signal to keep his mouth shut. But inside, his mind was racing. They're talking about the plane I was in. The Bluebeard plane.
Lyra…
I see, she is hiding something.
"Yeah, I heard something about that," Lyra said casually, leaning forward slightly. "Do you know what happened exactly? I mean, for a breach to form inside a sovereign zone..."
Martinez's expression grew sombre. "We sent two of our best. Stone—he was Tier 2; I knew him personally. Good man, reliable. And there was also a famous detective, not with the concordat, a volunteer, I suppose; nevertheless, she was experienced."
She paused, watching the twisted landscape roll past. "Both of them died inside. The plane resolved somehow, but we never found out how. No survivors, no reports, nothing. One minute they entered, and then the next morning, when officials went to check up on the plane, it was gone along with any traces of the two."
Wait, what? Erel's mind went completely blank for a moment. Stone and the detective, Grey... But that doesn't make sense. Adren was there too. And West. Were they not human? Were they constructs?
But that wasn't possible. Adren had been too real, too human. The way he'd talked about everything, his fears, and his determination to get back to his sister. No construct could simulate that level of emotional complexity.
"Only two humans?" Lyra asked, her tone carefully neutral.
"Yeah, the plane had a capacity of two entrants," Martinez replied. "That's standard for most Tier 2 formations. The Imaginarium seems to have its own rules about how many people it allows inside."
"Capacity?" Erel found himself asking before he could stop himself.
Martinez looked back at him. "Every plane has a range of Anomalites that are allowed to enter. It can be measured using an Ammeter, a device that picks up Imaginarium signals and translates them into comprehensible data. The one we're heading to now has a range of two to four entrants."
Erel felt like the world was spinning. He'd entered a plane with a capacity of two people. If Stone and Grey were the official entrants, and if Adren and West weren't constructs, then how the hell had he gotten in? Nothing about his experience in that plane made sense anymore.
First, he'd somehow entered a plane without any memory of how he'd gotten there. He'd just woken up in that twisted carriage with no recollection of the decision to enter. And now this—learning that the plane was supposedly restricted to two people when there had clearly been more.
Adren couldn't have been a construct. He had been too real, too genuinely concerned for his sister. Constructs, they don't sacrifice themselves to save others.
And then there was all the stuff he said about Mira.
"Everything alright back there?" Martinez asked, noticing his silence.
"Yeah, just nerves before the mission," Erel managed to say.
Lyra was studying him with obvious confusion, but continued to gesture subtly for him to stay quiet. She clearly didn't understand what had happened in the plane, but she trusted him enough not to press the issue in front of the Colonel.
The landscape outside continued to shift and change as they drove deeper into the breach zone. The corruption here was more advanced than anything Erel had seen during his travels with Lyra. Entire sections of forest had been transformed into crystalline structures that chimed softly in the wind. A lake they passed glowed with bioluminescent algae that formed shifting patterns on its surface.
"How long have you been stationed out here?" Lyra asked, probably trying to fill the awkward silence.
"Three years," Martinez replied. "Transferred from the Tokyo command when they started expanding operations in this sector. It's been... educational. You learn things about the Imaginarium that you can't get from reports and briefings."
She gestured toward a distant mountain peak that seemed to be floating several meters above where it should have been. "Like how it doesn't just change things randomly. There's a pattern to it, a logic that we're only beginning to understand. Each plane, each entity follows rules, even if those rules don't make sense to us."
The truck hit a particularly rough patch of road, and everyone grabbed for handholds as they bounced through what used to be a small town. The buildings here had been transformed into something that looked almost organic walls that curved like ribs, windows that pulsed with soft light, rooftops covered in what might have been scales or feathers.
"Jesus," the driver muttered. "This sector gets weirder every time we come through."
"You get used to it," Martinez said. "The important thing is not to stare too long at anything that moves when it shouldn't, and don't touch anything that glows unless you're wearing full protection gear."
Erel barely heard her. His mind was still stuck on the revelation about the Seoul breach. If Stone and Grey were the only official entrants, and if Adren and West weren't constructs, then what did that make them? Had they somehow entered illegally? Was that even possible?
More importantly, how had he entered? He remembered waking up in that carriage with no memory of passing through the breach, no understanding of what was happening.
"We're about ten minutes out," the driver announced.
Martinez began checking her equipment and reviewing her tablet. "Standard operating procedure once we reach the breach point. You'll have a thirty-minute window to enter after we arrive. If you survive, hoping that you do, call for us using the beacon."
"Understood," Lyra said.
"Beacon protocols are simple," Martinez continued. "If you need extraction, activate the beacon and we'll have a team to you within six hours. If you complete the mission successfully, exit the plane and activate the success signal. We'll have transport waiting."
She looked at them seriously. "And if you die in there, well, we will probably know once the entities come crawling out."
Such a cheerful woman, Erel thought grimly.
The truck slowed as they approached their destination. Through the armored windows, Erel could see what looked like a shimmering distortion in the air above a small valley. The breach was subtle compared to some he'd seen, just a barely visible wavering that hurt to look at directly.
It's just like the Bluebeard one. Only this time, I am still on the other side.
"There she is," Martinez said.
They came to a stop about fifty meters from the breach point. The driver kept the engine running while Martinez gathered her gear and prepared to oversee their entry.
"Last chance for questions," she said as they climbed out of the truck.
"What are the stability readings for it?"
Lyra asked, looking at the shimmering crack that seemed to float beyond them, dissecting the very reality they knew before them.
Unlike the tier of the plane, each plane also came with its stability rating. An Alpha plane, much like the Bluebeard plane, had its own set of internal rules and had constructs that acted in a way to enforce them, generally prioritising mental navigation. Then there were Beta planes, which provided autonomy in exchange for usually pitting you against entities.
There were two more as well, very rare, yet they existed. Gamma planes, the ones that had you play the role of a predetermined entity, and Omega planes, where multiple myths interacted against each other, creating unprecedented outcomes and tales.
"It seems to be a Beta plane. You can expect direct combat with entities."
Turning to look at Erel, Martinez now looked at him questioningly.
Erel looked at the breach, then at Lyra, then back at the shimmering distortion that would soon swallow them whole. His mind was still reeling from everything he'd learned during the ride, but there would be time to process it later. Right now, he needed to focus on the mission ahead.
"No questions," he said.
"Good luck in there," Martinez said, extending her hand for a final handshake. "Try not to die. Paperwork is a nightmare when contractors get killed on our watch."
Erel shook her hand, then followed Lyra toward the breach. The air around the distortion felt charged, like the moment before a lightning strike. His serpent responded to the proximity, thrumming with anticipation as the tattoo heated.
"Ready?" Lyra asked, pausing at the edge of the effect.
No, Erel thought. I'm not ready. I don't understand what happened in the last plane, I don't understand how any of this works, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing something crucial that I have no idea about.
"Ready," he said aloud.
They stepped forward together, and the world dissolved into a swirling mist of darkness and light intertwined against each other.
The transition hit like walking into a wall of cold, wet air. One second they were looking at that weird shimmer in the valley, the next Erel was stumbling forward into an alley that made his nose wrinkle in disgust. The smell hit him first - piss, coal smoke, rotting garbage, and something else he couldn't identify but definitely didn't want to.
His boots hit wet cobblestones with a splash, and he nearly went down when his foot slipped on something slimy. The alley was narrow, maybe six feet across, with tall brick buildings pressing in on both sides like they were trying to squeeze the life out of anyone stupid enough to walk between them. The walls were black with soot and grime, streaked with moisture that dripped steadily from broken gutters overhead.
Jesus, this place is depressing, Erel thought, looking around. Gas lamps flickered weakly at the far end of the alley, their yellow light barely strong enough to show the outline of the street beyond. Everything felt cramped and suffocating, like the whole city had been built without any thought for the people who'd have to live in it.
He could hear the sounds of the city in the distance - horses clopping on stone, carriage wheels rattling, voices calling out in accents he could barely understand. The whole place felt alive but in a grimy, desperate kind of way.
"Why did you gesture for me to stay quiet back there?" he asked Lyra, keeping his voice low, looking around the alley with a face scrunched in disgust. Water dripped from somewhere above them, landing on his shoulder with a cold splat. "What are you hiding from me?"
Lyra was scanning the alley, her hand resting on her knife hilt. She looked tense, like she expected something to jump out at them any second. "There's too much we don't know about your experience with that plane," she said finally. "It's best to stay hidden for now and not unnecessarily create a target on our backs from the Concordat."
"Hidden?" Erel felt his frustration boiling over. "Lyra, what the hell is going on? None of this makes sense."
She turned to face him, and he could see the concern in her eyes even in the dim light. "What exactly do you remember about entering that first plane?"
"That's just it; I don't remember entering it at all." The words came out harsher than he intended. "I woke up in that carriage with no idea how I got there. One minute I was in Seoul, the next I was lying inside it."
And now I find out two of those people were supposed to be the only ones there. What does that make the rest of us? Ghosts?
"It doesn't make sense," he continued, pacing the narrow space between the walls. "There were more humans in that plane, especially Adren. That man was real, Lyra. He talked about his sister, about wanting to get home to her. He literally died choosing our survival over his own. What construct would do that? What construct could fake that kind of emotion?"
Lyra was quiet for a long moment, studying his face. "If there was a two-person capacity, and if the concordat already had sent two as the official entrants, then how were you able to enter? And without any recollection of how you got there?"
"That's what I've been trying to figure out." Erel felt a chill that had nothing to do with the damp city air. "Every plane has rules about who can enter. But somehow I broke those rules without even knowing it."
"Or something else broke them for you," Lyra said quietly.
That thought had occurred to him, too, and it scared the hell out of him. What if his presence in that plane hadn't been an accident? What if something had specifically wanted him there?
Lyra stepped closer, and he could see the worry clearly written on her face now. "Erel, planes don't just randomly pull people in. The Imaginarium operates on specific rules, even if we don't understand all of them. If you were brought into that plane against its normal parameters..."
She trailed off, but he could fill in the blanks. Someone or something had wanted him there specifically. The question was who, and why.
The alley suddenly felt even more oppressive than before. Erel looked up at the narrow strip of gray sky visible between the buildings. "So, what do we do?"
Lyra reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Her touch was warm, reassuring in a way he hadn't expected. "Don't worry. We'll find answers, one step at a time. But we have to be careful about who we trust with this information. If the Concordat thinks you're some kind of anomaly..."
"They might decide I'm too dangerous to leave alone," Erel finished.
"Exactly." She squeezed his shoulder gently. "For now, we have a plane to solve. We focus on it, complete the mission, and then we can dig deeper into what happened to you."
One step at a time, he repeated to himself. But God, I hate not knowing what's going on.
The conversation was interrupted by a sound that made them both freeze; a scream cutting through the air like a knife. It was high-pitched, desperate, and absolutely blood-curdling. The kind of scream that spoke of terror beyond anything a human throat should be able to produce.
It came from somewhere deeper in the maze of alleys, echoing off the brick walls in a way that made it impossible to pinpoint the exact location. But it was close. Too close.