The roar faded in layers—first the world-ending crack that had shaken her bones, then the rolling thunder that chased it, then the smaller noises that should have been ordinary but weren’t. Sand still rained down in weak, gritty curtains, tapping her armor like impatient fingers. Heat shimmered above the glass-smooth craters, and the air carried a bitter, scorched smell that made every breath taste like burned metal and dust.

  Rize knelt in the churned sand, her sword planted like a cane because her legs refused to be legs anymore. The blade trembled under her hand, not from the wind, but from the way her whole body wouldn’t stop shaking. Her ears rang with a thin, shrill note that flattened everything else, and the desert looked slightly unreal, edges wavering as if the world itself couldn’t decide what shape to hold.

  She tried to lift her head, and the motion dragged nausea up her throat. The crater ahead still smoked at the rim, and the sand around it had fused into warped glass that caught the sun in hard, cruel highlights. There was no chitin left, no blood, no twitching leg—only absence where the magical beast had been, as if it had been erased rather than killed.

  Rize swallowed, and it felt like swallowing sandpaper. Is it… gone? The thought should have brought relief, but her mind lagged, stuck in the moment the shadow had covered her and the mandibles had opened. Her heart still beat like she was running, and her muscles still braced for impact.

  A gust rolled through, hollow and dry, and it scraped the last clinging dust off her cheek. Her eyes stung, tears gathering not from emotion at first, but from grit lodged under her lashes. Then the tremble in her chest shifted, became something else, and the tears turned warm and real before the heat could dry them.

  “Rize! Are you okay!” The voice cut through the ringing in her ears like a blade through cloth, familiar enough that her brain refused to accept it at first. The sound wasn’t carried by wind or bounced off stone—there were no walls to echo in a desert. It was there anyway, close and urgent, the way it had always sounded when Yu forgot to hide his worry.

  Her eyes flew open wider, and her throat tightened until the next breath caught. The world didn’t change, but the emptiness inside it did. That’s not a memory, something in her insisted, fierce and shaking. That’s him.

  “Yu…!” The name cracked out of her, ragged and hoarse, but it landed solid in her own ears. She dug her fingers into the sword hilt until her knuckles went white, needing the pain to prove she wasn’t dreaming. Tears blurred the desert into gold smears again, and she didn’t care.

  She couldn’t see him, couldn’t feel a body nearby, couldn’t even point to where the voice had come from. But her chest knew, deep and absolute, the way it knew hunger and cold. The promise hadn’t faded into illusion after all.

  ?

  Yu’s smartphone vibrated against the hard surface of the desk, a sharp buzzing that felt too loud in his cramped room. The screen lit up with a cold rectangle of white-blue, and the notification sat there like a dropped coin—small, bright, unavoidable. He had tossed the phone aside earlier like he could discard the world with it, but it refused to be discarded.

  “It’s happening. They say the orbital satellite is armed.” The message was from Harukawa, and the bluntness of it made Yu’s eyebrows pinch together. He grabbed the phone, fingers still tacky with cold sweat, and the glass felt strangely chilled compared to the fever heat building behind his eyes. The lock screen reflected his face for half a second—pale, drawn, not sleeping enough—before the news broadcast filled it.

  The footage was grainy, probably deliberately so, a drifting dot in orbit captured in careful angles that showed nothing and suggested everything. An emotionless commentator repeated sterile phrases like “intercept capability,” “national defense,” and “top-secret development,” each word smoothed flat until it stopped sounding like a human choice. The satellite looked harmless on-screen, just a speck against a black void, but Yu felt a wrongness in it the same way he felt wrongness in the other world’s systems—an edge of intent.

  “Doing it again, huh.” Yu’s voice came out low, scraped by fatigue and irritation. “Humans always weaponize the sky.” His thumb hovered over the power button, the instinct to turn it off and pretend it didn’t matter rising hard. He almost did.

  Then an image flashed behind his eyes—white light, a sense of being seized by something that didn’t care about his body, the pressure of [Bind] wrapping around reality like a hand. And then Rize’s figure, alone in a desert that didn’t belong to her, sword raised against something he couldn’t touch. His stomach dropped, and his breath hitched as if the room had tilted.

  “Wait… could it be…” The words fell out as a dry rasp, and the fragments in his head started to click into alignment with sickening speed. The Returner’s voice surfaced from memory, calm and infuriating: Don’t let form trap you. Mamiya’s lecture threaded through it, clinical and impossible: Mana can be translated into data.

  Yu exhaled, slow and deliberate, the way you do right before diving underwater. He thrust both hands forward into the empty air of his room, palms spread as if he could grab something invisible and pull. The space looked clear—cheap wallpaper, a humming fluorescent light, a cluttered desk with homework he’d stopped pretending to do. But to his eyes now, it wasn’t empty.

  “I have to do it.” His voice steadied on the last word, not because he was calm, but because panic had hardened into resolve. He focused on his fingertips and held an image in his mind: a tiny hole, a “Door,” the same small tear he had forced open before. Reality bent faintly, like glass under pressure, and something heavy and viscous seeped into his world.

  Mana. Yu couldn’t see it the way he saw light, but he felt it. The air grew thicker, charged with static that made his arm hairs lift. The room’s hum changed pitch, just slightly, as if the very frequency of the space had been nudged. The edge of a notebook page fluttered though the window was shut.

  “It’s coming in…” Yu regulated his breathing and did it again. A small door, a careful pull, a measured draw, like siphoning liquid from a tank that wasn’t supposed to exist. Once wasn’t enough, and he knew it the way you know one cup of water won’t put out a house fire.

  Again. And again. With each pull, the atmosphere transformed further. The fluorescent light overhead seemed to bend at the edges, casting warped shadows that didn’t match the objects making them. The corners of the room looked too deep, like they had extra distance stuffed inside. It was subtle enough that a normal person would call it eyestrain. Yu wasn’t normal anymore.

  “Gkh…!” Pain knifed through his temples, sudden and bright. He pressed a hand to his forehead and found cold sweat beading instantly, sliding down his face in thin trails. Nausea surged up hard enough that his throat tightened, and his knees trembled as if his body was trying to fold away from what he was forcing it to hold.

  “Hah… it’s coming after all…” The words were half laugh, half wheeze. The more he handled mana, the more his body rejected it, like a vessel that had never been built to carry this kind of pressure. A human from a mana-less world was a cheap container for something that wanted to flood.

  Yu bit his lip until he tasted iron and forced his focus deeper. The sensation in his fingertips expanded, spreading into his palms, then up his wrists like a living current. Mana buzzed within his hands, barely maintaining shape under sheer will, and the vibration felt both powerful and wrong—like gripping a live wire with wet skin.

  His vision blurred, edges darkening as if someone had turned down the brightness of the world. The floor swayed beneath him, a slow roll like standing on a ship deck. He didn’t stop.

  “Rize…” He breathed her name into the thick air, and the moment he did, the shaking in his sight steadied just a fraction, as if his mind had found a point to lock onto. His chest burned, and the burn felt good because it meant he still cared enough to hurt.

  “I’ll protect her… with this power…” His nose went hot, pressure building behind it like a warning. A drop fell. Drip. Red hit the floor and spread in a small, ugly stain. Yu didn’t wipe it. He didn’t even blink. If I collapse, if I’m crushed, fine. One purpose mattered more than the rest.

  ?

  Yu kept filling his room with mana until the pressure felt suffocating, until breathing became work because the air had weight now. Transparency was gone; the space shimmered like summer heat over asphalt, and the world looked like it had a thin layer of distortion wrapped around it. His desk lamp haloed strangely, light bending as though passing through water.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He clenched his palm, conscious of the flow converging there. The mana gathering in his hand trembled like a compressed mass of liquid, dense enough that he could almost imagine it sloshing if he moved wrong. His fingers cramped from holding an invisible shape in place, joints aching as if he’d been gripping a barbell too long.

  “One more step.” His voice was thin but stubborn. “I can do it.” He shifted his gaze to the smartphone, the news image of the orbital satellite burned into his mind like a target. He built an image of touching it with his senses, bridging thousands of kilometers through nothing but intent and [Bind.] From his room to space—an absurd line to draw, except absurdity had stopped mattering. Yu thrust his palm forward and concentrated.

  [Bind.] A small hole opened again, the air in front of his hand dimpling like fabric pulled tight. This time, he didn’t pull mana into his world. He pushed—sending mana outward, forcing it toward the universe of his own reality. The sensation was like pressing against a door that didn’t want to open, shoulders and spine bracing even though the resistance wasn’t physical.

  “Ngh!” His vision swayed violently, and the room lurched hard enough that he had to widen his stance to keep from falling. Blood streamed from his nose, warm and relentless, pattering onto the floor in quick drops that made the red stain widen. Nausea and chills slammed him at once, and his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.

  Beyond that price, something connected. Pitch-black space pressed against his mind like a cold hand. The presence of the drifting satellite came through as a faint, alien pressure, not sight but awareness—mass, movement, orbit. Yu’s breath shuddered out, equal parts triumph and terror.

  “I see it.” The words came out reverent despite him. He twisted his palm and widened the hole, forcing the Door’s edges to stretch. On one side was Earth’s vacuum, on the other side was the other world’s void—two emptinesses stitched together by his will.

  Transfer. In the next moment, the mass of an artificial object passed through without a sound. No wind, no boom, no cinematic crash—just a shift in the pressure behind his eyes as the satellite was sucked into the other world’s orbit. In silence with no gravity or air, that steel shadow began to trace a new path around a different planet, a stolen star re-homed.

  “I did it…” Yu’s mutter was hoarse and shaking. The headache intensified until it felt like someone was splitting his skull with a wedge, and the edges of his vision collapsed into a dark vignette. He forced his trembling fingertips to close the Door, sealing the tear with a final, shuddering push.

  Yu leaned his back against the chair and breathed roughly, chest heaving in the thickened air. “Transfer… complete…” Fatigue and nausea weighed on his limbs like soaked cloth, dragging him down. But deep inside, beneath the pain, there was a sharp, definite elation. He had stolen a weapon from the sky. And with it—he could protect her.

  ?

  Immediately after moving the satellite into the other world’s orbit, Yu stared at his hand as if looking away would make the thing disappear. He bundled the flow of mana thinly, like pulling thread from a spool, and extended his consciousness along it. He was using the observation theory of EWS in reverse—turning a mechanism that usually showed him things into one that grasped.

  “[Bind]… connect.” The words were soft, and the moment he said them a cold current ran deep in his head, a sudden chill that made his scalp prickle. Information floated at the edge of his vision like blueprints surfacing through fog: encryption keys, admin privileges, system architecture. The satellite’s inside unfolded to him as if he had built it with his own hands.

  “What… is this…?” Yu’s voice trembled, and a sick thrill crawled up his spine. Understanding arrived too fast, too clean, too absolute. The data redefined the satellite from a lump of metal into a catalog of violence. High-output lasers. Electronic warfare systems. And—ballistic missiles.

  “Did I… get my hands on a weapon?” The question tasted bitter, but the answer was already branded into his mind. What he held now was power that could erase a city, not in a fantasy battle, not in a game, but in the blunt arithmetic of physics and fire. The names he’d only heard in movies drilled into his brain as reality, each parameter like a nail.

  “What have I done… I…!” His fingers twitched as if he could drop it, as if letting go would undo the theft. Reason screamed alarms in the back of his skull, every moral line he’d grown up with flaring hot.

  Then Rize’s face rose in his mind, not smiling, not safe—Rize trapped, Rize swallowed by sand, Rize calling his name like a drowning person. I want to protect her…! The guilt and fear were painted over in an instant by something hotter. Yu’s heart raged, and the burn in his chest became a furnace. If the world demanded a weapon to keep her from being taken again, then he would become the kind of person who held one.

  “I… to protect her…!” Yu forced the words out like a vow and used that vow as armor. With trembling fingertips, he accessed the satellite’s armament authority, stepping over a line he could feel under his feet. One of the displays in his mind—an abstract interface made of logic and permission—switched quietly.

  Unlock—Preparation Complete. Yu breathed roughly, shoulders curling as he collapsed onto the desk. His nosebleed dripped onto his notebook, spreading a red stain across unfinished homework. The sight should have grounded him, reminded him he was still a kid in a small room. It didn’t.

  “With this…” he whispered, voice more desperate than confident, “I won’t let Rize be taken away.” The words sounded like something he needed to believe rather than something he knew.

  ?

  On the smartphone screen, the EWS app displayed Claval’s channel in crisp, vivid motion that felt wrong compared to the dimness of Yu’s room. The interface flickered once as if struggling to stabilize under the pressure in the air, then locked in. Claval stood in a desert with silver hair whipping in the wind, explaining in an easy, arrogant tone that this was a kingdom order—subjugation of a “Mighty Magical Beast” that had appeared in the sands.

  The stream captured everything: the heat shimmer, the way sand skated across the surface like living skin, the harsh light flattening shadows. Yu stared so hard his eyes hurt, absorbing every frame as if watching could become touching. Mana buzzed faintly in his fingertips, answering the broadcast like a nervous animal.

  “That beast… looks tough…” Yu muttered, and the words came out as a strained breath. His head throbbed, a steady pulse behind his eyes, but he didn’t look away. Then the edge of the video showed another figure, and Yu’s chest was gouged open.

  “Rize… why…!” The name tore out of him like a raw sound. There she was—left behind in the raging desert, desperately readying her sword. He could see the tremor of sand at her feet, the subtle bulge that meant something was coming from underground. He could see her stance—the way she tried to plant in shifting ground, the way her shoulders lifted with forced breath.

  Yu’s vision narrowed until there was only her. If I shoot now, I’ll make it. The thought was brutal and immediate, and it slid into place like a weapon being loaded. Pain constricted his head, warm liquid ran from his nose again, and his body wavered on the edge of exceeding its limit. But the satellite in the other world’s orbit was connected by his [Bind], tethered to his will through mana.

  Yu gritted his teeth and controlled it as if crushing it through his hands, aligning targeting data to coordinates over the desert. The act made his stomach twist, like his body knew he was forcing something too big through too small a vessel. The room’s light bent again, shadows warping across the wall as the mana flow spiked.

  “FIRE!!” Yu shouted the command with the last strength he had, and the word wasn’t fantasy. It was permission, authority, action. The ballistic missile released from orbit, tearing through atmosphere toward the desert.

  As Yu watched the sequence to impact—telemetry blooming across the EWS interface like cold, precise flowers—another voice reached him through the stream, thin and trembling, prayer-shaped.

  “Yu… help me… Please help me!” The plea pierced straight through the rage and lodged in his chest like glass. Yu’s teeth clenched hard enough to ache, and he tasted blood again, not sure if it was his nose or his lip.

  “Make it in time…!” he whispered, and the words shook. His vision wavered, edges darkening, but the screen flared brilliant as impact confirmed. A pillar of light descended in the broadcast, so bright it flooded Yu’s room through the phone’s small display. The shockwave didn’t reach him physically, but the recoil did—his head splitting, his stomach heaving, his hands going numb. He didn’t look away.

  ?

  By the time the roar and the remnants of the flash finally subsided, the desert was wrapped in an unnatural silence. Scorched sand still smoked, heat rising in visible waves from the glassy crater. The air tasted burned, and the wind that passed through carried a dry, hollow sound like breath through bone.

  Rize knelt, using her sword as support to drag herself upright. Her vision was still hazy with dust, and the world tilted when she tried to focus. But even through the haze, she felt it clearly—the presence of the threat was gone. Not retreated. Not buried. Gone, vaporized so completely that her instincts had nowhere to hook fear onto.

  “Did you… do it…?” The words trembled out of her, disbelief making them small. Seconds ago she had been prepared for death, the kind of certainty that turns your blood cold. Now she was alive in the wake of impossible light.

  Tears finally spilled, not just sweat, though sweat ran down her cheeks too. The heat had dried her eyes raw, and the tears stung as they traced clean lines through dust. Relief spread through her chest like a knot untying, slow and shaking.

  “Yu… thank you…” Her voice was hoarse, scraped by screaming and sand, but saying it felt like touching solid ground. The promise hadn’t been an illusion. He had answered.

  Then another voice rang out beside her, soft with amusement and something that didn’t quite belong in gratitude.

  “Heh… as expected of Yu.” Claval stood a few steps away, silver hair fluttering, staring at the glass crater as if it were a jewel someone had dropped into the sand. A smile floated on her lips, and it looked, at first glance, like a blessing.

  But there was something bottomless in it.

  It wasn’t the smile of a rival relieved to be alive. It was the smile of a predator who had just confirmed the worth of what she was watching—who had seen the shape of power and decided it was interesting. The desert wind tugged at her cloak, carrying the faint smell of scorched air around her like incense.

  Rize tightened her grip on her sword again, knuckles aching. Relief and unease sat side by side in her chest, refusing to merge. She looked at the crater, then at Claval’s smile, and felt the gap between them like a wound that hadn’t opened until now.

  The desert wind blew through that gap with a dry, hollow sound, wrapping both of them in the same breath—comfort and warning in the same invisible hand.