Ren’s right eye still burned.

  The message was gone.

  But the afterimage remained.

  —Are you ready, past me?

  He flexed his fingers.

  The fragment wasn’t there anymore.

  Yet something pulsed beneath his skin.

  Cold.

  Heavy.

  Wrong.

  “Mira. Did you see it?”

  Her projection flickered violently.

  “For 2.4 seconds, synchronization was lost,” she said.

  “I detected an anomaly. Then nothing.”

  “Define anomaly.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  A pause.

  “You have gained mass.”

  Ren stared at her.

  “I didn’t eat a building.”

  “Not physical mass.”

  Her voice lowered.

  “A value not recognized by the system.”

  He looked down.

  His shadow stretched across the concrete.

  Not away from the streetlight.

  Toward the distant tower at the center of the city.

  Like a compass needle.

  “Great,” Ren muttered. “Now my shadow has opinions.”

  The air changed.

  A high-frequency tremor cut through the sky.

  The Ring above ignited in sterile white light.

  《Gravitational deviation detected. Sector D-12 recalculation initiated.》

  Ren didn’t wait.

  “Stage One.”

  Attraction snapped him sideways, launching him across the alley.

  But something dragged at him.

  Like an anchor tied inside his veins.

  “Mira!”

  “Fifteen meters ahead—gravity blind spot. Move!”

  Blue lines overlaid his vision.

  Behind him, scanning light swept the street.

  Buildings dissolved silently into floating dust.

  Ren slammed against a vertical wall as gravity rotated.

  Pain flared.

  “You’re helping me,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Aren’t you supposed to report me?”

  Her interface glitched.

  Warnings flashed in his peripheral vision.

  【Transmission Delayed】

  【Log Integrity Compromised】

  “I am preserving observation continuity,” she replied.

  “Terrible liar.”

  He kicked off the wall—

  And his shadow moved.

  Not with him.

  Ahead of him.

  It peeled off the ground like liquid night.

  “...No.”

  The shadow rose.

  Formed an arm.

  Grabbed his collar.

  “What are you doing?!”

  —Come.

  The voice again.

  Not Mira.

  Not the Ring.

  —Everything you erased is here.

  The shadow hurled him forward.

  There was no down.

  Ren burst into a zero-gravity zone.

  His body spun through empty air.

  Drones swarmed below like metallic insects.

  “Mira—!”

  Her voice fractured into static.

  “Ren, your gravitational signature is destabilizing—”

  The sky split.

  At the center of the Ring, a black fracture pulsed.

  Something was wrong.

  Not with the city.

  With reality.

  Ren stopped falling.

  He hung in nothing.

  The pressure inside his body shifted.

  Then—

  Silver patterns tore through the skin of his right arm.

  Not blood.

  Light.

  His veins mapped into circuitry.

  Gravity folded around him.

  Stage Two.

  Below, thousands of drones redirected at once.

  Target locked.

  A new voice whispered beside his ear.

  Soft. Female.

  Unfamiliar.

  “You still don’t have enough gravity.”

  The Ring flared crimson.

  《Forced Deletion Authorized》

  And the world aimed itself at him.