After Daren had been subdued by the town guards, Shiro quietly slipped away from the growing crowd. The shouts behind him gradually faded as he wandered into a small, quiet tea shop overlooking the square.
It was nearly empty.
A woman in her late twenties greeted him with a gentle nod before setting a steaming cup of tea on the weathered wooden table.
"...Thank you."
Shiro wrapped both hands around the warm ceramic. For a moment, he simply watched the thin wisps of steam rise into the cool air before taking a small sip.
His expression didn't change. He set the cup back down.
No bitterness. No sweetness. Not even the faint aroma of tea lingered on his tongue. It tasted like nothing more than warm water.
His gaze drifted toward the bustling street outside. 'Come to think of it... I haven't seen a single elderly person here.'
Footsteps approached his table.
"...Shiro?"
"...Mr. Dyer."
Shiro looked up at the young man's face, which carried a sternness beyond his years. His eyes held the quiet weight of someone who had endured more hardship than most.
"Please, no need for the formalities. That said, I didn't expect to find you here."
"What do you mean?" Shiro asked, his brow raising.
Kaelen pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. "I figured you guys had already bailed and gone to call for backup."
"We've been trapped here ever since we fell into the rift." A faint frown crossed Shiro's face, but he kept a calm expression. 'If only that were possible.'
"Seriously?" Kaelen blinked, before letting out a breathy sigh. "Perhaps my age is finally catching up with me. I could swear my eyes are playing tricks on me."
The woman behind the counter walked over, another steaming cup in hand.
"No, thanks," Kaelen said politely, raising a hand. "I'm fine."
She gave a brief nod before quietly retreating. Kaelen's eyes fell upon the barely touched cup in front of Shiro. "You actually drank that?"
Shiro gripped the cup between his palms. "No. It's just cold. I'm using it to warm my hands."
'There's nothing cold about this place.'
Kaelen glanced at Shiro in silence before sighing inwardly. "Just don't drink anything here."
A faint, humorless smile crossed Shiro's face. "I wasn't planning to."
A heavy silence settled between them before Kaelen broke it.
"Are the others nearby?"
Shiro's expression grew solemn. "They're no longer with us."
"...May I ask what happened?"
Shiro slowly lowered his eyes before turning toward the oblivious townspeople passing by outside. Kaelen followed his gaze toward the departing onlookers.
"So that's how it is."
Neither spoke for a moment. Kaelen leaned back in his chair, resting his forearms on the back of his head.
"I felt something was off with Daren when he never asked you a single question before we entered the rift. At the time, I brushed it off and thought you were just one of those Civilian Enforcers. Now I understand why the Bonehound acted the way it did."
Kaelen glanced at the heavens, carefully piecing together the fragments of memory he had previously ignored. The vial Daren had tossed into the bushes before the raid began.
"The Bonehound?" Shiro asked.
"Normally, they avoid humans unless they're cornered or provoked. But that one... it attacked us the moment it caught our presence."
"There's an experimental substance black-market merchants handle," Kaelen added. "A concoction made from corrupted monster blood and mana-rich herbs. It's typically coated on arrows to force enemy horses or beasts into a frenzy, amplifying their aggression. It was banned following mysterious circumstances, likely by order of the Sovereign Assembly."
Shiro's eyes widened slightly as the pieces clicked into place.
The look Elara and Daren had given when he spoke to Casia in the first loop. Their sudden disappearance. They hadn't entered the abandoned mine to complete an ordinary raid. They had come with an entirely different objective. The rift opening was simply an interruption to whatever dark scheme Daren was carrying out. But one thing still didn't make sense. How was Casia connected to this? Did she do it willingly, or was she manipulated?
He regretted not asking more questions or noticing anything sooner. But it was too late. She was gone.
"Daren's unraveling," Kaelen said. "Compared to the rift, he's still the least of our problems."
Shiro snapped out of his racing thoughts.
"You said that you've been here since you fell into the rift?"
Shiro nodded.
"Due to my past experiences with rifts, you guys should have entered after us. So we searched in other places, considering maybe you appeared in different locations. However, neither you nor the others were anywhere in town. I did the same in the first loop... then the second, and the third. It yielded the exact same result. Then I and Hyu thought that maybe you had left the rift for backup, or the worst possibility, that the rift had collapsed."
He's remarkably calm about all of this, Shiro thought. He must have cleared his fair share of rifts.
"Then I started paying closer attention to the details," Kaelen continued. "They were the same in the first loops, but in this loop, their actions began to deviate from what they did in the previous loops. I followed them to the east side of town, which led me here."
Kaelen leaned closer on the table.
"The more I think about everything we've experienced, the less I think we've experienced the same point at the same time."
Shiro stared at Kaelen in silence, thinking through what he had just said.
This explained why they couldn't locate the others. A disparity in arrival times created different temporal anchor points within the exact same loop. Using the town guards to enforce local laws must have broken the immediate time paradox. The time shifts, the reset loops... it all pointed to a specific scenario Shiro had been briefed on in his original world.
Then he saw it.
A lantern hanging by the tea shop entrance. The same design, but older.
Suddenly, a young man's face, half lit by the lantern, surfaced from the depths of his mind.
"Was Hyu affected by the time?"
"Since we entered at the same time, I think he might be around the town since the time paradox was broken."
"Could this be Rank 3?" Shiro muttered.
"Rank 3?" Kaelen asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It's a classification system for identifying complex rifts."
"I see. Things must have changed a lot from my time."
"That's not the only thing that troubles me."
"At a certain point, the timelines become one, especially when you guys died on the western side of town."
He paused.
"That means the loop doesn't reset every time someone dies. It only resets when the whole group is completely wiped out."
"This explains why we didn't return to morning. We're already in the middle of the day."
His gaze shifted toward the daylight around them.
"Because the others died."
Shiro considered the implication.
Could the Mutanti have killed him?
No. It was already dead by then.
His eyes narrowed.
There was only one possibility left.
He remembered the strange way the Patriarch had addressed them upon their arrival, welcoming them as guests rather than unannounced visitors. No ordinary leader would accept armed strangers into his estate without verification.
Two conclusions formed in his mind.
The Patriarch had willingly let them stay at the manor as a trap. He was the host of the parasitic Anomaly.
"We still need answers. Something doesn't add up."
"Then let's go find what we're looking for," Kaelen said as he stood from the chair before dropping a few coins on the table. "Don't wanna end up like that guy for breaking the rules of the town."
Kaelen and Shiro approached the mansion gates.
The guards stationed outside straightened as they drew near. The broad-shouldered guard stepped forward, hand resting on his weapon.
"Halt. State your business."
'Great. This guy is here.' Shiro thought.
Kaelen stopped and met the guard's gaze. "I am Kaelen Dyer of Vaelrhion. This is my apprentice." He gestured briefly toward Shiro. "We wish to speak with the person who was taken earlier for breaking the town's rules."
The guard's eyes narrowed. "The prisoner is not open for visitation. Who sent you?"
"No one sent us. We came on our own."
The guard shook his head. "Then I'm afraid we can't—"
"Let them in."