Both of them stumbled backward in fear. But it made no difference—they realized that soon enough. When they turned around together, everything surrounding them had completely changed. What met their eyes now was a blood-red sky, ancient shattered statues scattered here and there, and massive broken structures stretching into the distance.
Before them stood the gates of a palace, already thrown open. Waiting for a king.
Aron stepped back on instinct. "Why are we in a cursed place like this—"
"Whatever destroyed it," Zekai said, eyes still moving across the ruins, "might still be here."
Aron's face tightened. "Then why are we still standing here?"
"We should move," he said fast—except neither of them had the faintest idea which direction that meant. No road. No city lights. No people. Nothing marked this place as belonging to any world either of them recognized.
Zekai pulled out his phone. The screen lit.
1 missed call — Grandpa Marcus.
8:43 AM.
He stared at it. Then the numbers flickered.
8:43 AM.
9:30 PM.
8:43 AM.
9:30 PM.
Aron leaned in. "That just changed, right?"
The seconds kept jumping, erratic, refusing to settle. "Damn it." Not a broken clock—more like the phone couldn't decide which moment was actually real. Morning had turned to night and back again without either of them blinking.
His grip tightened on the phone before he forced his hand to loosen. Panic doesn't fix anything. Staying calm had always come easy to him.
Not this time. For the first time in years, he had no idea what was happening around him.
Aron held something out. "You left this at the counter."
The tarot box. Zekai took it without a word.
"Thanks."
He tucked it into his coat and glanced down at his empty arm—nothing left of the bouquet but a few crushed petals caught in the fabric of his sleeve. He brushed them off and said nothing.
"And since you followed me," he said, looking at Aron, "you're stuck here too."
Aron gave a nervous laugh. "No clue what's going on either." He glanced around. "But standing here freaking out isn't gonna help."
Zekai didn't answer. None of it made sense—the frozen intersection, the vortex, the voices, the transfer, this dead world. Marcus's call cutting out at exactly the wrong moment. Pieces that didn't fit together no matter how he turned them.
"You think this is still Earth?" Aron asked.
Zekai stared out at the ruined skyline. "Maybe." A pause. "Or something wearing its face."
The words left his mouth before he'd fully decided to believe them—and once said, they were harder to take back.
Another dimension.
If that was true, neither of them had any idea what kind of world they'd fallen into. Worse—they had no idea if anything here wanted them breathing.
His hands curled into fists. Then—
Thump.
Heat bloomed in one pocket of his coat. In the same instant, an unnatural cold spread through the other.
He pulled both objects free.
The tarot box pulsed with a faint crimson light—a glow that cast nothing across the courtyard, and yet he could see it clearly, like it was burning somewhere behind his eyes rather than in front of them.
The black cube stayed dark. Completely inert.
One was reacting. One wasn't. That asymmetry bothered him more than either object alone would have.
"...Aron."
"Yeah?"
He held both objects up. "These look like they're glowing to you?"
Aron squinted, then shook his head. "No. Look normal to me."
As I thought.
The crimson was unmistakable to Zekai. Invisible to Aron. Which meant whatever was reacting, it was reacting to him.
His eyes shifted to the cube. Cold, too heavy for its size, wrong in a way he couldn't name—but since they'd arrived, it hadn't done anything at all.
One data point proved nothing. He needed a second.
He held it out. "Hold this a second."
Aron hesitated.
"I'll take it back."
"...Okay." He took it, turned it over in his hands. Nothing. No pain, no reaction, no glow only he could see. Just a smooth black stone.
So it's not reacting to him either.
Aron pocketed it. "I'll hang onto it."
Zekai nodded once. "Fine. Don't lose it."
He was about to say something else when a cold current ran straight through his chest. He went still, eyes sweeping the courtyard—the statues, the dead fountains, the vines, the rubble.
Nothing moved.
Then his gaze locked on one statue in particular, and his expression changed.
His boots stopped mid-step.
"Mr. Zekai?"
He didn't answer. A hairline crack split across the statue's stone face.
Unlike the other ruined figures scattered across the courtyard, this one stood almost fully intact—ancient armor worn smooth by centuries, posture rigid and upright, as if it had never once stopped standing guard over a city that no longer existed.
A stone serpent coiled around its neck, scales carved in obsessive, unnatural detail, its head resting against the statue's cheek, mouth open just enough to show a row of tiny stone fangs.
A guardian.
He hadn't noticed it before. Across the courtyard, another statue stood with a massive sword driven into the ground—that one hadn't moved. Hadn't so much as shifted.
His fingers closed hard around the tarot box.
"Aron."
"What?"
"Don't move."
Aron went white. "Why?"
Zekai didn't answer.
The guardian's stone head had turned toward them.
Crk.
Another crack split down its neck.
The serpent lifted its head. Its stone eyes opened.
Then the guardian smiled.
✦ End of Chapter 3 — The Fallen Realm ✦