Mir's departure had left a cavernous void in the house, a silence so thick it felt like a physical presence lurking in the corners of every room. During the first week, their daily routine managed to hold together by a single, fraying thread: the nightly phone call. Every evening, at the exact same hour, the phone would ring. Mir's crackling voice, distorted by the distance and the static of the mission site, brought a semblance of normalcy to Laine and Dack. They clung to those minutes like survivors to a raft.
Then, abruptly, the thread snapped. The silence moved in, permanent and cold.
The phone remained mute on the bedside table. Laine's desperate attempts to reach her husband resulted in nothing but the impersonal, metallic click of an automated voicemail. Her worry, initially a dull ache of loneliness, sharpened into a consuming, visceral panic. Finally, unable to bear the weight of the uncertainty, Laine called the electric vehicle corporation, her voice trembling as she demanded to know why the communication with the mission site had been severed.
The receptionist's response hit her like a high-voltage shock, leaving her breathless.
"A business trip?" the voice on the other end asked, sounding genuinely confused, almost amused by the question. "Ma'am, I think there's a misunderstanding. We never sent Mir on any mission. In fact, he filed a request for an extended leave of absence months ago, claiming he wanted to spend more quality time with his family."
Laine's world tilted on its axis. The floor seemed to liquefy beneath her feet. Mir had lied. He wasn't working in some remote facility; he had vanished by his own choice—or worse, he had used the lie to cover a forced disappearance that he knew was coming.
Desperate and haunted by visions of the worst, she contacted the authorities. A nationwide missing person's alert was issued, his face plastered on digital screens, but the file remained hauntingly empty. No trace of Mir. No bank movements, no sightings on surveillance footage, no witness reports. It was as if he had been erased from the fabric of reality.
For Dack, learning that his father was officially missing was a total devastation. At school, the once-curious, radiant boy became a shadow of his former self. He retreated into a solitary, iron silence, finding comfort only within the protective, unspoken circle of his four loyal friends who watched over him like silent guardians.
Three months crawled by. Three months of agonizing waiting, of jumping every time the wind rattled the door. The police, lacking any leads or proof of life, eventually delivered their cold, bureaucratic verdict: the case was closed. Mir was officially declared dead.
The announcement was the final blow. Laine literally collapsed in the commissioner's office, her spirit breaking before her body hit the floor. She didn't wake up until much later, breathing through an oxygen mask in a sterile hospital room, the rhythmic beep of the monitors the only sound in the room. She was surrounded by her sister Elena and a young Dack—whose gaze seemed to have hardened prematurely, his eyes losing their childhood sparkle to a cold, analytical steel.
Back at home, the silence was now a permanent resident. Elena decided to move in with them, her presence a necessary crutch to help Laine navigate the impossible weight of grief. But for Dack, something fundamental had shifted deep in his DNA. His sadness was being replaced by a profound transformation. He became a keeper of secrets, a boy who watched the world with suspicion.
Yet, deep within him, a small flame refused to be extinguished. He remembered his father's final words, whispered like a prophecy. To the rest of the world, Mir was a ghost, a tragic statistic. But to Dack, his father was simply "out of reach," hidden somewhere within that Parallel dimension that continued to haunt his nights with visions of glowing stones and humming energy.
Two years withered away, leaving behind a silence that even the steady march of time could not fill. Dack was now nine years old. In the school hallways, he was no longer the boy people smiled at. His character had calcified into a fortress. The bullying had not ceased; if anything, his father's disappearance had become a jagged weapon for Djin and his gang. But Dack was no longer an easy target. His four pillars—Drez, Ig-nard, Luna, and Leste—stood as a living shield, defending him against the relentless cruelty of the playground.
At home, Dack spent countless hours in his father's study, surrounded by the scent of old paper and lingering tobacco. One afternoon, driven by a burning intuition, he tried to locate the secret journals once more. He pried at the locked drawer, his small fingers straining until the wood gave way with a splintering crack... but it was empty. The notebooks had been scrubbed from existence. Someone had cleaned the room.
Disturbed, he sought out his mother in the kitchen. "Tell me about him, Mom. Not the technician. The man. About how you met. I want to know everything."
Laine offered a sad, fragile smile, her eyes drifting back to a memory nine years old. She described an evening after work when nine men had begun to hunt her through the streets. Cornered in a dark alley, her ankle twisted, she had collided with a stranger: Mir.
"Wait for me here. I only need a minute," he had told her with an unnerving, icy calm that froze her heart.
Then, without her even understanding how it happened—as if time itself had skipped—Mir had neutralized all nine attackers. They lay scattered on the pavement like broken dolls, writhing in silent agony. He hadn't even broken a sweat.
"Dad actually did that?!" Dack exclaimed, his eyes wide, his heart racing.
"Yes," Laine whispered. "He was a mystery, Dack. But he protected us. Always."
This revelation forged an unbreakable conviction within the boy: his father was not dead. A man of such power didn't just disappear. He remembered Mir's mantra: "It is those who believe in and follow their dreams who find the happiness they seek."
But fate was tired of waiting.
One afternoon, a dull, heavy explosion rocked the very foundations of the house, shattering windows and throwing Dack against the bathroom wall. He sprinted downstairs, his heart hammering like a trapped bird. Below, the living room was a nightmare of smoke and debris.
Three men stood amidst the smoldering wreckage. They didn't look like burglars; they looked like soldiers from another world. One of them held Laine—unconscious and limp—in his arms. Before Dack could even scream, a Dimensional Portal tore open in the middle of the room, a swirling vortex of violet energy that defied gravity. In a flash, the strangers and his mother were sucked into the void.
When the police arrived, they found a petrified child with hollow eyes, standing in the ruins of his life. Dack was no longer there; his mind was chasing that violet light.
Later, at his aunt Elena's house, his friends Drez and Ig-nard came to find him. But as Dack walked them to the door, a stranger was waiting in the shadows of the porch.
"Dack, I want you to meet Glad," Elena said, her voice wavering. "He says... he says he's a childhood friend of your father."
Dack stared at the man. For the first time in years, a spark of hope—or perhaps the cold chill of extreme danger—ignited in his eyes. The hour of truth had finally arrived.