*Beep*

Sheng watched as the central monitor updated. Of the three concurrent rift events, one of them had been safely secured at last. This was a cause for relief for many people, but unlike the others, she was far from being the most relieved. As a matter of fact, she even lamented a little.

"It's such a shame. Manticores are so rare. It's such a shame that such a wonderful creature had to die tonight. But it can't be helped."

As a public servant, she knew what had to be done that night.

She had watched the entire fight unfold from the safety of the neatly air conditioned command center. In her observation, she noted all the particularities of the beast as it fought with their vanguards for future reference. And in peculiar, she grew exceptionally excited when she watched the manticore display its hiding arte as that was not a trait indicative of the Zenikyra Manticore species.

In a nutshell, it really got her juices flowing.

"But I do wonder… just where could it have come from?"

There was the unsolved mystery of the iron collar wrapped around its neck. Sheng reckoned that there was a lot untold about it and she was reminded of a certain infamous country. It was a cesspool of a country that used to capture neighboring tribes to be made into slaves to fight to the death in a pit. Sometimes, they would even use their own people when the fighters would be lacking.

They would even have spectacles sometimes, where great and exotic captured creatures would be pitted against those poor souls instead. It was a public sport, where not even diplomats and guests from other countries were safe from either. Purely for the sake of entertainment, it was a bloodbath where anyone of any status could be thrown in without rhyme or reason.

And they would have gotten away with it too, if not for the fact that they eventually crossed the wrong person and subsequently became a footnote in history. Now, they were only known as one among the many places trampled over by the divine emperor's centuries long merry crusade across the northern lands of the central Arca Archa continent.

"Truly, religious fanatics are the scariest in the world." Sheng shuddered. Then, she turned back towards the central monitor and eyed the red-E rift at the airport.

"The White Night, Great Calamity of Arca Archa. I can't wait to see what kind of things might come of this rift."

It excited her to no end, what unfathomable dangers might lie ahead. It was precisely for moments like these why she had joined the guild in the first place.

…

…

At the airport where the red-E laid silent, the Scouts of SCT Noctua and SCT Accipiter stood nervously as they watched the scene through the rift change over time. What was once a lush and brightly lit jungle started to be whited out by the onset of fog. Before long, not even a single spot of green remained and the only thing that could be seen through the rift was a canvas pure and white.

"That's what we were warned about?" Y'ihex of SCT Accipiter asked his friend.

"Yes, so don't go touching the fog." Merya, from SCT Noctua, looked up from her reading tablet and nodded. "Just sit obediently until Miss Quies comes back. She took off quite a while ago though, I wonder where she went?"

Prior to leaving earlier, the head of Scouts had told them to move quickly to set up a quarantine zone, as if their lives depended on it. They did as they were told, naturally, and had expected for the worst. But at the end of the day, it was hard to be afraid when all they could see was some fog.

"I ain't got a clue, but I saw there's an outbreak event happening on the other side of Singapore. Maybe that's where she went. How do you reckon things are going over there?"

"They'll be fine. VGT Tyr's the one on the scene, last I heard." Merya shrugged.

"VGT Tyr? With the Iron Fist Nemeadas and the Berserker Garmr? Whew I wish I could have seen that fight. Say, you reckon I could be one of them Vanguards? I might even get to work with Li Hua, twin sister of the rising star actress Li Bai. I could probably use a weapon pretty good. Maybe even cast an offensive arte or two. How pog would it be if I could have one of them exo-gears all to myself?"

"Don't even think about it. You'll definitely die, and that's if they even let you join in the first place."

"You ever tried to put it on? I did it the last time they had a recruitment and let me tell you, it was like I was a different person. I could have jumped a building if I wanted to."

"Yeah, I was there to see you get knocked flat on the ground by Hua meimei with one hit."

"Ayo, we don't talk about that here. Hold on, when did you get so close to her to start using pet names? How come you don't let me use a pet name with you?"

"It's a girl thing, don't worry about it."

After this, Y'ihex decided to change the subject.

"So this white Night thing, what do you reckon it is? All I see is fog. Hard to be afraid of fog. It'd be a different story if I was on a silent hill and I couldn't see past my hands, but this just ain't it."

The change in subject caught Merya's attention and her expression suddenly changed as a spark of light gleamed through her eyes. She pushed up on her glasses and then spoke.

"Well I'm glad you asked! I've been reading up on it ever since Miss Quies warned us about it."

"So that's what you were doing. I could have used your help when I was setting up the FBDSs earlier, but no… some childhood friend you are."

"Shut it, stupid Felid child. My turn to speak now!"

"But you're younger than me…"

"TL;DR! My turn to speak now~"

Unfortunately for Y'ihex, his protests fell on deaf ears. Such was the kind of childhood friendship nurtured between a Felid boy and a Canis girl.

*Thump*

"Ayo, did you hear that?" He asked suddenly. His ears twitched the moment he heard the sound, but when he looked around, no one else seemed to have noticed it.

"Hear what?" Merya also reeled herself back as she noticed the change in Y'ihex's mood. She cupped her hands over her wolf-like ears and listened.

*Thump…*

"That!" He pointed it out again. "Can't you hear it? I'm sure it came from across the rift."

"I still don't hear it." She frowned. "You better not be up to your shenanigans again or by god I swear that your mom will hear of this."

"Ayo, hold it. That's not pog at all. That's anti-pog."

"Sound argument, unfortunately, your mom."

*—Thud!*

This time, the sound was loud enough that the two clearly heard it. Their bickering stopped dead in its tracks and their heads slowly turned towards the sound.

—Something had just slipped through from across the rift.

"Is that a person…?"

When it crossed, it fell limp onto the ground with a hard thud. It certainly had the traits resembling a person, with its four slender limbs, torso, and head. But at the same time, it looked far too terrifying for them to want to believe that it was one. It was emaciated like a corpse that had died of starvation, with bleached skin that rested loosely on the ridges of its bones, and its joints had bent in all the wrong ways. Moreover, when its head rolled over from them to see, dark hollow sockets where its eyes should have been stared back at them, the gums in its mouth had fully receded to show abnormally long and grotesque teeth, and the rest of its face was entirely shriveled up like a dried plum.

"Oh god…" Merya turned away and hurled immediately. She gagged as she felt the acid of her stomach scald her throat and the remnants of her dinner being rejected from her body.

*Clackckckck…"

All of a sudden, the thing moved. Its body writhed and seized as its joints popped in and out of place. It made a sound as disgusting as the sight was abominable. Merya wanted to turn away, and she knew if she looked she might hurl again, yet she did so anyway. Credit it to morbid curiosity, but she could not tear her gaze away as the thing continued to twist and contort.

"Are you okay?" Y'ihex exclaimed, but not towards Merya. Before anyone could stop him, he had already ran forward and crossed the barrier in an attempt to help the thing he thought was a person.

"Stop! Don't touch the fog—!"

For the young Felid scout, these words would be the last things that he experienced before all of night had been bleached white.

…

"What…? Where did y'all go?" Y'ihex spoke, but there was no one around him to respond.

How strange. He could have sworn that he was with Merya and the other scouts at the airport just a moment ago. Now when he turned around, he could see nothing but a pure blanket of absolute whiteness. In fact, even the person he had run to help earlier was nowhere to be seen.

He tried to take a step forward before the most confounding thing happened next. It was like the world was spinning around him and he was being spung along with it. It was crazy. He felt dizzy and tried to take a step back, but now he felt his feet swing in the air as his body was being restrained by nothing.

"I can't move. This isn't good. I gotta get outta here! Merya, where are you? Help! Say something if you can hear me!"

It did not take long at all before the inklings of fear overtook his senses. It was then that he finally noticed something else as well…

"Wait, where're my hands? I can't feel my hands! And my face! And my body?!"

It was all gone, everything. He touched his face and nothing happened. When he looked down, his body was missing. He turned around and everything stayed the same. All of him had already been overtaken by pure all encompassing white.

…

…

"Merya, where are you! Ahhhh! Help me! My body's gone!"

"I'm right here, so just get up already! You're too heavy!" Merya heaved.

As though jerking awake from a nightmare, Y'ihex suddenly found himself back to his senses and in his own body again. The first thing he saw and tasted was the ground and the first voice he heard aside from his own was Merya's as she struggled to drag him by the ankle.

"Merya? Is that you? I can see again! You saved me! I appreciate you so much!" He exclaimed, before throwing himself at his savior.

"Eek! Don't hug me, you'll get my clothes bloody!" Yelping loudly, she instinctively backed off and held her arms out to keep her friend at an arm's length. "If you've regained your senses, then stop shouting already. You make my ears hurt, you stupid idiot!"

"What happened to me— atch! That stings!" Now that he was back to being himself, he suddenly felt just how much his face stung. Blood was even dripping out of his nose like a leaky faucet. "Merya, it was awful. I couldn't move, I couldn't see, I couldn't even feel my own face! It was a total out of body experience and I thought I was dead and in the afterlife! If that's what heaven's like, then I don't wanna go there when I die!"

"Wipe that blood off already, jeez. Did you already forget what Miss Quies warned us about? Don't touch the fog! God, do you even know how scared I was? You just ran straight through the barrier and then you fell flat on your face. After that, you started touching your face nonstop and screamed at the top of your lungs for help. I risked my life to save you!"

"O-Oh. So that's how it looked from the outside. Then what about the person I tried to help?"

"Person? That might be overselling it." Merya pointed back towards the rift. The writhing mass rolled against the barrier, but without an access tag, it could not pass through the way they could.

"Ayo, how could you say that! That's mean. That's a person too, just like you and me."

"Just because it bears a vague resemblance to a person doesn't make them one!"

"That's racist!"

"Oh my god, this is why you need to read more. I just, I just can't with you right now. I can't breathe, where's my inhaler?"

Exasperated, Merya dug through her bag to find what she was looking for. Once she found it, she immediately put it to her mouth, puffed it once while inhaling, and then she did it a second time after that. She felt much better now.

"Look, can you just stay put and wait until we get further instructions? Let's just do our jobs properly. You don't want to experience whatever it is you just experienced again, do you?"

Y'ihex shook his head vehemently. No, he did not want to experience that again. He absolutely did not want to experience that again. However, he still looked pitifully at the person he had tried to save before.

Merya may have refused to call them a person, but he knew now. He had experienced the effects of the fog first hand after all, how all his senses were deprived away from him. When he watched them flail wildly, he was immediately reminded of the way he tried to move his body in a panic before. So he was sure that this person used to be a someone just like him before being made a victim of the White Night.

Had he not been dragged out by Merya, he felt that he would also have ended up just like that.

…

…