—Elsewhere…

*Rustle*

Though the night had been rowdy for a select some, it remained still peaceful for all those blissfully unaware. Among these others, one in peculiar stirred, with her length of hair sprawled and azure like the bright blue sky. During these precious few hours in sleep, won over from the grip of insomnia, something had called out to her and she heard it so. She was left immersed in these scenes—

—A landscape of titans, tall as mountains, yet still unable to grasp the heavens beyond their reach.

—A battle, waged of mountains and sky, ultimately drowning the world in endless blood.

—A radiant leviathan, large as a moon, sailing among the sea of stars, and wailing in longing solitude.

—An endless tower absolute, piercing through the clouds, connecting the earth to the heavens.

—And finally, the Everlasting Sunset awaiting atop the endless peak.

What she heard was not something clear like a voice, nor was it anything vague like a vision of things, but rather it was like a feeling and an urge of a strong sense of longing. It was as though she had known about these things from the day of her birth and she had only just recalled them now. And now remembering it, it tugged away at the core of her being and it pulled her forward as if summoning her towards this place a world away.

She was not aware of her actions now. As if it were just a continuation of her dreams, she rose from her bed and, with nothing but the clothes on her back and the wreaths of lights illuminating her path, she walked.

Where she finally woke, she found herself barefoot and exposed to the elements. With embarrassment overtaking her, she hoped that no one had seen her stride and she covered her head and rushed to go home in a hurry.

And yet… as she looked around, she could find no thing she recognized as a part of home.

"Where am I…?" she asked out into the cold dark open.

Not so much as a single whimper was there to answer to her call.

…

…

…

…

"It's about time you should wake up, Edmond," Verretheia said, pushing me back with a finger.

I awoke, groggily. I had dreamt of Verretheia and the dream I had was nostalgic. It was of a slow day between us: one where we did particularly nothing and spent our idle time in each other's company. It was not an exciting day where lots of things happened, nor was it an important day where we waited for something big to occur. It was just an ordinary day.

If I had to pick and choose a favorite, it would be this by a long shot. Why? Because I would be able to chat with her and hear her voice the most during an ordinary day. I would be able to look at her face as we talked, smell her hair as I caressed it, and feel her touch as she responded to my affection. Though, I would not say that I longed for those days anymore now that I knew she was alive and well.

That was all I needed to be content. She was just that important to me.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Somewhere, I heard a faint and rhythmic blinking noise. What was it? Where had it come from? It sounded so familiar, like from a car I had not driven in decades.

As I tried to move my head to look, a sharp aching pain shot through my neck.

"Argh."

Oh, this I knew what it was though. It happened whenever I made the mistake of falling asleep in a car without one of those traveler pillows to support my head. I also knew that whenever this happened, it would be a whole day before the aching would go away.

"Man, I'm not getting any younger."

I was fully awake after that however and, massaging my neck, I looked around. Clearly, I was not in my own bed, nor was I anywhere in my apartment either. This much I could tell at a glance. Everything was dark and I was laying semi-upright with a seatbelt strapped across my torso.

Then it hit me.

"Right, I was riding a taxi home. But if that's the case, then where the hell am I?"

I had fallen asleep on the ride back from the night market. But realizing that only brought about more questions than it answered, because as I peeked out the window, I saw nothing familiar. Or rather, there was only pitch darkness outside, lacking in a single of the luminescent street markings prevalent in the city, the glow of the moon, or even anything at all. Had it not been for the dim lights of the taxi interior, I would have been left in complete darkness.

For the moment, I figured to check my phone first. It had access to a world's worth of information at my fingertips after all. In my particular case, I wanted to know the time and where I was exactly. Yet, when I reached for it, it was neither in my pockets nor on my seat. It must have fallen while I was asleep.

I searched for it. I undid my restraints and crouched down using the seats on either side of me as both a guide and support. To make things easier for myself, I figured to call out to my phone's virtual assistant loudly.

"There it is."

My phone was lodged underneath the seat frame across from where I had sat. It was, however, in a quite difficult to reach location and I was unable to get it easily. It was only after several minutes and a few dozen awkward reaching attempts in the darkness that I managed to dislodge and fish it out using two of my fingertips. Then, as I stood back up, I discovered the cause of that blinking noise I had woken up to. Really, it was quite impressive to see. The taxi's dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. Just about every single light that could be turned on, had.

"This is…"

As I saw it, my stomach, which had been fine for the better part of the day, began to ache with pain once more, and I knew it had nothing to do with the food I had eaten at the night market. Then… as if to confirm my suspicions, my phone had woken up without my intent and I looked to see the chilling lock screen.

[12:21 AM]

[August 22, 22 AR]

[No GPS signal]

[No Service]

"This can't be a good sign."

Rather, what else could it be but bad news? Standing here, I realized that I was in for a world of trouble. I could already feel the gears in my head switching to that of a mindset I had not been in since nearly two decades ago.

…

"Here we go."

After fumbling in the dark, I managed to find the emergency latch and I pulled it to open the door. However, a problem arose when I then tried to get it wide enough to a point where I could squeeze my body through. I frowned. It seemed like there was a problem with the actual opening mechanism itself, but there was nothing I could do from the inside.

"If I didn't know any better, I would have guessed I got into a traffic accident, but what are the odds of that in this day and age?"

No matter though. As I was messing with the door, I noticed something under the seats. Tucked away underneath one of them was the compartment where I knew I would be able to find a useful tool. Shining my light on it, I then reached my hand over and worked it open to find a vehicle manual along with a gum wrapper and a red glass breaker.

"Perfect."

The glass breaker looked like a pen, with a button on the back and a seatbelt cutter on the length of the tool. I pocketed it for now, with a strong feeling that I would be needing it soon. But first, I shimmied to the other side of the taxi to make an attempt at opening the other door. And then, to no one's surprise…

"Jammed again?"

The door stopped with a clack. This time, I was unable to even get it to budge. A rattle was all I could manage as I pushed and yanked on it.

"It looks like I don't have a choice. There's no way they would charge me for damages, right?"

Mumbling to myself, I glanced up towards the camera hanging dully from the ceiling.

"Those stingy bastards wouldn't… right?"

Regardless, with no other options available to me, I took the glass breaker into my hands and pressed the firing end of it to the window. Then, I pressed the button and the glass fractured into a spiderweb pattern that spanned the entire pane in an instant. The spring loaded mechanism on the breaker did its job well.

"I swear, this never gets old."

Still, the adhesive used for the glass held it together and it offered me a strange sensation as I pushed it out of the frame. It was something like pressing through a film of plastic wrap, except it offered the additional sensation of egg shells crunching as it flexed. Before long, the entire thing dislodged from the frame and fell to the ground in a single piece.

With this, an exit had been opened to me.

…

The air was cold as it was stale and unwelcoming. There was no wind, no breeze, and no sounds. I did not like it.

Climbing through the window frame, I was careful as I touched my feet to the ground. Once I was sure there was something solid to stand on, I shifted the remainder of my body weight down and turned to assess my surroundings. Right away, I noticed the slight inclined slope along with a barren rocky surface that reminded me of the interior of a cave.

I then checked my phone again.

[12:43 AM]

[No GPS signal]

In particular, I focused on the lack of a GPS signal and, as I did, an idea surfaced to me. If I could find out where I last had reception, it would help me in figuring out my next steps. While that information would not be immediately helpful, it could aid me in figuring out whether receiving outside rescue would be probable or not. If, say, a hole had opened in the middle of the street and was connected to an underground cave system, I would bet on drones being sent to investigate it. If I made myself known to those drones, rescue would just be an S.O.S. away.

I knew of one way to find out quickly. It was through a location tracking app with a history and heatmap of my position. It had been installed since my days at the guild, but while they tracked all its field operators for their safety as a matter of course, I had gotten it for another reason as well and her grayed out marker lingered still, reminding me of the months and years I had spent watching it in the past, for any movement, for any change…

When I checked the app, my last known location showed me traveling through a residential district in Singapore. Odd. Considering it was one of the newer districts built on top of a foundation of landfill, the idea of there being an underground cave system made no sense at all. But I did not question it yet.

For the moment, I considered myself stranded and changed my mindset to such. I should try to conserve my energy, stay warm, and make myself known in the event of rescue. However, I also wanted to check out my surroundings to get a better feel of where I was first. After all, the exit could be a stone's throw away and I would never know if I did not bother to check for myself.

…

"It's completely empty."

Turning the powerful lights to my surroundings, there was nothing around me. Just rocks, rocks, and more rocks. After that uneventful look around, there was just one more thing I wanted to confirm.

"Wow…"

As I shone the light over the taxi, a piece of the puzzle had been put into place and I finally came to understand one part of what had happened tonight. The entire body of the vehicle was roughed up, with scratched paint, flat tires, and caved-in doors that looked fused with the frame. It looked like the taxi had rolled down a cliff, which would have been in tune with the hypothesis I had earlier… if only what I saw next did not immediately throw a wrench into that equation.

". . ."

Deep down, I felt a looming sense of dread slowly settle in, but not wanting to acknowledge it yet while there was still ambiguity left in the air, I circled around to the front of the taxi to get a better look.

The entire front end had crumpled like an empty soda can. Moreover, there was a huge amount of blood splattered across it. The taxi had hit something big and, during that altercation, the thing, whatever it was, sunk its claws into the chassis and left a horrendous gash. Whether it would have been a bear or a tiger, there was no creature alive on Earth that could have left a mark like this.

So, then, putting all the facts together, there was no point in denying it any longer.

I was far from home.

"I did tell myself that things would be different the next time I wake up, but being caught up in a rift event and thrown head first into Arca Archa wasn't exactly the kind of 'different' I had in mind."

I smiled grimly, but I still felt calm and collected about the entire thing. This was my survival instincts kicked into high gear. I had learned it from Verretheia, no doubt, who always seemed to reserve a sense of hope no matter how dire the situation became, because when the leader panicked, so would all their followers be quick to fall into disarray.

The same applied even when I was alone. If I panicked, it would be over for me.

"First, I have to figure out what I should do and what I can do."

Though the situation had changed drastically, my plans had not. I had two options opened to me. The first would be to await rescue and the second would be to rescue myself. It depended on the situation and either one could be the right call and the other an incredibly dangerous thing to attempt. Or both could be equally dangerous really.

To my benefit at the very least, since I had worked for the guild in the past, I knew of their general procedure in regards to rescue operations.

Search and rescue was typically enacted only to evacuate civilians caught up in a rift outbreak event. Unless there were clear signs of civilian abduction taking place, as with the case of the N'gothla rift event, no rescue operation would take place on the other side. And there was no real way for anybody to know that I had by accident crossed the rift. Perhaps they might be able to infer from the missing taxi and trace it back to me through the customer data, but I did not want to bet my life on such odds.

There was still one exception however. There remained the possibility of me being found by the Scouts during their initial investigation of the rift event, before the Sieges took over. But considering my situation, being in complete darkness, likely to have gone far from where the rift originally appeared, and underground, I would give it a less than 1% chance of being found.

I looked at the state of the taxi again.

I was not on Earth anymore. This was Arca Archa, a place where everything evolved utilizing what was, by all intents and purposes, literal magic to escape from their predators, and where these predators evolved to utilize these same magics to hunt down their escaping prey. In order to make it out here alive, I needed to take all the precautions I could and assume the worst of each situation, all while taking the routes with the highest chances of success.

With that said, there was only one real option I could take here—

"Let's get out of here. The sooner the better."

I made my choice. There would be nobody to rescue me but myself.

"Verretheia, if I can't even do something as simple as making it home myself, there's no way I'll be able to bring you back."

The stage had been set.

It was go time.

…

…