Miranda checked her augury compass. She had already checked it a few times, but she couldn't help checking it again.
"Wait… what am I missing? Why does everything look different?"
She did not understand what she was seeing.
If her calculations were correct, then she should be standing right now on planet Xyphos-9, at the precise coordinates where the relic was supposed to be buried. But instead of the ancient ruins that had been charted by previous auguries, instead of the towering trees that filled the landscape…
No trees. No plants. Not even a small grass. The land was barren and cracked and lacked any kind of life force as far as her eyes could see.
Miranda's fingers tightened around the edge of her compass. Her heartbeat quickened. That wasn't possible. Augury readings weren't perfect, but they didn't just… change.
She took a deep breath, centering herself, then activated the secondary layers of her divination. Golden lines of energy traced through the air in front of her. Maybe she made a mistake. However, a few seconds later she arrived at the same result once again.
"What the hell happened here?" She shot forward at full speed scanning the area as she went. Since she was at the correct location, the only explanation for this is someone had beat her to the punch.
Hours passed by and she continued flying forward without any break. Unfortunately, everywhere she looked there were only barren lands. Somebody had thoroughly destroyed the lands. But who could do such a thing?
Weren't these trees the heaven-touching trees of Xyphos-9? Their lofty overbearing nature made it difficult for anyone to even damage a few trees, let alone completely devastate the whole landmass. She could feel it. Something was wrong.
Miranda continued flying until she saw something shining in the distance. Was she finally near the main area? Her eyebrows shot up in surprise because she was seeing something small and shiny, instead of a tall building and a sprawling settlement.
She narrowed her eyes as she accelerated toward the shining object. Her augury compass pulsed in her grip, reacting to the energy ahead. As she drew closer, her stomach twisted.
It wasn't a structure.
It was a tear in space.
A jagged rift, no larger than a palm, hovered above the cracked earth, flickering with unstable energy. Fractured reality twisted at the edges, distorting the air like a wound that refused to close.
Miranda's breath hitched. A spatial rupture.
Someone had forcefully extracted something so integral to this place that reality itself had collapsed in its absence. She hovered cautiously, her instincts screaming at her not to get too close. Spatial implosions were rare and spatial tears were dangerous.
If space was not stable then spatial implosions could spontaneously happen and there would be nothing she could do to stop from getting swallowed and spat out in the void. Only a fool would enter such a place.
Despite that, she continued moving forward. She was not a fool. She was a person who had too much to lose if she turned back right here and now. All she could do now was hope that this was the only spatial tear in this place. Otherwise, she might be risking her life.
Miranda cautiously avoided the tear and the volatile flickering spatial ruptures that emerged from a tear . But just as she did, another tear was staring right at her face. Her face became unsightly as she realized the horrifying truth—this wasn't just one isolated rupture.
They were everywhere.
Miranda's eyes darted across the landscape, and as she let her vision adjust, she saw them—dozens of flickering spatial wounds, some small like the first, others larger, pulsing with raw instability. The entire area was riddled with them, forming a chaotic web of collapsing reality.
Her breath quickened. How?
Destroying a single ancient structure should not have caused this level of destruction. Even if the relic had been forcefully extracted, even if someone had stripped the land bare, this… this was beyond normal.
Just what the hell happened here?
Before she could figure out what to do now, a blast of spatial energy assaulted her from the side. Miranda immediately erected a barrier to block it but she was not able to do so in time. Her arm was ripped into shreds, the flesh vanishing into thin air.
"Fuck! I was not prepared to face these kinds of attacks. Why are there so many spatial tears here?"
Miranda gritted her teeth, suppressing the searing pain radiating from her arm. Her flesh was gone—just like that, erased as if it had never existed. The raw wound throbbed, but she forced herself to ignore it. No time. No room for hesitation.
She surged forward, weaving through the unstable space, every muscle in her body tense as she dodged yet another flickering rupture. The entire land was an unraveling death trap, but she wasn't about to leave empty-handed.
Ahead, at the very heart of what remained of this place, stood the central tower.
Unlike the rest of the destroyed settlement, the tower still stood, looming in the distance like a forgotten guardian. Its structure pulsed with the same golden veins she had seen in ancient augury texts—markers of pre-collapse civilization, something so old it had no place existing in modern time.
And inside that tower—the relic.
Her compass burned hot in her grip, the golden lines spinning wildly. Yes. It was there.
Miranda exhaled sharply, pushing past the pain, her focus narrowing to a single thought: get to the tower. As long as she was able to obtain that relic, her efforts wouldn't have been in vain.
She endured hellish pain and fought tooth and nail to survive for the next several minutes as she finally arrived at the central tower. She was now completely beaten and ragged and her body was swaying weakly. She had only barely made it but here she was.
Miranda gritted her teeth. It was time to go in. Finally, it was time to get her hands on the relic. However, just as she stepped forward, watching out for more spatial tears, something else caught her eye.
A man… a lone human man… trying to pry out a tile from the outer wall.