He turned slowly, taking in the full sweep of the place he was standing in.
The ledge beneath his feet was carved from the same dense black stone as everything around him. Behind him, it ended abruptly at a colossal cliff face that rose vertically for what looked to be nearly a thousand meters before curving inward, following the arc of an immense boundary that enclosed this entire world.
A realization struck him.
That boundary... ’is this the underside of Antarctica or something?’
He was standing beneath the continent’s ice cap. Somewhere, thousands of meters above him, the polar cave where he had left Camilla still rested within a glacial mountain, which itself sat upon the frozen surface of an Antarctica he could no longer reach.
His gaze drifted across the landscape below. A group of small, dark figures moved through the middle distance. Creatures.
From this far away, he couldn’t make out what they were, only that they were alive. They traveled in an organized formation, their movements deliberate rather than instinctive. He watched as one of them suddenly took flight, gliding through the crystal-lit sky before landing atop one of the drifting islands. It crossed the island in several long, bounding strides before disappearing behind a low structure.
Whatever they were... They weren’t human.
Farther away, another group moved along the banks of a distant river.
Their posture and coordination resembled that of people, yet something about them was unmistakably different. Even from kilometers away, their skin reflected the crystal light in hues no human complexion ever could.
Stan looked back toward the fractured crystal sky.
Then at the inverted mountain. The rivers flowing upward. The floating islands. The impossible sky itself.
A slow breath escaped him.
He had experienced more than enough impossible things over the past two weeks.
None of them had prepared him for this.
He steadied his thoughts with the discipline he had cultivated since the apocalypse began. Panic achieved nothing. Observation cost nothing.
He was in an unknown location.
His system was still functioning, albeit at partial capacity. His inventory remained accessible, but his personal spatial escape had been completely sealed. Inside that inventory were eighty-five thousand liters of Liquid Qi, his pair of daggers, two books detailing the true history of Earth, and enough supplies to survive for weeks.
Under normal circumstances, none of that would have concerned him. Qi had already transformed his body beyond ordinary human limits. He no longer feared freezing temperatures, thin air, or most natural hazards.
Yet none of that changed one simple fact.
He was somewhere he was never supposed to be.
The realm the werewolves had spoken of.
The place the vampires had come from.
The world the vanished races had disappeared to on the Night of Vanishing.
He suspected he was standing inside it.
Or perhaps... Only at its doorstep.
His gaze returned to the vast world stretching endlessly below.
Somewhere down there, or perhaps in the countless regions beyond it, lay the answers to every question the Introduction to Earth had raised.
The vampires. The werewolves. The demihumans. The True Humans.
The races that modern history believed had vanished, when in truth they had simply gone somewhere humanity could no longer reach.
And now... Stan Harrison was here.
Whether he had been brought here on purpose or by accident, whether the spatial lock was temporary or permanent, whether the crystal sky, the inverted mountain, and the floating islands were real or not... none of that changed the fact that he was here.
And if he was here, then he would have to find a way through.
He couldn’t just stand around and do nothing. He had to find his way back.
’Why am I so sure this is that realm, though? I could be wrong... Whatever. No point dwelling on it right now. I need to find my way back... but I don’t even know where to start.’
He rolled his shoulders, tested the weight of his enhanced body, felt the small but steady current of Qi circulating through his newly opened meridians, and took his first cautious step forward along the black stone ledge.
The world below him waited.
The answers, he suspected, waited with it.
Just as Stan began to think this might truly be the world the werewolves and vampires had come from, just as his mind was beginning to accept that the impossible landscape before him was a real place he had somehow arrived in, the space around him folded once more.
The vast continent crumpled inward and disappeared.
A stone hallway took its place.
Stan blinked. ’What the fuck?!’
He was no longer standing atop the high black stone ledge overlooking the world. Instead, he found himself at the entrance of a narrow corridor carved through solid rock. Its walls rose tall and dark on either side, while its far end disappeared into shadow. The floor beneath his feet was the same dense black stone. The air carried the same warm, ambient temperature.
But the world he had been looking at moments ago was gone.
Replaced entirely by this enclosed passage.
He turned sharply.
The ledge behind him had vanished as well.
In every direction, the corridor was all that remained.
His mind processed the sudden shift with the calm discipline of someone who had already accepted that reality here refused to obey common sense. The underground world had felt real. This corridor felt equally real. Somehow, both seemed to exist simultaneously, yet only one revealed itself at a time.
His instincts, honed by everything he had endured over the past twenty-four hours, told him that neither was an illusion. Neither was a hallucination nor a vision. They were two coexisting layers of the same place, and whatever force governed this realm was allowing him to perceive only one at a time.
He trusted that instinct.
Taking a deep breath, he turned toward the corridor. There was no other path forward.
Whatever had brought him here had presented him with only a single choice, and he had no intention of wasting time resisting it.
With a quiet sigh, he stepped inside.
The stone wall felt solid beneath his palm as he let his hand trail across its surface. It was cold. Dense. Its faintly waxy texture was identical to the ledge outside, and he could feel the rough mineral grain scraping gently against his fingertips.
Real.
Yet undeniably...
Strange.