Seoul Dino Park, shrouded in shadow.
Amber and Scarlett sat facing each other inside the central control room, where a hologram mimicking Babel City spun slowly in the air.
Scarlett was reviewing code from a new hacking program, while Amber was analyzing recently acquired internal gacorp data related to dinsional rifts, occasionally turning to Scarlett for input.
A had left for the rooftop of Titan Tech’s Eastern Branch just monts ago.
The mont the park’s shadow-detection system picked up the “Pizza Demon summoning” signal from sowhere in Babel, she vanished via shadow movent.
More often than not, A would be gone before Amber even had the chance to report the signal.
Amber had a live feed of Titan Tech’s rooftop minimized on the side of her display as she glanced at it and muttered:
“So the offerings are actually good pizza this ti... Last ti she practically had a breakdown over that bug pizza.”
In truth, it was rare for A to ever call the offering pizza good.
More often, the pizzas were bizarre, borderline inedible concoctions made with absurd ingredients.
Amber figured A wasn’t in it for the flavor—she just liked trying new pizzas.
Even just tasting a new offering seed to genuinely lift her mood.
Scarlett paused her typing for a mont and glanced at the small screen Amber had pulled up.
It showed Titan Tech personnel gathering in force, fully ard and ready.
But neither Amber nor Scarlett looked particularly concerned.
No conventional weapon would ever be enough to take A down.
“By the way, A... She’s wearing her Triceratops hat today?”
As Scarlett pointed out, A was wearing the beloved Triceratops hat she usually kept in storage.
“She’s really bringing that thing into a battlefield?”
Amber chuckled softly.
“She probably just forgot she had it on and jumped straight into shadow movent.”
They traded light jokes, then went back to their respective tasks.
BEEEEEEEEEP.
A piercing shriek exploded inside their minds.
It wasn’t physical sound.
It was a wave—an overwhelming pulse through the AI fra network, powerful enough that every netwitch in the system, maybe even every living thing in Babel, could feel it.
Like a dam bursting and flooding an entire valley, incomprehensible volus of data crashed through the network.
Amber instinctively clutched her head.
It was a nerve-grinding sensation that set every cell in her body on edge.
Scarlett groaned in pain, clutching the edge of her holographic display.
“This... this is... a Corrosion Bomb!”
Amber barely managed to gather herself as she shouted, her voice trembling.
A weapon from the Babel era. The Corrosion Bomb.
Officially, no gacorp had ever used it in practice—outside of controlled “test detonations,” anyway. It was a forbidden weapon.
Like a nuclear bomb, it ruined not just the blast zone but the very nature of the space itself. Only worse.
Radiation faded over ti.
But the spatial distortions and micro-Corrosion Domains caused by a Corrosion Bomb? Those remained forever.
Wherever the bomb detonated beca a permanent death zone—unlivable, corrupted, ruined.
As the shockwave rolled through the AI fra network, chatter exploded across every node.
Who dared to use a weapon like that?
What kind of target justified sothing so catastrophic?
And where the hell had it gone off?
Unverified reports and fear-soaked speculation flooded every channel.
The entire network roiled like a boiling oil vat.
Conspiracy theories and panic spread uncontrollably.
“...It couldn’t be... where A is... could it?”
A chilling sense of dread wrapped itself around Amber’s chest.
Her fingers trembled as she worked the holographic console in the control room.
She activated every surveillance cara and sensor Seoul Dino Park had access to, desperately trying to locate A.
Praying—hoping—that A hadn’t been caught in the blast.
****
Everything moved in slow motion.
Ti crawled as the black sphere of the Corrosion Bomb swallowed whole, and I realized sothing truly horrifying.
My Triceratops hat.
It was still on my head.
I reached out with every ounce of power I had, trying to save it.
Circle energy surged from my heart. Shadows enveloped my entire body. But it wasn’t enough.
No ability that interfered with physical phenona could stop a space from tearing itself apart.
The hat vanished—completely erased from existence.
As if it had never been real to begin with.
“GRAAAAAHH!!”
I scread in anguish, my face twisted in despair.
Overco with rage and sorrow, I looked around.
The bomb’s core was pure chaos.
Corrosion Domains burst from the center, one after another.
It was like billions—trillions—of self-enhancing AIs were being born at once in a singularity.
The Domains collided, repelled each other, clashed with incomprehensible energy.
The force was so volatile, so sudden, that the very fabric of space scread as it tore apart.
My body was being shredded by the swarming Domains, breaking apart and regenerating over and over again.
And I could already predict what would happen next.
The Domains, cramd together into this tight space, would soon scatter in every direction.
Unable to fully expand, they’d tear everything around them into ribbons—like a cot storm made of razorwire.
Normal matter couldn’t survive even a brush with a moving Corrosion Domain. It would be punctured like wet paper.
I forced myself to hold them back.
No matter how tough I was, if I got torn into tens of thousands of fragnts, there was no guarantee I’d make it through.
I clung to the disintegrating mass of Corrosion Domains with everything I had.
Maybe because I was trying to physically grip sothing that had no form.
My hands were shredded and healed again, over and over.
Then, sothing changed.
The Domains resisted.
I could feel it. A massive pushback ford inside my grip.
It was like I had actually grabbed them.
Like a spring compressed to the breaking point, they trembled, ready to explode outward at any second.
But I didn’t let go.
And then—suddenly—they began to collapse inward.
Every single Domain was sucked into my grasp, compressing into one.
An impossible phenonon—only possible because space itself here was so unstable.
Like iron shavings drawn to a magnet, the Corrosion Domains gave up resistance and started to fuse.
One after another, like droplets forming a river, they coalesced.
A massive current, shaped like a swirling vortex.
At the sa ti, the twisted space around began to settle.
Fragnts of shattered space drifted back into alignnt.
Even the underdeveloped Domains, which had failed to fully deploy, stopped pushing against one another and blended naturally.
And finally—when the chaos went still—
The fused Domain exploded outward in a single breath, devouring everything around it.
****
The mont the massive Corrosion Domain expanded, what lay inside was unlike any Domain I had ever seen before.
Up until now, Corrosion Domains were always warped, grotesque spaces—like living nightmares.
But this... this was different.
“Wh... where... is this?”
The scenery before was achingly familiar.
Old hos built from red brick. Tall utility poles lining °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° narrow alleys. Korean letters fading on a sun-bleached sign...
It looked exactly like the neighborhood I grew up in—over a hundred years ago.
The asphalt had faded to gray. Familiar cars were parked along the curbs. Torn posters still clung to crumbling walls.
It was all so vivid, I felt like I’d ti-traveled.
A strange warmth pulled at . A quiet ache rose from sowhere deep in my chest.
Without even realizing it, I started walking—through this naless piece of Korea.
Step. Step.
My footsteps echoed hollow in the empty alley.
On a green street sign, barely visible under the weathering, the words “Incheon tropolitan City” were printed.
But that didn’t really matter.
What mattered was this place... this place was ho.
A fragnt of the holand I’d been searching for.
I wandered aimlessly, step by step—until I reached the edge of the world.
Like the torn zones of Babel, a sharp boundary stood in my path.
Beyond it stretched the vast expanse of space.
But it wasn’t the cold, black void I knew.
It was dazzling—bursting with color, a kaleidoscope of galaxies.
That cursed sky stretched from the horizon to the heavens, filling my entire view.
Thunk.
I reached out—just to check—and my forehead struck sothing invisible.
A transparent wall.
Like a giant glass do sealing this tiny Korean space off from the rest of the universe.
“....”
It was disappointing.
That my Korea was so... small.
And I missed it. I missed it so much, it physically hurt.
But at the sa ti, this miracle—this sliver of rediscovery—filled with peace.
I had found a trace of the vanished Korea I’d never stopped chasing.
As I turned to head back the way I ca, a building tucked in the shadows caught my eye.
Inside one of its dark windows... a tiny blue light flickered.
‘...?’
In a place so completely devoid of life, it was a strange thing to see.
A flicker of hope—maybe soone had survived?
I walked slowly to the window.
Peered inside.
And saw them.
Children—several of them—pressed up against the glass, their eyes glowing blue in the dark.
They looked like small animals, wary and silent, hiding in the shadows.
The mont I t eyes with one of them—a particularly expressionless one—
All across the darkness, dozens, hundreds of blue dots lit up.
Like stars in a night sky. Uncountable.
And then I realized:
Every one of those blue lights...
...was a child’s gaze.
They were all staring at from the dark.
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