"No matter how many times I see it, that thing always gives me the creeps."
One of the raiders muttered as the team stood at the edge of the crack. It wasn't a hole in the ground or a flashy portal in the sky. It was worse — a tear, like someone had tried to unzip reality and left it halfway open. Jagged, flickering, and humming low like an electric cable about to snap.
Jaemin stood behind the others, clutching his dull blade tighter than he meant to. The so-called Abyssal Rift didn't look like much from afar — just a strange shimmer above the ground, surrounded by flickering hazard lights and shoddy fencing.
But up close? It felt wrong. Like standing too close to a speaker turned just low enough that the noise isn't sound anymore — just pressure.
The Abyss, from what Jaemin had studied, wasn't another world. Not in the conventional sense. It was more like… what leaks through when this world's structure begins to thin out.
Rifts were temporary. Entry points. Some lasted hours. Other days. This one had appeared just last night — logged as a Tier 5 incursion. The lowest rank. Supposedly safe. No known elemental interference, no high-level Abyssals.
Supposedly.
"Stick to your lanes. No panicking, no shouting, no sudden heroics."
The leader's voice echoed. His tone wasn't harsh — just tired. Seasoned.
Jaemin looked up at him — the man wasn't wearing any visible weapons, only in his back were two twin blades, but his armor bore deep scars that didn't look decorative. He didn't broadcast his strength, didn't radiate pressure like some others did. He was just… still. Like a flame hidden under stone.
Non-Coreborn, middle row. If things go bad, drop and wait for pickup. You don't run ahead. Clear?"
Jaemin gave a short nod. No one asked his name.
That was fine.
Then the Rift pulsed — a sick ripple in the air like a heartbeat with no rhythm — and the first raider stepped through.
No dramatic effect. No lightshow. They just… vanished.
One by one, the others followed. And when Jaemin's turn came, he hesitated only a moment before stepping forward.
****
The world changed — in a blink on an eye
The sky was still there, but not the one you would stargaze at. Grey and too still, like painted fog. Buildings stood at odd angles, identical to the real world's cityscape but... off. The glass in the windows looked like still water. Roads stretched endlessly into the mist.
And silence.
No birds. No wind. No sound but boots crunching on cracked pavement.
"This is a low-tier Mirror," a soft voice spoke beside him.
Jaemin turned. One of the healers — a woman maybe a few years older than him — walked with quiet grace. She had no armor, just a long, dark purple dress and an Auxiliary badge on her sleeve.
"It mimics our world to bait the mind. Early tiers always do. The deeper ones get more abstract… But this? This is just a reflection that forgot how to breathe."
The mist curled around their boots as the group advanced. No one spoke.
Jaemin walked near the rear, eyes scanning the too-quiet buildings. Every cracked window looked like water.
"You alright?."
He flinched slightly. The voice was gentle — not pitying, just... checking in.
He turned his head. The woman beside him gave a small smile.
"Yeah. Just… taking it in… This was a sudden job, so I wasn't quite ready."
"First Rift?."
"First time inside one actually," he said.
"Usually I just help with cleanup missions."
She nodded.
"Makes sense. Tier 5 Mirror Realms are weird like this. Not dangerous, not yet… just unsettling."
He hesitated before asking, "What's the difference between them? The tiers, I mean."
She glanced ahead, then just smiled as she answered him.
"Tiers aren't just power scales. They're… environmental filters...sort of. The Abyss isn't built like a dungeon game — it's layered."
Jaemin frowned.
"So this is… what, a copy?"
"More like a reflection."
"Low-tier mirrors our world but strips away its meaning. No animals. No people. Just an empty frame — like it remembers what we look like but not why we exist."
That hits him harder than he expected.
"And the higher ones...like those which are above this tier?"
"Tier 4 to 3, you get dungeon-type zones. Labyrinths, sunless caves, ruins... the structure starts falling apart. By Tier 2, the rules shift. Light bends wrong. Gravity breaks."
She paused, then added, "And Tier 1s? Domains. Personalized hells. Usually guarded by something that thinks."
"...Thinks?"
She didn't answer. Just kept walking.
After a beat, she glanced back at him.
"I'm Hana... Seo Hana, by the way."
"Jaemin."
"Good. Try not to die, Jaemin."
He blinked at her.
"Dark joke...it's a Healer thing," she said, giving him a soft grin.
He managed a weak laugh, then followed her deeper into the mist.
"You didn't answer my question."
Hana's steps didn't slow. For a moment, he thought she might ignore it again — but then she sighed.
"Tier 1 Domains…" she said quietly. "You don't talk about them unless you've been in one. Or lost someone to one."
"They're not just deeper zones. They're sentient. Or close enough that it doesn't matter. The place itself wants things. Remembers things. Sometimes it hates. Sometimes it mourns. Sometimes…" She trailed off, then shook her head. "Whatever you are when you step inside, it pulls it out. And if there's nothing solid at your core—"
She didn't finish.
He looked down at his hands. His grip tightened on the worn handle of the sword strapped to his side.
"...Sounds like a place meant to break people."
Hana gave a small, humorless laugh. "It doesn't have to try. That's just the nature of it."
They walked in silence for a stretch.
Then, softer, almost as if to herself, she added, "That's why they don't send rookies past Tier 3. And even then, only with full teams and exit plans."
Jaemin nodded slowly.
No dramatic shiver. No swelling background music.
Just a heavier step than before.
After a moment, she bumped his arm lightly with her elbow.
"Anyway," she said, her voice brighter, "at least you're not the worst rookie I've seen."
Jaemin raised an eyebrow. "That's supposed to be comforting?"
She smirked. "The last guy tried to bring a fishing pole into a Tier 4 Rift. Thought he'd 'catch something weird.'"
He blinked. "…Did he?"
"Oh, he did catch something. A concussion."
Jaemin let out a small laugh. Genuinely this time.
"Guess I'm doing okay then."
"You're walking straight and not asking if you'll get powers mid-raid. That's a win in my dairy that I'll be journaling all night in today."
Before he could reply, a shout rang out from ahead.
"TROOPS AT ATTENTION! RIFTHOUNDS IN SIGHT!"
The leader's voice cut like steel through fog.
Everything shifted.
Boots grounded. Weapons drawn. The tension snapped tight in a heartbeat.
"Stay close to the Bastions. Don't draw unless one breaks through."
From the mist ahead, shapes began to slither as dim purple eyes gleamed through the mist.
Flowing low to the ground — like wolves made of shadow and liquid glass, eyes glowing dim and purple.
Rifthounds.
Low-tier. But fast. And hungry.
The Rifthounds emerged from the mist — serpent-bodied, wolf-faced, with glowing eyes like dying coals. Low-tier, sure. But numbers made even trash dangerous.
"Bastions!" the leader called, voice low but firm.
Two Coreborn stepped forward along with the leader. No theatrics.
And then—flare.
Their Corewheels ignited in unison.
A deep crimson-red aura surged from each of them, raw and visceral. It spread like blood blooming underwater — thick, suffocating, impossible to ignore. The ground didn't shake, but it felt heavier, as if the air itself had to make room for them.
Jaemin's breath caught; he was in countless mission as clean-up but never a part of the actual raid.
The leader stood at the center of the trio. His aura flared the fiercest — the red so dark it nearly blackened at the edges, like smoldering coal just before it catches again.
"Hold the line," he said.
The Rifthounds hissed and shifted, uneasy now.
They hadn't expected a wall of living flame.
The Rifthounds let out a guttural howl, feral screams that echoed through the mirror streets like something trying to remember how to be a wolf.
Then they charged.
Fast.
One of the Bastions stepped forward, boots cracking the broken pavement.
"Bastion Core: Lion's Mane."
The words left his mouth calm and steady — and a golden lattice flared into existence around him with a lion-like roar, expanding outward into a small dome.
A shimmering barrier formed, hexagonal and dense, like ember light woven into a shield. It absorbed the first impact as two Rifthounds slammed into it with shrieks of frustration.
The others?
The remaining tanks moved with frightening control.
They didn't need their blades drawn.
"THWACK!'
One pivoted and used his armored gauntlet to grab a charging hound mid-lunge — momentum redirected into a brutal slam against the ground.
"Fwip"
"THUM...THWACK!"
Another tank stepped between two beasts and shoulder-checked one into a broken car chassis.
Deep crimson auras still burned around them like coals in motion, the mist curling and recoiling from the heat.
Jaemin watched, heart hammering.
He wasn't in danger. Not yet.
The tanks had it covered.
Total control.
One of the Rifthounds broke through a gap in the line — fast, low, slipping under the arc of Lion's Mane as it began to fade.
"Shit!."
Jaemin's grip tightened on the dull sword in his hand, breath catching—until the team leader stepped in, hand still on his sheathed blade but aura blazing.
The Rifthound stopped. Mid-charge. Its body shuddered and twisted, as if crushed by invisible weight.
The leader's voice was quiet.
"Next time, wait your turn."
Then he flicked his wrist — a controlled motion — and the beast collapsed, dead.
The air snapped.
A low, guttural howl rolled through the fog like a war drum — then another, closer.
Too many.
From every alley, every shattered rooftop, the shapes came slithering — not running, slithering — like smoke-stained wolves poured into the shape of serpents. Rifthounds.
A lot more than before.
Jaemin's breath caught. "How many?"
"Thirty. Maybe more," one of the DPS muttered, already unhooking her twin daggers. "They're hunting in a pack!!, LOOK OUT EVERYONE!."
The tank leader's voice boomed, solid and sharp:
"Formation B. Bastions forward, DPS follow through once the gap opens. Healers, stay middle line — eyes on the non-Coreborn.!!!"
The three tanks surged ahead in practiced synchronicity. Their aura ignited like flares in the night — deep crimson red, blooming around them like fire caught in a slow-motion explosion.
"Bastion core: LION'S MANE! Forward Formation."
Roared the leader.
A transparent dome of burning crimson energy burst out from his shield, shielding the front as the other two tanks shouldered their way forward with bared blades.
The first wave of Rifthounds smashed against the barrier with screeching impact. Claws skidded across energy, jaws snapped at air.
"NOW!" the leader barked.
The DPS moved.
One blinked forward — a Velocity Coreborn wraped in an Golden Yellow aura which flares to life — appearing in a blur behind a Rifthound and severing its spine with a single clean slash.
Another, a Precision type wrapped in Fiery Orange aura, let fly a barrage of gleaming core-thread bolts that pierced skulls with surgical precision.
"ass-wipes."
The air thickened. Core energy clashed with Abyssal hunger in a rhythm too fast to follow.
Jaemin kept to the rear, grabbing dropped weapons, watching backs — until one of the beasts broke through.
It came from above — launched off a half-collapsed rooftop like a shadow. He turned too slow.
"Cruccckkkkkkkkkkkkc"
The weight knocked him flat. Its claws raked across his shoulder, slicing through hoodie and skin. Pain flared.
"AGH—!"
Then came light.
A streak of vivid purple energy slammed into the Rifthound's flank, sending it skidding across the ground. One of the DPS an Flux core — the youngest-looking one — was already at Jaemin's side, blade crackling with residual electricity.
"You okay?!"
"I— yeah...I think so—" He clutched his bleeding shoulder.
"I wasn't looking in the right direction—"
"No excuses here!," she said, sharp but not cruel.
"Stay low."
"Jaemin!."
Hana's voice cut through, and she knelt beside him, pressing her warm, glowing hand against the wound.
"Try not to get mauled five minutes in."
He hissed, pain easing slightly as her soft emerarld healing aura flareed up and wrapped around him, healing him .
"Didn't plan on it."
She rolled her eyes.
"None of us do."
More howls. The fog seemed to close in tighter. But the tanks were still standing. The line held — barely.
"Let's go," Hana said, hauling him up with surprising strength. "The next wave's coming. And this time? Don't be a hero."