From the head office of the Sehee Research Institute, Seoa and I were watching the security CCTV footage playing on the wall-mounted monitor.

The only sounds in the silent office were the occasional rustling of papers filled with charts and graphs.

But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t figure out the cause.

Why did the seemingly calm Glass Flamingo suddenly break out?

I turned to Seoa and asked, "What could have caused the sudden escape? I’ve reviewed the footage closely, and there wasn’t any provocation or attack."

Seoa, deep in thought, answered calmly, "That’s why I thoroughly analyzed the previous research institute where it was held before the Sehee Research Institute acquired it. I found a few suspicious elements."

"Really? What were those suspicious elements?"

I tilted my head slightly, showing keen interest in her response.

Seoa showed me a series of ominous photos, almost resembling those of a military facility.

The pictures revealed an imposing structure surrounded by thick, reinforced walls, along with explosion devices designed to bury the entire isolation chamber underground if needed.

Looking at the photos, my first thought was, ‘Wow, they really spent a lot of money on this.’

"It seems the lack of such high-strength isolation facilities in our institute was the issue. The Flamingo might have sensed it could escape and thus revealed its aggressive nature. After all, when it broke out, it didn’t attack anyone but immediately tried to flee down the stairs."

"So it acted harmless when it felt trapped but ran the moment it saw an opportunity?"

I couldn’t help but feel slightly offended, as if the Object had underestimated our institute and made its escape.

"Still, it’s a relief. This kind of escape won’t happen again, right?"

Glancing toward the corner of the table, I saw a proud and adorable soldier standing tall.

Wearing a helmet made of water and holding a water-made spear was a Golden Reaper!

Its confident expression and cuteness were amplified, making the Golden Reaper twice as adorable.

After the Glass Flamingo’s escape, the Golden Reapers had somehow found helmets and spears and began patrolling the institute.

One in each isolation room.

One in each office.

Thud, thud, as they marched through the hallways.

A whole group gathered in front of the pudding in the break room.

While we found them utterly adorable, the Objects seemed to feel differently. The aggressive behaviors of the other Objects significantly decreased whenever a Golden Reaper was nearby.

The staff, who frequently encountered the cute Golden Reapers, were also much happier.

The Sehee Research Institute had become the safest and happiest place in the world.

I was enjoying a dreamlike rest on the artificial beach of the water park.

Below me was Yerin, lying on an uncomfortable plastic lounge chair that didn’t match the soft sandy beach.

Though the chair was hard, Yerin had her eyes closed, wearing an expression of pure contentment.

I lay on top of her, completely relaxed and limp, finding a comfortable position.

And above me, the ever-lively Golden Reapers were also taking their rest.

Some were lying on my belly, while others bounced playfully on top of it.

Yerin looked happy, and I was content lying on a soft Yerin rather than a hard chair, so I was happy too.

Add to that the happiness of the Golden Reapers—this was paradise.

Watching the Golden Reapers frolic about, I felt the mischievous side of me, which had quieted lately, start to resurface.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t teased the Blue Reaper after hitting it with the marshmallow hammer.

The Golden Reapers might sulk if I didn’t play fair, so I should prank them equally.

But the youngest was so fragile that choosing a prank was tricky.

If I put them in a washing machine like the Golden Reapers, they might just fall apart.

With the playful Golden Reapers bouncing on the water, the sweet snacks, and Yerin nibbling on my antennae, the peaceful day was suddenly torn apart by a violent spatial rift.

A tear in space, aimed as if to strike at Yerin’s neck, startled me into action, and I quickly expanded the Mini Reaper Garden around us.

Thankfully, the rift in space halted as it encountered the space I controlled, unable to tear through it.

"!"

Yerin was so shocked by the sudden event that she forgot to scream, instead clutching her neck and sitting up in a daze.

The torn space quickly returned to normal, but the floor, caught in the spatial rift, began to crumble slowly.

What the hell was going on?

The thought that Yerin had almost died filled me with anger, and I stood up, spreading my senses outward.

I estimated that 90% of this was likely caused by that damn tree tearing through space.

As I considered turning it into sawdust, James burst into the isolation room, phone in hand, panting heavily.

"Why haven’t you answered your phone? We need to evacuate James City right now!"

James was drenched in sweat, as if he had run all the way here.

Having witnessed the spatial rifts slicing through steel walls like pudding, Yerin didn’t ask any questions. She just threw on a shirt over her swimsuit and hurriedly followed James.

As we rode in the cart to escape, the scene in the research facility was chaotic.

It looked like everyone had evacuated in a rush, leaving doors wide open, papers, and high-tech equipment strewn across the floor.

Here and there, we spotted the severed bodies of those caught in the spatial rifts.

"Just moments ago, we received a report of anomalies at the wall. We’ve got a six-hour window, but with the time distortion, that’s uncertain. It could be six hours, or it could be one minute, one second, or even a year. We need to move quickly," James said, his face tense with urgency.

"At least the barrier is holding up for now. When the tree first expanded its territory, we suffered massive casualties as everyone fled," James added in a low voice, mentioning the vice-mayor’s role with a hint of bitterness.

As we passed through the facility and out onto the street, it was eerily quiet, not a soul in sight.

The spatial rifts had carved through the area multiple times, and the damage was obvious.

The tall buildings were barely holding their shape, while the shorter ones looked as though they could collapse at any moment.

I placed two Golden Reapers on Yerin’s and James’s heads, then jumped out of the vehicle.

"Reaper?"

I turned to glance at Yerin as she sped away and then dashed toward the barrier in my Ghost Form.

Yerin’s life had been endangered, so I had to get my revenge.

Where am I?

No matter how much I tried to grasp my surroundings, everything was a blur of confusion.

Right, I was in the barrier control room.

I have to protect the barrier.

I have to keep the citizens safe from dangerous Objects.

But the reality I saw wasn’t the control room—it was a chaotic mess, shattered like countless fragments of a broken mirror.

It felt like a mosaic of incomprehensible moments.

It was as if I were submerged in deep water, the sounds around me muffled and distant.

Everything I saw—the colors, the shapes—was like a kaleidoscope, swirling together in a disorienting blur.

My thoughts, my world, had fundamentally changed, severed completely from reality.

Looking down, I could see my hand firmly anchored to the console, like a ship’s anchor in a storm of chaos.

The console’s timer flickered: 6 hours. Then it shifted to 1 hour. Then -30 hours.

The displayed time was a jumbled mess, and the concept of “remaining time” had lost all meaning.

This was it.

This was the time anomaly I had only read about in reports from beyond the wall.

A world where time didn’t flow linearly but rolled and twisted.

The control panel beneath my hand had been shattered into countless pieces, like it had aged and crumbled over millennia.

Yet if I looked away for even a moment, it would appear whole again.

As if it had never been broken.

And I—whatever "I" was—was fractured as well.

I was already dead.

Yet I was still alive, staring at my own corpse.

It seemed like more than six hours had passed, yet it also felt like time had stopped. Or maybe it hadn’t.

I felt like I was trapped, eternally suspended in this broken time, endlessly looping through this moment.

Past, present, and future clashed, merged, and repeated in an endless cycle with no escape.

This was my prison.

Thud, thud.

I walked alone down a desolate street that had once been bustling but was now eerily empty.

Each step echoed through the silent city, creating a lonely rhythm in the midst of the abandoned urban landscape.

There were delicious-looking restaurants and fascinating facilities.

This city would have been a delight to explore with Yerin tomorrow.

But the roads and buildings were in ruins, and there wasn’t a single person in sight—only signs of a hurried evacuation.

Like a salmon swimming upstream, I retraced the path of the fleeing masses, moving closer to my destination with each step.

With every stride, I drew nearer to the ominous vibrations emanating from the barrier.

As I approached, I could feel the tree’s presence growing stronger.

Like lightning flashing on a stormy night, space occasionally tore apart, slicing through the city.

When I arrived at the enormous wall, it looked like it was barely holding together.

I was amazed it was still standing at all.

The barrier resembled a shattered ceramic pot, its cracks painfully obvious.

The fissures in the wall gaped open like wounds, and from those wounds seeped an eerie dark blue light, like blood.

I looked up at the barrier, then threw myself through one of its cracks.

The world, which had been shrouded in mist and scattered like pieces of a broken puzzle, began to align as something powerful started observing it.

When I managed to raise my barely functioning head, I saw a world still shattered but different.

It was a landscape stitched together from countless fragmented realities.

A living, breathing mosaic.

The earth beneath my feet was like a puzzle, forcibly pieced together with mismatched fragments of land.

Fields covered in white flowers, pulsing with life.

Shadowy lands where lone ghosts danced in the darkness.

And at the end of this puzzle-like terrain, a towering tree spread its long, thick roots, grasping and holding the fragments together.

The sky above was a chaotic curtain of twilight, dawn, day, and night, all jumbled together.

It was as if time itself had shattered, leaving behind nothing but the jagged fragments of a broken mirror.

But the tree wasn’t the true ruler of this surreal space.

Hovering above the fragmented sky, casting its heavy light upon the tree, was a colossal dark blue moon.