An hour earlier,
Somewhere else in a nice minuscule city in the Minor Realm Aexel, the skies were a warm shade of blue and the sun bathed the streets in gentle gold.
In front of a rather mundane post office, a boy stood. No—posed might be more accurate. Mid-teens, green-haired, and disarmingly handsome in a way that made you question if you'd seen him in an expensive perfume ad once.
Dressed casually, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he held a bundle of letters in his hand and sorted through them like they were lottery tickets to a better day.
Another one. Wrong again.
He let out a long, theatrical sigh as he looked up at the cloudless sky. "Still nothing," he muttered. "Seriously, how can someone as amazing as me be stressing like this? What a cruel, unjust world."
A few passing women glanced at him—some out of curiosity, others with narrowed eyes at the melodrama—and he rewarded them with a lopsided grin. The kind of grin that said I know I'm ridiculous, but you love it anyway.
The disappointment didn't last long though. He was too practiced in brushing it off. After all, it wasn't every day you sent people through the realms chasing after the finest hair conditioner in the realms, and they still came back empty-handed.
He clicked his tongue, kicking a small stone off the curb. "Pleasure Isles would've been a better call," he muttered, glancing at his surroundings. "Sunshine, warm waves, good drinks... and not this minor-realm nonsense." He yawned, tossing the letters aside. "But nooo, I just had to follow that my sister's hunch."
And then suddenly there was a change.
A shift.
Like a soft, translucent wave rolling through the world—unseen but deeply felt. The air pressure changed. The clouds seemed to blur. And every person nearby paused for a fraction of a second, unsure of what they'd just experienced.
The boy stopped mid-stretch. His expression changed instantly.
"That wasn't wind," he whispered.
His silver eyes flickered for a moment—then turned emerald, sharp and glinting like cut gems. They focused, scanning the horizon, and then…
There they were.
Flickering.
Glitching.
Runes.
His lips curled. "Well, well... someone's opened an Advent."
He knew what that meant. A realm breach. A complete override of local reality. And here? In this meager city, where there were probably no Worldforged to be seen for miles?
That was serious.
He considered the implications. Should he get involved? Normally, this would be the Church's problem, and he really wasn't supposed to .be here in the first place.
But then again, ignoring danger wasn't really in his nature—not when it piqued his curiosity.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver coin, old and worn but polished to a shine. It hummed faintly as he coated it in a soft green aura and flipped it high into the air.
"Fate decides," he said, voice casual as ever. "Heads, I go be a hero. Tails, I book a spa weekend and pretend this never happened."
The coin spun.
Landed.
He opened his hand and smiled.
"Well well, looks like I'm saving the day."
*******
Some minutes later,
At the edge of the city where the city's Academy loomed, chaos had taken root. A massive dome shimmered in the air, warping light like oil on water—its colors shifting between wrongness and more wrongness.
Civilians stood behind yellow-marked barriers, phones out, recording the phenomenon despite repeated warnings from the city's officers.
One such officer—a weary man with greying sideburns and a voice hoarse from shouting—was furiously trying to get through to someone on a crystal-comm device.
"I told you, the Academy's inside the Advent! There was supposed to be a graduation taking place there."
"There are many high-profile figures inside! If we don't act now, we lose them!"
The voice on the other side was calm, bureaucratic, and completely unhelpful. "Estimated arrival of Church Response Unit: one hour."
"One hour!?" he shouted. "By then, it'll be fully integrated!"
But the line had already gone silent. He let out a strangled growl and pinched the bridge of his nose.
They weren't prepared for this. They were already stretched thin with the increase of crime rates.
If this Advent wasn't settled swiftly—then it would—the fallout would bury them.
"What's the problem, officer?"
The voice was light. Joking.
The captain turned, confused.
A green-haired teen stood beside him, smiling like he'd just walked into a birthday party and was about to be offered cake.
Where had he come from? How did he even get this close?
The captain's instincts screamed. Something was off. The officers around him spun around, wide-eyed.
"Who the hell are—"
The teen raised a hand, playful yet confident. "Whoa whoa, relax. I'm just here to help." His emerald eyes glowed faintly, and a breeze stirred around him despite the stillness of the air. "You've got an Advent on your hands. And fate tells me... I'm exactly where I need to be."
The captain blinked rapidly, still trying to process what had just happened.
"Wait," he said, brow furrowed, "what do you mean you're where you need to be?"
The green-haired teen tilted his head innocently, like the question genuinely surprised him. "You're trying to close the Advent before it fully integrates, right?"
"Yes, of course, but—what does that have to do with you?" the captain asked, eyes narrowing with lingering suspicion.
The boy gave him a flat, amused look, then gestured loosely to the enormous, pulsing dome of color that loomed over the Academy. "Well, I'm here to close it, obviously."
A beat of silence passed between them as if the captain couldn't quite believe he'd heard that correctly.
"You... you're kidding, right?" the captain asked, trying not to sound rude, but failing. "That's a massive Advent. Something like that would require an entire team of Church operatives—or a full Circle of Worldforged."
"Oh?" the boy responded, sounding only faintly interested. "Well, yeah. If it were a Fabled-Tier or higher. But this one's Unknown-Tier."
The captain blinked again. "Unknown?"
"Mm-hmm." The boy made a small spinning motion with his finger, a signal to wait for it. "Meaning? It is as weak as an Advent can be. A seriously trained group of Regulars could deal with it. It's not that strong."
The officer gave him a skeptical squint. "And how exactly would you know that?"
The teen blinked slowly, then gave a dry little snort. "You mean you haven't figured it out yet?"
He raised his hand, palm facing upward. Little motes of green light sparked into existence—twinkling like dew kissed by moonlight—until they spun together, forming a spectral book.
Silver and green. Elegant. Alive with shifting glyphs and glowing etchings.
A Codex.
The captain's eyes widened. The other officers let out hushed gasps, some even taking unconscious steps back. A Codex wasn't something you could fake—it was the mark of the Worldforged. The core of their existence. Their power laid bare.
The shift in the atmosphere was immediate.
"Oh—! I—I'm terribly sorry, sir," the captain said, bowing slightly, the formal respect rushing in like a reflex. "Forgive me for the questions. I didn't realize I was addressing a Distinguished Worldforged."
The boy laughed—a warm, airy sound that dispelled the tension like wind scattering fog. "Relax, cap. You were just doing your job. I am a random, handsome kid who showed up out of nowhere. Honestly? I respect the scrutiny."
The captain nodded, still flushed with guilt. "Even so... this Advent, it's not fully integrated yet. Are you really saying you can handle it alone?"
The teen didn't respond at first. His eyes—now pulsing with a soft emerald glow—were fixed on the shifting dome of corrupted light.
"I'm saying..." he murmured, voice just loud enough, "that if I walked in right now, I'd be back before your lunch break."
The captain stared. He wanted to laugh, to brush it off as overconfidence, but there was something behind those glowing eyes. Not bravado—clarity.
Then it clicked.
"You... you can see inside it?" the captain asked, voice suddenly reverent.
He'd heard rumors—tales of rare Worldforged gifted enough to peer into an Advent from the outside. To read its core. To measure its threat, and even glimpse the horrors within. It was not a common talent, but it was a sign of a truly special Worldforged.
The boy's smirk widened slightly. He didn't confirm it. He didn't need to.
The captain exhaled a long breath. Relief. Hope. This strange green-haired youth might be his salvation after all.
"I'll prepare an escort to take you to the edge of the field. If we hurry, you might still—"
A hand rose to stop him.
"Hold on," the teen said, his tone casual, but his eyes had sharpened.
He was still staring at the dome. Something in it had caught his attention.
"...What is it?" the captain asked cautiously.
The boy didn't look at him as he spoke. "Tell me something. Have you ever heard of Adversaries... fighting each other?"
The captain blinked. "You mean like territorial disputes?"
The boy shook his head. "No. I mean within the same Advent. Same origin point. Same world. Same purpose. Turning on each other."
The silence that followed was uncomfortable.
"That's impossible," the captain said. "Everyone knows Adversaries follow hierarchy—orders. When they fight, it's external. Never internal. They're... coordinated."
"Yeah," the teen said softly. "That's what I thought too."
The glow in his eyes flickered, as if adjusting focus.
Then he stepped back from the perimeter.
"Change of plans," he said. "I'm not going in."
The words were like a punch to the gut.
"What?" the captain barked, a spike of panic in his voice. "You said you could handle it! If we wait for the Church, the Advent could fully integrate! That's worst-case scenario!"
The teen didn't answer. He just kept watching the dome, brow furrowed in mild fascination. As if something inside was shifting, rewriting itself—and he was the only one who could see it.
"I know it's hard," he said absently, "but trust me. Something strange is happening in there. Advents don't behave like this. Something—someone—is breaking the script."
The captain opened his mouth, then closed it. His instinct told him to argue, but...
That look in the boy's eyes.
It wasn't apathy.
It was focus.
"I'll wait," the boy finally said, voice calm as still water. "Let's see who walks out first."