The Scantum did not believe in farewells.
It believed in distance.
Corridors stretched longer than memory. Gates opened without ceremony. Instructions were given without emotion. And when paths diverged, they did so quietlywithout asking whether the ones walking them were ready.
Harun stood in the central navigation chamber, hands resting on the cold stone table before him.
The map hovering above it was unlike anything he had seen before.
This wasn't a battlefield layout.
This wasn't a training schematic.
This was a route.
A living one.
Lines of faint light traced paths through jagged terrain, fractured lands, and regions marked only with warning sigils instead of names. Some areas pulsed softly, stable. Others flickered, distorted, as if the land itself resisted being understood.
Kunal stood to his left, mechanical fingers hovering just short of the projection. Mira and Ishan stood opposite, silent, attentive.
Gohan's voice filled the chamber.
"You are not being sent on a mission," he said. "You are being released."
Harun frowned slightly.
"Released where?" Kunal asked.
Gohan extended a hand. The map shifted, zooming outward—past ridges, past broken valleys, past regions marked with old Dravillian runes.
A name appeared.
Boulderra Town.
The letters were heavy, carved in stone rather than light.
"That," Gohan said, "is where your road begins."
Boulderra Town
Gohan didn't romanticize it.
"That place is not a city," he continued. "It is a collision."
The map expanded again.
Harun saw it now—Boulderra sat between multiple regions, not belonging fully to any. Trade paths intersected there, old migration routes crossed beneath it, and beneath everything, faint Dravillian currents twisted like buried veins.
"Boulderra exists because nothing else could claim it," Gohan said.
"It survived wars because no one wanted to own the cost of rebuilding it."
Mira narrowed her eyes. "A neutral zone."
"Partially," Gohan replied. "Neutrality ends the moment power arrives."
Kunal smirked faintly. "Sounds welcoming."
Gohan didn't respond to that.
"The route to Boulderra," he said instead, "is the test."
The map shifted again.
Harun's breath slowed as he took it in.
The road was not straight.
It cut through Broken Ridges—towering stone formations split apart by ancient force, their surfaces unstable, constantly shedding debris. Wind patterns there were unpredictable, strong enough to lift unguarded bodies and throw them against rock.
Beyond that lay the Low Silence—a stretch of land where sound behaved incorrectly. Footsteps echoed seconds late. Voices bent and returned distorted. Dravillian residue lingered there, not hostile, but disorienting.
Then came the Outer Scar.
Even Gohan paused before speaking again.
"That region," he said, "was never meant to exist."
The map flickered.
A long, jagged line cut through the terrain like a wound that never closed.
"Something tore through reality there," Gohan continued. "Not recently. Not cleanly. The land healed… incorrectly."
Ishan finally spoke. "What moves there?"
Gohan met his gaze. "What survives."
Silence settled.
Harun stared at the route.
This wasn't a mission path.
It was a filter.
"You are not expected to clear this road," Gohan said. "You are expected to walk it."
Kunal exhaled slowly. "And if we don't make it?"
"Then Boulderra was never meant for you," Gohan replied evenly.
Harun clenched his jaw.
"And once we reach the town?" he asked.
Gohan's eyes sharpened.
"Once you reach Boulderra," he said, "you stop being trainees."
The weight of that sentence settled heavily.
"You will hear rumors," Gohan continued. "You will see Dravillian stones change hands. You will meet people who should not be alive."
He looked directly at Harun.
"And you will learn very quickly that strength is not the most valuable currency there."
Harun nodded once.
When Team A was dismissed, Harun didn't leave immediately.
He lingered, eyes still on the fading projection.
This road felt different from everything before.
No guardian.
No test chamber.
No clear enemy.
Just distance.
Kunal noticed. "You thinking about the wind guy again?"
Harun didn't deny it.
"He's not on this road," Harun said quietly.
Kunal leaned against the table. "Different roads don't mean different destinations."
Harun looked at him.
Kunal shrugged. "Just means you don't get to walk together."
Elsewhere in the Scantum, Sahil stood before a much smaller projection.
No team beside him.
No layered explanation.
Just a direction.
The chamber was older than most, its walls etched with symbols that didn't match the Scantum's usual patterns. The light here was dimmer, uneven—like it struggled to exist.
A single path glowed faintly on the map.
It didn't have a proper name.
Only a designation.
Eastern Fracture Zone.
"This area," the guide said quietly, "is outside stable oversight."
Sahil's eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"
"Meaning rules behave differently there," the guide replied. "Power doesn't scale the way it does here. Structures don't last. Authority fades quickly."
Sahil studied the map.
The land beyond the fracture looked… wrong.
Not corrupted.
Incomplete.
Fragments of terrain floated where solid ground should have been. Lines bent at strange angles. Symbols flickered in and out of existence, refusing to stay fixed.
"This is not Dravillian territory," Sahil said.
"No," the guide agreed. "It isn't."
"Then why send me?"
The guide hesitated.
"Because," he said carefully, "you can survive without relying on borrowed structure."
Sahil didn't respond.
"This place attracts anomalies," the guide continued. "Artifacts. Rings. Powers that attach themselves rather than awaken."
Sahil's jaw tightened.
"So it's unstable."
"Yes."
"And dangerous."
"Yes."
"And you're not giving me a team."
"No."
Sahil exhaled slowly.
"Good," he said.
The guide blinked. "Good?"
Sahil looked at the map again.
"If I'm going to understand why I froze," he said, "I need a place that doesn't forgive hesitation."
The guide said nothing.
"There's something else," Sahil added.
The guide nodded. "You won't find Harun's road there."
Sahil already knew.
"Good," he repeated. "I need my own."
Later that night, the Scantum's outer gates prepared to open.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Harun stood at the departure platform with Team A.
Bags secured. Equipment checked. No one spoke much.
Beyond the gate, the land stretched wide and unfamiliar, the first shadows of the Broken Ridges visible even from this distance.
Harun took one last look back.
Somewhere deep inside the Scantum, Sahil stood before a different gate.
Different direction.
Different world.
They did not see each other.
They did not wave.
They did not speak.
But both felt it.
That subtle shift inside—the moment when shared ground ends.
Harun stepped forward.
Sahil stepped sideways.
Two paths.
Same origin.
Different legends.
Far above them, Gohan watched both projections fade.
"Do you believe this is the right split?" a voice beside him asked.
Gohan did not answer immediately.
"Some bonds," he said finally, "grow stronger only after they are stretched."
"And Rohan?"
Gohan's eyes darkened.
"Rohan," he said, "will follow neither road."
The gates closed.
The Scantum returned to its quiet breathing.
And somewhere beyond its reach, two stories began moving in opposite direction.
one toward Boulderra Town,
and one toward a fracture in the world where rules no longer held.
Far from the Scantum.
Far from Boulderra's roads and fractured lands.
In a place the maps refused to acknowledge.
A wall stood untouched by time.
Not ruined.
Not broken.
Waiting.
Carved deep into its surface was a symbol—
a dragon, coiled in eternal motion, its body sharp-edged and angular, as if forged rather than drawn. The carving was old, older than kingdoms, older than fear itself.
Behind it—
Five stars.
Not scattered.
Not decorative.
Aligned.
Perfectly etched into the stone, each star carrying a faint indentation, as if something had once been placed there… and removed.
Footsteps echoed softly.
A man stood before the wall.
He wore a black cloak, heavy and unmoving despite the faint currents in the air. The fabric drank in light instead of reflecting it. On his back, stitched in threads darker than shadow itself, was the same dragon symbol—identical to the one carved into the wall.
He tilted his head slightly, as if listening.
Then he spoke.
"Change has already begun."
His voice was calm. Certain.
Not a declaration.
A statement of fact.
Slowly, he raised one hand.
The air responded.
Not violently.
Not explosively.
It collapsed inward.
Aura spilled from him like ink dropped into water—
dark purple, so deep it bordered on black, threaded with veins of shadow that twisted and folded in on themselves. The pressure warped the space around him, bending light, dulling sound.
The five stars on the wall began to glow faintly.
One by one.
Not all at once.
The man's lips curved into the faintest hint of a smile.
"The world," he murmured,
"will not recognize itself soon."
The aura expanded.
Then—
Everything went still.
The wall remained.
The dragon watched.
The stars waited.
And somewhere far away, roads began to tremble.