The ancestors fled the Dark Continent long before humanity scratched out its earliest historical records.
Link spoke slowly. Her muffled voice lacked urgency, letting the heavy silence of the clearing fill the spaces between her words.
In the Dark Continent, scale defied human comprehension. Ants possessed the crushing bulk of calves. Grazing beasts could flatten entire city blocks under their bellies simply by resting. Colossal entities drifted across the terrain like shifting weather fronts. Danger and obstacle were useless concepts. From the perspective of the continent's apex predators, a human being simply did not register as prey. The desperate refugees built their settlements in subterranean burrows. Seen from high above, early human civilization functioned exactly like an ant colony, operating on an obscure, tiny logic entirely beneath the notice of the ruling ecosystem.
Humanity survived through sheer physical insignificance and paranoid, collective intelligence. They scraped together their existence in pockets of borrowed time. Decades passed. Eventually, their luck ran dry. The scattered remnants of their subterranean cities emerged and migrated toward the only logical boundary. The massive expanse of water marking the absolute edge of the continent.
To the native horrors of the Dark Continent, Lake Mobius was merely a lake. To the exhausted human refugees staring across the endless horizon, it represented the edge of the universe.
They crossed it anyway.
The voyage stretched until the concept of duration dissolved completely. The crossing changed them. Prolonged exposure to the raw, ambient energy bleeding off the open water altered their biology. The brutal physiological friction of perpetual survival warped generations shaped by the Dark Continent into something entirely new. These shifts were not injuries or illnesses. They were fundamental mutations.
They eventually washed up on the far shores. The six continents. A manageable world built to their physical scale, a place where their smallness transitioned from a dire survival flaw into an unbothered luxury.
And they kept their mouths shut, Liam said.
They buried the entire truth, Link replied. She gripped her ceramic cup, tracing the rim with her thumb. Everything regarding their origin. The agonizing crossing. The deep mutations lingering in their bloodlines. Starting over required completely severing all ties to the old world. Those who could not sever those ties, the ones bearing mutations too visible to pass as standard humans, remained behind at the primary landing site. The burial grounds.
Which eventually evolved into Meteor City, Bisky stated. Her gaze remained fixed on the twisting tree roots.
Gradually. Over a millennia, Link confirmed.
Shizuku tilted her head, her dark hair brushing her collar. When you mentioned mutations, were you referring to the entities we now classify as magical beasts?
Yes.
And the individuals who remained at the burial site underwent the same biological divergence, Shizuku pressed. They carry non-human blood. That is the genetic legacy of the Meteor City population.
Your first assumption is correct, Link said. The second depends entirely on where you draw the biological boundary between a human and a magical beast.
Link shifted her dark eyes toward Liam.
Liam tapped his finger against his knee. He mapped the flow of natural energy, the lingering residue of deceased life saturating the environment. Bodies molded by the dense atmosphere of the Dark Continent absorbed that ambient power unconsciously, breathing it in like oxygen.
The ancestors were not Nen users, Liam said. Not according to our modern framework. But they possessed a unique capacity. The survivors of the crossing adapted to a lethal environment. The raw natural energy of Lake Mobius interacted with their latent potential, mutating them into something closely resembling...
The discipline you are currently studying, Link finished softly.
Shamans. Priests. Individuals manifesting impossible phenomena without technical frameworks, relying entirely on raw, instinctual survival.
I was born in Meteor City, Link continued. She reached down, gently resting her gloved hand on the pointed hat of the younger Link sitting at her side. Certain children born in the city awaken their latent abilities spontaneously. No Water Divination. No rigorous training. The power simply snaps into existence the exact moment survival demands it. I am a very specific manifestation of that phenomenon.
She turned her masked face toward the ancient, towering trunk.
Years ago, delirious from starvation, I wandered into this forest. When my consciousness returned, my existence had fractured. Half of my being remained behind in Meteor City, guiding qualified individuals toward the answers they sought. The other half... She tilted her chin upward, observing the thick canopy. Stays right here.
With the tree, Shizuku noted.
With what sleeps inside the tree, Link corrected. Over fifteen hundred years, the original burial site compressed. The refugees who could not leave saturated this soil with their lingering presence, their mutations, and their grief. Over centuries, under these precise atmospheric conditions, that energy grew intensely concentrated.
You are a gatekeeper, Liam said. Not a violent deterrent like Wu Da. A warden. Something ancient is sealed inside that wood, and you have been sitting here waiting for the correct variable to arrive.
Link remained silent. The steam curling from her tea dissipated into the cool air.
I believe your assessment is accurate, she finally said. I received no physical description of the designated arrival. But you are sitting in front of me, and I find your presence entirely expected. She uncrossed her legs. Reach out and press your palm against the bark. You may enter.
Liam, Bisky, and Shizuku stood up and stepped several paces away from the roots, clustering together.
She was violently sucked into that trunk, Liam whispered, glancing at Bisky's profile.
And violently expelled missing a limb, Shizuku added, her voice dropping to a low murmur.
I survived by fleeing deep into Meteor City using a compressed physical form to mask my aura signature, Bisky stated flatly. She crossed her arms, her jaw locked in a rigid line. I have no idea what attacked me, nor what it looks like inside that space. Do we have an actual strategy.
We go inside, Liam said.
That is an action, not a strategy, Bisky countered.
It is a highly straightforward strategy.
Liam mentally scanned his internal reserves. The Butterfly technique he had copied from Akane remained securely anchored within his talisman. A hex gate forged from observing Jayce's blueprints, locked to a precise coordinate in Piltover. A dimensional exit bridging an entirely separate reality.
If the situation deteriorates, Liam explained, keeping his voice strictly regulated, I can rip open a dimensional crossing. Worst-case scenario, we step through the gate and materialize in a universe holding absolutely zero jurisdiction over whatever entity is rotting inside this tree. No ancient spirit is going to successfully track us across a complete dimensional boundary.
Bisky stared at the dirt, rolling the tactical variables through her mind.
Shizuku pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. The logic holds.
If you possess a superior tactical retreat, I am entirely open to suggestions, Liam offered.
Bisky dropped her arms to her sides.
The three of them turned back toward the towering tree. The masked Link and her younger counterpart remained perfectly still beside the massive roots. They did not speak or move to interfere.
Liam, Shizuku, and Bisky stepped forward, raising their hands in unison.
Their palms pressed flat against the rough wood. The bark radiated a deep, ambient heat, baking their skin. A second later, the solid surface lost its rigidity. The heavy wood grain liquefied beneath their fingers, swirling inward in a slow, hypnotic spiral. The physical boundary of the ancient trunk dissolved entirely, parting into a wide, open threshold.
They stepped through the wood.