The Seoul checkpoint stood like a steel and concrete monument at the city's southern edge, its massive walls rising forty meters into the morning sky. Guard towers positioned every hundred meters bristled with both conventional weaponry and strange crystalline arrays that hummed with barely audible energy. The morning sun caught the metal and glass, turning the entire structure into something that looked more like a fortress than a border crossing.
Erel shifted the weight of his pack and stared up at the imposing barrier. He'd never been this close to the city's edge before. Most residents of the sovereign zones lived their entire lives without ever seeing the boundaries that protected them.
"First time?" Lyra asked, noticing his expression. She was adjusting the straps on her own pack with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this countless times.
"Yeah." Erel watched a convoy of armored trucks rumble through the massive gates, their sides marked with the Concordat's symbol - a stylized world tree with roots extending in all directions. "I always knew it was there, but seeing it..."
"Makes it real, doesn't it?" Lyra started walking toward the checkpoint queue. "Those walls went up after Mumbai. Fifteen years ago now."
Mumbai, the first massive gate that ever opened.
"What exactly happened in Mumbai?"
Lyra was quiet for a moment, her expression distant. "Tier 4 Gate opened in the heart of the city. Released the entire Mahabharata mythology into reality - armies of mythic warriors, divine weapons, celestial beings, the works. The anomalites back then... we didn't know what we were doing. Didn't understand how to coordinate, how to fight something that massive." She shook her head. "By the time it was contained, we'd lost India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Most of Southeast Asia too. Three billion people, gone in six months."
The number hit Erel like a physical blow. He'd known the early years had been bad, but three billion people...
"That's when the governments that were left formed the Concordat," Lyra continued, joining the line of people waiting to exit the city. "UN's last official act before it dissolved completely. Every surviving nation pooled their resources into one organization with a single mandate - contain the Imaginarium's influence at any cost."
The line moved slowly. Most of the people ahead of them were clearly anomalites - Erel could sense the faint energy signatures that marked their kind, though he was still learning to interpret the subtle differences. A few appeared to be ordinary humans with special permits, probably researchers or support personnel.
"These days, the Concordat has more real power than most governments," Lyra said, watching the processing area ahead. "When they say jump, nations ask how high."
The checkpoint itself was efficient but thorough. Guards in tactical gear examined their documentation while running them through various scanners. The whole process felt like a cross between airport security and military inspection.
"Training expedition, Gimhae Borderlands," Lyra told the clerk when they reached the front. "Six to eight months duration."
The clerk, a tired-looking woman in her thirties, stamped their papers without much interest. "Emergency beacon," she said, handing Erel a device about the size of a phone. "Response time varies from thirty minutes to six hours depending on your location and threat level. Try not to need it."
Walking through the final gate felt like stepping from one world into another. The contrast was immediate and striking. Where Seoul had been all managed green spaces, clean architecture, and the controlled hum of modern civilization, the landscape beyond the wall felt wild and untended.
The road stretched ahead through rolling hills where nature had begun reclaiming abandoned human settlements. Weeds pushed through cracks in the asphalt, and vines had overgrown the guardrails. Trees that had once been carefully maintained in parks and gardens now grew without pruning, their branches reaching across the road to form natural tunnels. Wildflowers bloomed in the ditches, and tall grass swayed in meadows where there had probably once been farmland.
"Welcome to the borderlands," Lyra said, pulling out a paper map instead of using any electronic device. "First thing you need to know - technology gets unreliable out here. GPS signals drift and the internet is a thing of the past."
They walked in comfortable silence for the first hour. Erel found himself constantly looking around, taking in the wild beauty of land that had been left to its own devices. Bird songs echoed from thick woods that pressed close to the road. Deer tracks were visible in the muddy patches, and he occasionally caught glimpses of larger animals moving through the underbrush.
"You're seeing what happens when humans abandon an area," Lyra said, noticing his interest. "Nature reclaims everything surprisingly quickly. Most of this region was evacuated gradually over the past decade as entity incursions became more frequent."
"How much of the world is like this?"
Lyra was quiet for a long moment, studying the overgrown landscape around them. "When the Imaginarium first manifested thirty years ago, humanity wasn't prepared. We didn't understand what anomalites were, didn't know how Paradox Planes worked, didn't even comprehend what we were facing." Her voice was matter-of-fact, but there was something underneath it - grief, maybe, or exhaustion. "Global population was eight billion then. It's half that now."
Erel stumbled slightly. "Four billion people died?"
"Died, transformed, or absorbed into Paradox Planes." She pointed to a cluster of buildings in the distance, their roofs green with moss and their walls covered in climbing ivy. "Mumbai was just the largest single catastrophe. There were hundreds of smaller ones those first years. Entire cities swallowed by mythic realms, regions abandoned when they became too dangerous to inhabit."
They passed a Concordat outpost around midday - a small fortified building with communication arrays and guards who watched the surrounding landscape with the kind of alertness that spoke of experience with things going wrong quickly. The guards nodded to Lyra as they passed, recognizing her despite not speaking.
"How many anomalites are there now?" Erel asked as they continued down the increasingly overgrown road.
"Maybe around three hundred thousand worldwide." Lyra paused to consult her map, comparing it to landmarks ahead. "Getting recognized by a myth is rare. Most people who experience the Call die during synchronization. Of those who survive, about half become Fissures instead of true anomalites."
The weight of those numbers settled on Erel like a physical burden. Three hundred thousand anomalites protecting four billion normal humans in an ever-shrinking safe zone.
"We're all that stands between the remaining human population and complete absorption into the Imaginarium," Lyra said quietly. "No pressure, right?"
Absolutely not.
They made camp that evening in a designated safe zone marked by metal posts driven deep into the ground. The area had clearly been a rest stop once - there were crumbling picnic tables and the concrete foundation of what had probably been a visitor's center. Now it was overgrown with wildflowers and berry bushes.
"The borderlands cover about twenty percent of Earth's surface," Lyra explained as she built their fire in what had once been a stone fire pit. "Manageable with proper precautions and regular patrols. It's the Breach Zones that are the real problem - nine percent of the planet where reality has been fundamentally rewritten."
"And the rest?"
"Sovereign zones like Seoul - about thirty percent of the original landmass, protected by constant monitoring and rapid response teams. The remaining one percent..." She gestured vaguely toward the darkening sky. "Nexus Points. Places where multiple mythic influences converge. Each one is a potential gateway for things that would make our current problems look trivial."
Late the next afternoon, they crested a hill and saw their first abandoned settlement.
The town had probably housed a few thousand people once. Now it lay empty, slowly being reclaimed by the natural world. Grass grew tall in the streets, and trees had sprouted in backyards and parking lots. Many of the buildings had partially collapsed roofs where tree branches had fallen during storms, and ivy covered most of the walls in thick green curtains. A small river that had probably been channeled through concrete now meandered freely through what had been the town center, creating new wetlands where there had once been a shopping district.
"What happened here?" Erel asked, staring at what had once been someone's home. A child's swing set sat in an overgrown backyard, its chains now serving as support for climbing vines.
"Probably evacuated when entity incursions became too frequent," Lyra said, leading him around the settlement's edge rather than through it. "Safer to move the population to a protected zone than try to defend every small community."
"Were they forced to leave?"
"Usually voluntary, with Concordat assistance. New housing, job placement programs, relocation support." She paused to study a building whose front wall had been torn open, revealing rooms where small trees now grew. "Though sometimes the choice gets made for you when your neighbors start disappearing into Paradox Planes."
They saw more abandoned places over the next few days - a gas station where the roof had caved in and birds now nested in the rafters, a school where the playground was overgrown but still recognizable under the weeds, a shopping mall whose parking lot had become a small forest. Each one told the story of normal human life interrupted and gradually erased by nature's patient reclamation.
"This is what happens when humanity retreats," Lyra explained as they passed a highway where saplings had broken through the asphalt in regular lines. "The Imaginarium doesn't need to destroy anything directly. It just makes areas too dangerous for normal people to live in, and nature does the rest."
Three days after leaving Seoul, they made camp beside a stream that ran clear and cold through what had probably once been farmland. The fields were now wild meadows full of flowers and tall grass, with the occasional fruit tree marking where someone's orchard had been. Lyra unpacked equipment Erel hadn't seen before - practice swords, protective gear, and training materials.
"Time to start the real work," she said, tossing him a sword that felt heavier than it looked. "If you're going to survive out here, you need to learn how to fight."
The sword was steel, simple and functional, but holding it made Erel acutely aware of how little he knew about using it. The grip felt wrong in his hands, the weight distribution was nothing like what he'd expected, and the blade seemed to want to pull his arms in directions they weren't meant to go.
"Basic stance first," Lyra said, demonstrating with her own practice sword. "Feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, weight evenly distributed. The sword is an extension of your body, not a separate tool."
Erel tried to mirror her position, but everything felt awkward and unnatural. The weapon was heavier than he'd expected, and maintaining the proper stance made muscles he didn't know he had start to ache within minutes.
"Why swords specifically? Wouldn't guns be more effective?"
"Guns don't work inside most Paradox Planes." Lyra moved around him, adjusting his posture with small corrections. "The Imaginarium operates on narrative logic, not physical laws. The only weapon you have inside a plane is your fragment, and they only take the form of a weapon that is appropriate for your myth. Guns, not so much."
She stepped back and studied his stance critically. "Your dominant hand is too tight on the grip. You're trying to control the sword instead of working with it. Relax your fingers, let the weapon settle naturally into your palm."
For the next hour, she had him practice just standing in the proper position, occasionally making small adjustments to his posture. It was surprisingly exhausting - his shoulders burned from keeping the sword at the correct angle, his legs trembled from maintaining the unfamiliar stance, and his back ached from keeping his spine straight.
"Good," she said finally. "Now, basic movement. Step forward with your dominant foot, maintain balance, keep the sword point directed toward where your opponent's center mass would be."
The movement felt clumsy and telegraphed to Erel. His foot caught on uneven ground, his balance shifted wrong, and the sword wavered from its target line. But Lyra made him repeat the motion dozens of times, correcting his footwork, his grip, his balance, until it became slightly more natural.
"The goal isn't to make you a master swordsman in a few months," she explained during a water break, watching him massage his aching shoulders. "The goal is to develop muscle memory and confidence so you can focus on using your abilities instead of fumbling with your weapon when things get dangerous."
"When will my fragment evolve into a weapon?"
"Probably when you reach Tier Two, which could be months or years depending on how much essence you accumulate and how well you integrate with your mythic nature." She picked up her own sword again, testing its balance with casual expertise. "But sword work will help regardless of what weapon manifests. The principles of distance, timing, and body mechanics carry over to any blade."
The afternoon was spent learning basic attacks - overhead strikes that used gravity and shoulder strength, diagonal cuts that flowed from hip rotation, thrusting motions that required precise footwork and balance. Each technique felt impossibly complex at first, requiring coordination between feet, hips, shoulders, and arms that Erel's body wasn't used to providing.
"You're thinking too much," Lyra said after watching him struggle through a simple diagonal cut for the twentieth time. His movements were stilted and mechanical, lacking any natural flow. "Combat isn't a math problem you solve with your brain. It's about training your body to react without conscious thought."
"That's easy for you to say. You've been doing this for years."
"Decades, actually." She demonstrated the same cut he'd been practicing, and in her hands it looked effortless - a smooth, flowing motion that started from her feet and traveled up through her entire body to end with the blade precisely where she wanted it. "But I remember being where you are. Everything felt impossible until suddenly it didn't."
As the sun began to set, she introduced him to defensive techniques - parries that redirected incoming attacks rather than stopping them directly, blocks that used the sword's guard to protect vital areas, and evasive movements that got his body out of danger while keeping his weapon ready to counter-attack.
"The most important lesson," she said as they worked through basic parrying drills, "is that fighting inside Paradox Planes isn't just about physical skill. Your abilities, your mythic resonance, your understanding of the story you're trapped in - all of that matters more than raw technique."
"What do you mean by understanding the story?"
Lyra lowered her sword and thought for a moment, watching fireflies begin to emerge from the tall grass around their campsite. "Every Paradox Plane operates according to the logic of its underlying myth. Let's say you're trapped in a plane based on Little Red Riding Hood. If you try to fight the Big Bad Wolf with pure aggression, charging in with sword swinging, you'll probably lose because that's not how the story works. The wolf is supposed to be cunning and dangerous in that tale."
She began moving through a series of movements that looked more like a dance than sword work - careful, deliberate, almost sneaky motions that emphasized stealth and precision over raw power.
"But if you approach it like a clever woodsman - patient, strategic, using the right tools at the right moment - the plane itself will help you succeed. The story wants to reach its proper conclusion, and you can guide it toward an ending that favors you."
Erel tried to follow her movements but quickly became tangled up, his feet crossing awkwardly and his sword swinging wide of its intended path.
"Like taking part in the trials pitted by the brides rather than retaliating?"
"Exactly."
That evening, as they sat by their fire eating travel rations and listening to the sounds of nocturnal wildlife in the surrounding meadows, Lyra began explaining entity classifications.
"Irregulars are what you'll encounter most often," she said, using her knife to draw diagrams in the soft earth beside the fire. "Tier One entities with minimal intelligence and simple behavioral patterns. Think of them as mythic animals - dangerous in groups, but individually not much worse than aggressive wildlife."
She sketched something that looked like a cross between a wolf and a living shadow. "They operate on instinct mostly. Hunt in packs, defend territory, feed and reproduce, but they don't plan or adapt much beyond basic survival behaviors."
"What makes an entity higher tier?"
"Intelligence, power, and complexity of behavior." She drew progressively larger and more detailed creatures in the dirt. "Kin-class entities can think and plan. They'll set traps, use tools, coordinate complex attacks. They understand cause and effect, can learn from experience like the brides you faced."
"Spawn-class entities are as intelligent as humans and often much more cunning. They understand psychology, can manipulate emotions, might try to negotiate or deceive you. Fighting one is like facing a predator that's been studying human behavior for decades. Like Bluebeard."
"Beast-class entities are like sentient catastrophes. They don't just hunt - they reshape entire territories to match their mythic nature. Fighting one is less like combat and more like trying to survive a hurricane that personally hates you."
"How do you tell what tier an entity is?"
"Practice, mostly. Lower-tier entities feel different to anomalite senses - their essence signatures are chaotic, almost random. Higher-tier entities have more organized energy patterns, and their mere presence starts affecting the environment around them." She stirred the fire with a stick, sending sparks up into the star-filled sky. "But there's a simple practical rule: if you're not sure what tier something is, assume it's higher than you can handle and call for backup."
"What about Fissures?"
Lyra's expression darkened, and she was quiet for a long moment. "Fissures are... complicated. They're what happens when the synchronization with a myth fails partway through. They look human, mostly, but something essential is missing. They retain fragments of human memories and personality, but they're hollow underneath."
"Are they dangerous?"
"Very. They crave essence from other anomalites because it temporarily makes them feel whole again. They often form packs with other Fissures, and they're unpredictable because their abilities are unstable." She poked at the fire again, watching the flames dance. "The worst part is that they remember being human. They know what they've lost, which makes them desperate and often violent."
On their seventh morning in the borderlands, Lyra opened the sealed packet from the Seoul checkpoint and spread its contents on a flat rock they were using as a table. The materials included tactical maps, reconnaissance photographs, and what looked like field reports written in the concise style of military intelligence.
"Intelligence reports show Irregular movements converging on an abandoned settlement about fifteen kilometers from here," she said, pointing to marked locations on the largest map. "Normally, Irregulars distribute randomly across available territory, but these movement patterns suggest coordination."
Erel studied the photographs, which showed disturbed ground, scratch marks on trees, and what looked like crude symbols carved into rocks. "What could make Irregulars coordinate?"
"That's exactly what makes this worth investigating." Lyra folded the maps and tucked them into her jacket.
"This is perfect for your first real hunt," she said, handing him his practice sword and a set of basic protective gear. "Irregulars are exactly the right level of threat for a Tier One anomalite. Dangerous enough to be meaningful training, but not so powerful that a single mistake means certain death."
"My first hunt," Erel repeated, testing the weight of the sword in his hands. It still felt foreign, but less impossibly awkward than it had a week ago. His shoulders no longer ached immediately from holding it, and his stance felt more natural.
"Every entity contains essence energy from the Imaginarium," Lyra explained as they broke camp and loaded their packs. "When you defeat one, some of that energy transfers to your essence cores. Not much from Irregulars, but enough to gradually strengthen your mythic connection. It's how anomalites grow stronger - combat, successful plane resolution, major mythic resonance events all feed essence back into your development."
She shouldered her pack and started walking toward the coordinates marked on the tactical map, following what had once been a paved road but was now more of a trail through reclaimed farmland. "But here's the critical thing you need to understand about entity incursions. When a Paradox Plane isn't resolved in time, it doesn't just disappear. The entities inside it get released into normal reality."
"What happens then?"
"They start reproducing, claiming territory, corrupting the local environment to match their mythic nature." Her voice was grim as they walked past an old barn whose roof had collapsed, leaving it open to the sky where birds had built nests in the exposed rafters. "A few Irregulars become a pack. A pack becomes a swarm. A swarm starts attracting higher-tier entities, and eventually you have an entire region that's been overrun by mythic influence."
The implications hit Erel like cold water. "That's how Breach Zones form."
"Exactly. That's how we lost Mumbai, São Paulo, half of Eastern Europe. Each one started with a small incursion that wasn't contained quickly enough." Lyra's smile was sharp and predatory as she adjusted her pack straps and picked up the pace. "So we're going to remove a small threat before it becomes a large one."
As they walked toward their first hunt, following an increasingly overgrown road through abandoned countryside, Erel found himself gripping his sword more confidently. The weight of it no longer felt quite so foreign in his hands, and he was beginning to understand that his training wasn't just about learning to fight - it was about learning to protect what remained of the world he'd grown up in.