A sudden pulse of light wrapped around Lin Feng's body.
Not warmth. Not cold. Just movement—as if he was being pulled through the folds of space itself, like air being sucked through the eye of a needle.
In the blink of an eye, the ground returned beneath his feet.
He was no longer in the vast, torch-lit chamber beneath the tree.
He was… outside.
On the sidewalk.
Directly in front of his house.
The sharp scent of concrete and late-night city air hit him immediately. He blinked at the streetlamp above, flickering faintly, the exact one he passed every evening on his way back from the park. His breath caught. His legs felt weak.
"How…?"
He turned and stared at the building—his home. The door, the cracked bricks, the iron fence. Everything was as it should be.
But none of it made sense.
He looked down at his hands. They were dusty, scratched, just as they had been inside the tower. This wasn't a reset. This wasn't him waking up. He was still in the same body that had crouched beneath that impossible tree.
"How did I get here? Why… here?"
He remembered the voice. The questions.
"Tell me who you are."
"Where do you run to?"
Had it always known? His name, his routine, his street, his house?
"It knew where I lived… Was it reading my mind?"
"Or was it testing me?"
He suddenly felt cold—violated, almost. Like something had reached into the most private corners of his thoughts and pretended it didn't already know.
"Were the questions real? Or were they traps?"
"Was it trying to see if I'd lie?"
Before he could spiral deeper, something snapped him out of it.
Sirens.
Dozens of them.
They echoed down the blocks like fire alarms in a war zone.
Then the distant thunder of rotor blades.
A helicopter soared overhead, scanning the streets with a searchlight.
People shouted. Horns blared. Somewhere, glass shattered.
He turned instinctively toward the park—the one he always jogged through, just a few streets away.
And then he saw it.
High above the trees, where the sky should have been empty, stood a tower.
No, not just a tower—a colossus of pure black stone.
It stretched upward so far he couldn't see the top.
There was no visible end—no antenna, no roof, no vanishing point.
It looked endless.
Like it went beyond the atmosphere, into space itself.
Its surface was smooth and reflective, but not like glass. It absorbed light. The moon seemed dimmer around it. The stars behind it had disappeared.
"It's real…"
"It wasn't a dream."
"She was real."
The Estera Root. The voice. The chamber.
They weren't figments. They were part of this.
And this… was happening now.
All around the city, chaos bloomed.
Across the glass of nearby skyscrapers, digital billboards flickered with emergency bulletins. Government logos rotated on red backgrounds. Broadcasters in suits shouted behind breaking-news banners. Footage of the tower was shown from helicopters, drones, street cameras.
Captions scrolled beneath:
"⛔ UNCONFIRMED STRUCTURE SIGHTED IN ALL NATIONS – GLOBAL EMERGENCY COUNCIL FORMED"
"🛑 ALIEN PRESENCE SUSPECTED – GOVERNMENTS COORDINATING RESPONSE"
"🧬 MILITARY CONTACT ATTEMPTED – NO ENTRY POINT DETECTED"
People crowded sidewalks, faces pale in the artificial light. Phones were raised everywhere, livestreams rolling, tears in some eyes, anger in others. Children cried. Dogs barked. Security officers pushed back crowds with yellow barricades.
Lin Feng turned, slowly, overwhelmed.
He wasn't the only one confused—but he might have been the only one who had already been inside.
On a nearby LED screen mounted on the side of a commercial tower, a glowing timestamp flashed:
10:20 PM
March 4, 2026
He noticed it.
"10:20..."
He had been running at 9:00 PM.
He had fallen into the hole shortly after.
And everything that had happened—
The infinite corridor.
The chamber.
The questions.
The voice.
The silence.
The tree.
It had felt like hours.
But here, only a little over an hour had passed.
He swallowed the thought.
The time didn't make sense.
Not here.
Not now.
Then he heard a voice.
Familiar.
"Feng-ge!"
"Where were you? Everyone is freaking out!
He turned.
It was his sister's voice.
Before he could fully turn, she was already in his arms—clutching him tight, trembling. Tears soaked his hoodie.
She was the first to cry.
His parents followed just behind, their faces pale with terror and disbelief. They had come outside looking for him.
He held his sister tighter and whispered, "I'm okay. I'm here."
"Where were you?" she asked. "There's police everywhere!"
Indeed, the street behind her was lined with patrol cars, their red and blue lights flashing across every wall and window. Across the road, soldiers in urban camo barked orders, forming a perimeter along the edge of the park. Armored vehicles blocked intersections. A military drone buzzed overhead.
People crowded balconies. Some whispered. Some prayed.
And in the middle of it all, Lin Feng stood motionless.
He wasn't dreaming.
The tower was real.
And the world had already begun to change.