---
They left Splitmoor in silence.
Not because they were afraid—Takumi was never afraid—but because the weight of what was coming had grown too large for conversation.
Behind them, the city shrank into the cliffs, the Spire of Flux fading into the fog like a bent needle stabbed into the world's spine.
Ahead of them stretched the Broken Mountains—a region whispered about in maps, sketched only in blurred charcoal, and labeled in shaking handwriting:
> "Gravity fractures. Paths disobey."
Lisette called it a cursed place.
Takumi called it interesting.
---
By the third hour of climbing, they noticed the slope bending wrong.
Takumi placed one foot on the next stone step and didn't rise—but instead, his body tilted sideways, as though walking along the inner wall of a cylinder.
Lisette grabbed his arm. "Wait—this is wrong. The slope's warping."
"It's not warping," he said calmly. "It's reorienting."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's the same thing."
"No. Warping is random. Reorienting is structured to an altered axis."
Lisette groaned. "Your brain is exhausting."
"You've said that before."
---
The mountain path led them into a rift valley that moved when they didn't look at it.
Twice, they walked the same stretch of road in opposite directions without turning.
Once, the sun rose—then reversed into night—then rose again with two moons briefly sharing the sky like twin coins in a gambler's hand.
Takumi tracked each change.
Every rotation.
Every angle of difference.
His mental map filled with annotations like:
> "Boulder: shifted 11 degrees north.
Grass line: identical in pattern, duplicated at 200m."
---
Lisette, however, grew pale.
"This place isn't right," she whispered after a fifth loop through what should've been the same cave. "I think time is... folding."
Takumi didn't respond immediately.
Then he turned to her.
"I know."
---
They reached a clearing at dusk. Or dawn. Neither of them could tell anymore.
There, standing beside a melted tree stump, was a girl.
No more than eight.
Hair white like winter ash. Eyes reflecting stars in patterns not found in any sky.
She smiled at Takumi before he could speak.
Then she said, in three overlapping voices:
> "You haven't chosen it yet, but you will."
"You already walked away."
"You are walking into Branch Five now."
---
Takumi froze.
Lisette stepped forward. "Who are you?"
The girl tilted her head.
Then answered: "I am the glitch in your path."
Takumi's eyes narrowed. "A system error?"
The girl laughed—all three versions of her.
"No. I'm the choice you left behind. The one you're about to face again."
She pointed to Takumi's chest.
"Open it."
---
Takumi hesitated.
Then opened his Status Menu.
But it wasn't the normal grid.
It had changed.
---
> Infinite Leveling Path – Branch Junction
Branch Four: Active
Branch Five: AVAILABLE
Warning: This path is irreversible. Entry requires acceptance of instability.
🜃 Option 1: Structured Ascension
• Permanent bonuses to mental resistance, symmetry-based skills
• Increased power under rules, less under chaos
🜄 Option 2: Fractured Mastery
• Adaptation to shifting logic, chaos-based evolution
• Skills break and reform randomly but grow faster
⚠ Choose now or path will decay.
---
Lisette read the screen and muttered, "They want you to break the thing that makes you... you."
Takumi said nothing for a long time.
He stared at both branches.
The structure.
The fracture.
Both were true paths.
But only one would allow him to survive Halrion—the city that never aligned.
He took a breath.
"Fracture adapts faster," he said quietly.
Lisette's eyes widened. "You're not—"
"I'm not abandoning myself," he cut in. "But this world isn't playing fair. So I will learn how to cheat."
---
He chose 🜄 Fractured Mastery.
---
> [Branch Five Selected: Fractured Mastery]
New Skill: Rule-Breaker Lv. 1
"Once per day, ignore a world rule for 5 seconds."
Status Effect Gained: Instability Blooming
Random logic shifts may now occur in perception.
Rewards scale with control.
Fractal Echo: Stabilized — 44%
---
The girl smiled.
Her three voices merged into one.
"You may fall now. But you'll never fall the same way twice."
And with that, she vanished—like a page closing on a book that was never meant to be written.
---
They stood in silence for a long time.
Lisette whispered, "That… didn't feel like a system event."
"No," Takumi said. "It felt like a warning."
---
That night, the stars above the Broken Mountains blinked in the wrong sequence.
And Takumi dreamed of perfect shapes folding into themselves… until none remained.
---
🔹 End of Chapter 11