The sky didn't just break—it shattered.
Fragments of the bruised heavens fell like glass, dissolving into streams of corrupted magic that spiraled downward. The massive skeletal hand reached through, and where it touched the air, reality screamed.
Yume tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond. The death magic coursing through him was fighting his own power, turning his blood to ice, his muscles to lead.
"Yume!" Cana grabbed his shoulder, shaking him. "Stay with us!"
The ground beneath them began to crack, not from impact but from absence—as if the very concept of solid earth was being erased.
Levy's eyes darted frantically across the breaking landscape, her mind racing through every text she'd ever read about dimensional magic, spatial distortions, escape protocols—
Nothing. There's nothing. We're trapped.
Rika moved to shield them, her massive spectral form expanding, but even the Queen of Curses seemed uncertain—her void-like eyes fixed on the descending presence with something that might have been recognition.
The Master's hand closed around the edge of the dimensional rift, and began to pull.
The entire graveyard dimension buckled.
"Everyone, close formation!" Yume forced the words out through gritted teeth, his Pandora orbs spinning erratically. "Rika—barrier! Now!"
Rika's form exploded outward, wrapping around the team in layers of cursed energy just as—
The world inverted.
Up became down. Light became darkness. Sound became silence.
They were falling—no, rising—no, spinning—
Levy screamed, but heard nothing. Cana's cards scattered into the void, disintegrating into motes of light. Yume's shikigami were forcibly desummoned, yanked back into whatever space they inhabited when not manifested.
Only Rika remained, her grip on them absolute, her power somehow anchoring them against the collapsing dimension.
And then—
IMPACT.
---
Cold.
The first sensation was cold.
Not the cold of winter or ice, but the cold of deep water. Pressing. Suffocating.
Yume's eyes snapped open.
Water.
They were underwater.
He kicked instinctively, lungs already burning. Above him—which way was above?—he could see faint, filtered light. He swam toward it, breaking the surface with a desperate gasp.
"Le—cough—Levy! Cana!"
Two splashes nearby. Cana surfaced first, spitting water and cursing. "What the hell—!"
Levy came up a moment later, gasping, her glasses somehow still clinging to her face. "Where—where are we?!"
Yume treaded water, looking around—and his blood went cold for an entirely different reason.
They were in the town square of Serenity Creek.
He recognized the buildings, the central fountain, the cobblestone streets—
But everything was underwater.
Not flooded. Not destroyed by a tidal wave. Submerged. As if the entire village had been transplanted to the bottom of an ocean.
The buildings were intact. Doors and windows perfectly in place. But through those windows, Yume could see furniture floating, curtains drifting in slow motion, dishes suspended in the water like they were frozen mid-fall.
"This isn't possible," Levy whispered, her voice hollow. "We're—we're in Serenity Creek. But it's drowned."
Cana swam toward the nearest building, peering through a window. Then she jerked back, her face going white.
"There's—there are people. Inside."
Yume swam over. Through the window of what looked like a coffee shop, he could see them.
Bodies.
Floating. Eyes open. Staring at nothing.
The villagers.
Elder rio. Marcus Thorne. Elena Brightwater. Johan Cress. Dozens of others.
All drowned. All dead.
"No," Yume said flatly. "This isn't real. When we left, they were alive. This is another trick—"
"Look at the coffee plants," Levy interrupted, pointing toward the edge of the village.
The coffee groves that should have been on dry land were now visible beneath the water's surface—and they had grown. Massively. The plants had transformed into towering trees, their trunks thick as ancient oaks, their roots spreading across the submerged earth like grasping fingers.
And in the bark of each tree—
Faces.
Human faces, twisted in silent screams, pressing against the wood from the inside as if trying to break free.
Cana swam closer to one, her expression horrified. "Those faces... I recognize them. These are the villagers too. Some of them are the same people we just saw floating in the buildings."
"How can they be in two places?" Levy's analytical mind was already working through it. "Unless... unless this isn't now. This is—"
"The future," a familiar voice said from behind them.
They spun in the water.
The Keeper stood—floated—on the surface of the water as if it were solid ground. Her white Victorian dress was soaked now, clinging to her small frame. Her long black hair drifted around her like seaweed.
The void where her face should be was somehow even more terrible underwater, reflecting the filtered light in nauseating ways.
"Or rather, a possible future. One of many threads. This is what happens if the Master succeeds."
"You," Yume snarled, reaching for his magic—but it stuttered, the death magic still corrupting his system, making his power unstable.
The Keeper tilted her head, that too-smooth motion.
"Angry? You should be grateful I'm giving you a warning. A glimpse of what's to come. The Master is generous that way—always giving his chosen ones a choice, even when the outcome is inevitable."
She gestured toward the drowned village, toward the coffee trees with their screaming faces.
"The harvest ritual was never about the crops, Darkbound. It was about the roots."
Levy's eyes widened. "The roots... they were reaching down into—"
*"Into the mass grave beneath the valley. Yes." The Keeper sounded pleased, like a teacher whose student had finally understood the lesson. "Serenity Creek was built on death. A plague, three centuries ago. Thousands buried in a common pit. Forgotten. Their suffering seeping into the soil, into the water table, into everything."
She knelt at the water's surface—impossibly still standing on it—and trailed one small hand through the liquid.
"The Master spent years preparing this ritual. Infecting the coffee plants. Using them as conduits to draw on that ancient death, that collective suffering. And when the villagers drank their morning coffee—their precious, beloved coffee—they drank their own doom."
"They're not dead yet," Cana said fiercely. "We can still stop this."
The Keeper's faceless void somehow conveyed amusement.
"Can you? This is just one thread, yes. One possible future. But the ritual is alreadycomplete in your timeline. The seeds are planted. The infection has spread. Every villager who drank the coffee in the past week is marked."
She stood, water dripping from her dress.
"By midnight tonight—in your real timeline—they will all begin the transformation. They'll walk into the forest. Dig their own graves. Lie down. And feed the trees with their bodies and souls."
"We'll warn them," Levy said desperately. "We'll evacuate the village, get healers from the guild—"
"And tell them what? That their crops are cursed? They've been drinking cursed coffee for a week. The magic is in their blood, their bones, their very souls. There is no healing this. No cure. No salvation."
The Keeper's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried across the drowned village.
"There is only acceptance. Or defiance."
She pointed directly at Yume.
"And that choice belongs to him."
Yume felt the black veins pulse on his skin. "What are you talking about?"
"The death magic you absorbed, Darkbound. The Necromantic Authority. You can feel it, can't you? Even now, even here, you can sense the ritual's anchor point. The source of all this corruption."
She was right.
Yume could feel it—a pull , deep in his chest where the death magic had taken root. Like a compass pointing toward magnetic north, except this was pointing toward something below them. Deep beneath the drowned village.
"The mass grave," he said quietly.
"Yes. The Master's coffin is chained there. Has been for three hundred years, waiting for enough death to accumulate. Enough suffering to weaken the seals. Your ancestor—the original Darkbound—he's the one who sealed the Master there. A final act of defiance before the magic consumed him entirely."
The Keeper spread her arms wide.
"But chains rust. Seals weaken. And now, the harvest is complete. The Master will rise. Unless—"
She pointed at Yume again.
"Unless you break the final chain yourself. Face the Master in single combat. If you win—if you can defeat him before he fully manifests—the ritual collapses. The villagers wake from their curse. Serenity Creek survives."
"And if he loses?" Cana demanded.
The Keeper's void-face turned toward her.
"Then the Darkbound bloodline fulfills its true purpose. Yume becomes the Master's vessel. The Threshold opens. And every grave in this world begins to fill."
Silence, broken only by the gentle movement of water.
Levy swam closer to Yume, her voice urgent. "You can't trust her. This is manipulation. She's trying to get you to—"
"She's telling the truth," Yume interrupted, his voice hollow. "I can feel it. The death magic—it's showing me things. The ritual. The anchor point. The coffin." He looked at his hands, at the black veins crawling across his skin. "And it's showing me what I'll become if I don't stop this."
He raised his eyes to the Keeper.
"How do we get back? To our timeline?"
The Keeper clapped her hands together, that childish gesture made horrifying by context.
"Finally! The right question!"
She reached into the water and pulled—and impossibly, she withdrew a door. An old wooden door with rusted hinges, standing upright in the middle of the submerged village square with nothing supporting it.
"Through here. It will take you back to the moment you left—to the collapsed cave, three days after you vanished. Your friends are waiting. Your guild is searching."
She opened the door. Beyond it was darkness, but a different kind than the Threshold's void. This was the simple darkness of underground stone.
"But know this, Darkbound: the moment you step through, the countdown begins. You have until midnight—approximately thirteen hours in your timeline—to make your choice."
"Face the Master at the cemetery. Alone. Or let the harvest complete."
Yume swam toward the door, but Levy grabbed his arm.
"Yume, we need to talk about this. There has to be another way—"
"There isn't." His voice was flat. Certain. "You heard her. The ritual is complete. The villagers are already marked. If I don't fight, they die. Everyone dies."
"Then we fight together," Cana said fiercely. "That's what guilds are for. That's what family is for."
For the first time since entering the Threshold, Yume smiled—a small, tired expression.
"I know. And I'm grateful. But this..." He looked at the black veins on his arms, feeling the death magic pulsing in time with his heartbeat. "This is my magic. My bloodline. My responsibility."
He met their eyes.
"But I'm not doing it alone. I'm going to need both of you—and the guild—to help me prepare. To give me every advantage I can get. Because I'm not planning to lose."
The Keeper giggled, the sound echoing across the drowned village.
"Such determination! The Master will be delighted. He so rarely gets worthy opponents anymore."
She gestured toward the door.
"Go then. Return to your world. Prepare for your destiny. We'll be waiting."
As she spoke, her form began to dissolve—not into mist this time, but into water, becoming one with the drowned village around them.
Her final words echoed from everywhere and nowhere:
"Midnight, Darkbound. The cemetery. Don't be late."
"The Master hates being kept waiting."
And then she was gone.
The three of them floated in silence for a moment, the weight of everything they'd learned pressing down like the water around them.
Finally, Yume swam toward the door.
"Let's go home."
He reached the threshold, grabbed the doorframe, and pulled himself through—
—into air.
Solid ground beneath his hands. The smell of rock dust and smoke. The familiar weight of gravity.
They tumbled through one by one, collapsing on the stone floor of what looked like a cave—but not the same cave they'd left. This one was partially collapsed, with filtered daylight streaming through cracks in the ceiling.
Voices echoed from outside. Familiar voices.
"—found something! There's an opening here!"
"Be careful! The whole system is unstable—"
"I don't care if it collapses! They're in there somewhere!"
Natsu's voice.
Yume pulled himself to his feet, steadying Levy and Cana. They were soaked, exhausted, marked by their ordeal.
Behind them, the wooden door dissolved into shadow and vanished, leaving no trace it had ever existed.
"Yume," Levy said quietly. "Those black veins—"
"I know." He could see them clearly now in the daylight. They hadn't faded at all. If anything, they were more pronounced—dark lines spreading from his hands up his forearms, like cracks in porcelain. "We'll deal with it. First, we need to—"
"THERE!"
A blast of fire illuminated the cave entrance, and then Natsu was there, grinning like a maniac, Happy flying beside him.
"You're alive! Man, you look terrible! What happened? We've been searching for three days! The whole cave system collapsed and—wait, why are you all soaking wet?"
Behind him, Gray and Erza appeared, both looking relieved and furious in equal measure.
Erza's eyes immediately zeroed in on Yume's arms. On the black veins. Her expression darkened.
"Explain. Now."
Yume met her gaze steadily.
"We need to get to Serenity Creek. Immediately. And I need to speak with the Guild Master."
"The village is in quarantine," Gray said. "After you vanished, people started getting sick. Some kind of magical infection. Porlyusica is there now, trying to figure out—"
"It's not an infection," Levy interrupted, her voice strained. "It's a curse. A death curse. And if we don't stop it by midnight tonight..." She looked at Yume, then back at the Fairy Tail team. "Everyone in that village is going to die."
Erza's hand went to her sword. "Then we move. Now."
As they ran toward the cave entrance, toward daylight and the real world and the coming crisis, Yume felt the death magic pulse in his veins.
Thirteen hours.
Somewhere beneath Serenity Creek, in a mass grave three centuries old, something was waiting.
The Master's coffin. The final chain. The choice that would define everything.
And Yume knew—with the terrible certainty that death magic brought—that when midnight came, he would face it alone.
Not because he wanted to.
But because some battles could only be won by those marked for them.
They emerged into afternoon sunlight, and Yume didn't look back at the collapsed cave behind them.
Only forward.
Toward Serenity Creek.
Toward midnight.
Toward destiny.
---
[END CHAPTER 58]
---
Next Chapter Preview:Chapter 59: Countdown to Midnight - Back in Serenity Creek, the situation is desperate. Porlyusica confirms the curse is beyond her ability to break. The villagers are getting worse. As the sun sets and midnight approaches, preparations are made for a battle that could cost everything...