The mandatory staff meeting had concluded, leaving the Platinum Tier instructors reeling and the Inverted Phenomena Observation Wing in forced operation. For Dawn, the politics were only background noise. The true lesson was waiting at the edge of reality.
Fenrir stood before a reinforced portal in the Fold Reconnaissance Wing, casually polishing his Existence Threader cane.
"A simple retrieval, Inverter," Fenrir announced, without looking at the pulsing, sickly purple gate. "Deep within the Fold, there is a clock—a timepiece from your Human Realm. Bring it back."
"Why a clock?" Dawn asked. His voice was becoming flatter, stripped of the emotional inflections he once possessed.
"Because it is a symbol of Order," Fenrir replied, with a wicked gleam in his red eyes. "It measures the finite, predictable march of time. I wish to see how your Chaos Domain handles it. The Fold is merely decay; true power is the indifference to decay."
---
I. The Descent and The Null-Form
Stepping through the portal was entering a violent dream.
The air was a cacophony of unstable frequencies, gravity folded inward, and the environment shifted like a broken kaleidoscope.
Normal demidemons needed heavy armor and protective spells here.
Dawn had only his blindfold and the Inverted Mark.
The moment the chaos surged, the Mark reacted.
A presence solidified in the corner of his Echo Mapping — a black-and-silver energy silhouette, silent and formless, moving with perfect Anti-Causality.
Hush. His Cosmic Shinigami.
The null-form didn't fight; it created pockets of silence, helping Dawn filter the sensory overload.
Fenrir's voice echoed into his mind, stripped of ambient sound:
> "Hush protects your senses, Dawn. But he cannot protect your soul. Show me your resilience against sentimentality."
---
II. The Denvigon's Reverence
Deeper within the Fold, mutated horrors awaited — the Denvigons.
Beast-like, fast, and driven by predatory hunger for demidemon energy.
Dawn heard them: a pack of five, warped bodies moving with chaotic, high-frequency steps.
He prepared a Void Pulse.
He didn't need to use it.
The Denvigons emerged from a smoke-choked ravine… and then froze.
No snarls. No attack.
Instead, they made a low, guttural, unified whimper.
In Dawn's Echo Mapping, their chaotic energy signatures tried aligning themselves with his.
They saw the Inverted Mark — the source of the chaos that created them.
They reacted not with hostility…
…but with reverence.
A pack of Denvigons bowed before him.
---
III. The Silence of Empathy
The old Dawn — the boy who cared for abandoned animals — should have felt pity or fear.
This moment demanded dread, or at least curiosity.
But all he felt was the cold, rhythmic thrum of the Inverted Mark.
Calculation:
The Denvigons were neutralized.
Their existence was irrelevant to the mission.
His lack of emotion was absolute.
Ignoring the bowing horrors, Dawn followed Hush's silent path toward the artifact.
The clock — a tarnished brass piece — ticked precisely in a collapsed building.
He retrieved it.
As he turned to leave, the Denvigons whimpered again.
One, especially hideous, made a pitiful, pleading sound.
Dawn sensed a demidemon patrol approaching — they'd slaughter the Denvigons.
The human Dawn would've helped them.
The new Dawn concluded:
They are a distraction.
Their deaths stabilize Order.
He phased through the crumbling wall, leaving them.
He did not warn them.
He did not care.
---
IV. The Approval of the Architect
Dawn emerged from the portal, the brass clock cold in his hand.
Fenrir smiled, accepting it.
He didn't ask about the Denvigons.
"What did you feel, Dawn?" he asked, winding the clock.
"I felt the most efficient path to the objective."
Fenrir's razor pupils widened in satisfaction.
"Excellent. The silence I seek is not of sound, but of the heart.
The Price is Identity Collapse.
You are learning that empathy is the failure state of the universe, Inverter."
He shattered the clock, the sound barely audible as his Chaos Domain consumed it.
"Go. The students are planning against you.
Use their foolish attempts to further invert the weakness they seek."