#ectober 19

Unwatched, the crack spread. Centimeter by centimeter, inch by inch, the skewed Y morphed into a mangled X, and then branched into something longer, more grotesque, a shape resembling one of the forbidden letters of the Old Language. By the time anyone thought to check on it, the crack had grown to a daunting size.

"…What is this," Frostbite murmured, stepping warily into its shadow.

The crack now resembled a spiderweb, the edges of it encroaching on the corner of the Far Frozen. The bulk of it sprawled over the Endless Road. Frostbite watched in awe and horror as one of the web's long, thin legs branched downward, fracturing in slow motion, and skewered the blacktop below.

The road split.

Crk. CrKK. Asphalt whined and crumbled. The length of the highway seemed to shudder and buckle, trying to twist away from the rift. With a rising whine, the road seemed to vibrate - then all at once, with a sound like deep thunder, the whole stretch of road just shattered.

Frostbite flinched away. Debris flew everywhere, thudding into the snow around him or spinning off in other directions, towards the green horizons. A chunk of concrete caught his leg, ripping past leather and fur to graze his leg, and the wound burned hot.

The chunk of road closest to the fissure burst into dust, a rippling cloud that seemed to swirl around the crack that'd destroyed it, before getting sucked into the hairline break like water down a drain.

Within minutes, the air cleared. Frostbite watched as the smoke fell away, slowly revealing the damage.

The Endless Road - a misnomer now - was in pieces. Ghost Zone gravity kept a few of the chunks floating, but most had spun away into the dark, leaving an empty gap.

Frostbite stared at the wreckage. A good mile or so of the road had been torn away, and all by one, little crack.

The crack that'd pierced the road sat, unmoving, in the air. It—the whole web, really—seemed more solid, more real than the zone around it. Like the zone itself was just a painting on pottery, and the ceramic underneath was breaking.

At the center of the web, between the jagged fractures, tiny triangles of the zone weren't green anymore. Frostbite could see bits of another reality poking through; golden twilight, vivid blue, starry red.

This did not bode well.

Edges of the web twined, sprouting more fingers. Three large cracks formed. One arc'd away, in a meandering line, towards Skulker's distant island. The second forked downwards, in the direction of Pariah's keep.

The third split the air, thin but unstoppable, straight at the Far Frozen.

Acting fast, Frostbite lifted his hand to his coat lapel, pressing the sapphire button on his communicator.

"Snowblind," he called to his right-hand warrior over the comms. "We've got a problem."

"What kind of problem," She asked with trepidation.

"The crack on the edge of our realm. It's spreading."

Snowblind was quiet for a long minute. "What's the damage."

"None to us—yet. But potentially? Catastrophic." Frostbite said. "The part of the Endless Road closest to us has already been destroyed."

"That does explain the glitch on the infimap earlier."

Frostbite knew she couldn't see him, but nodded anyway. He now knew that the terrible gouge that'd appeared across the map days ago hadn't been a mistake after all, though he desperately wished it was.

"What's the plan?"

He eyed the arching fracture, inching ever closer. "Evacuate," he advised. "Get everyone to a safe distance… at least until we know how far it can stretch—and what it can do. You are in charge while I'm gone."

"…I imagine you're going to fetch Phantom?" She asked, unconvinced. Frostbite knew she wasn't as enamored with the Great One as most of the tribe had been.

"I fear this thing might be powerful enough to shatter our domain—perphaps even the entire Zone. We'll need any outside help we can get." He said, stealing a last glance at the web of cracks above.

"And regardless," he added quietly, squinting at the dozens of colored fractures at the web's heart, windows to other worlds.

One triangle shard in particular stood out—a familiar glowing neon sign on the other side. Frostbite recognized it immediately, even if he could only read the first three stylized letters through the gap.

F-E-N-