LIGHT 13: The Growing Shift

LIGHT 13: The Growing Shift

Lumira and the others had stopped near the boundary of the unobservable zone.

Deep in the passage, pale white particles drifted without end. The outlines of the crumbling walls would not hold steady, and the scenery continued to sway quietly at short intervals. Delayed shadows remained on the floor, and the light that should have vanished still seemed to bleed faintly into the stone.

Only the exceptional person kept looking deeper into the passage.

They did not turn back.

They did not move.

Their gaze stayed fixed, as though waiting for the place where something would happen next.

Waiting again.

Lumira watched their back while keeping one hand on Elia’s shoulder.

Along the passage wall, the management display kept trying to restore the missing records. Faded strings of text surfaced, and after a brief silence, were replaced by different content. Lines of light formed again and again, broke apart, then connected once more.

But the restored display did not match what had been recorded before.

Point of occurrence.

Reaction time.

Classification.

Each one had changed, little by little.

It is not coming back.

It is being replaced with something else.

Immediately after, another distortion appeared deeper in the passage.

White particles rose, and the space sank inward in silence. The light across the floor trembled late, and the shadow cast on the wall stretched a beat behind.

But the position was different.

It should have been the same distortion.

It should have happened in the same place.

And yet the point of occurrence had shifted slightly from before.

At that moment, some of the residents repeated the same actions.

One adjusted their load.

One looked toward the wall.

One stopped walking.

For a short time, the same movements from before were reproduced inside the passage. The rustle of clothing, the halt of footsteps, even the small intake of breath were strangely similar.

But a few seconds later, they returned to their normal movements as if nothing had happened.

They held their loads again, walked on, and continued their conversations.

None of them were aware of it.

They had not noticed.

Not even the fact that they had repeated themselves remained.

The three guardians observed the repeated phenomenon at the same time.

The luminous patterns running across their dark garments flickered, and pale light flowed from their chests to their arms. But the reactions of the three did not align.

One recorded it as a reproduced phenomenon.

One classified it as a new occurrence.

The last one kept losing sight of the occurrence itself.

They should have been seeing the same thing, yet the records split into different forms.

They do not match.

Even the guardians could no longer grasp the same phenomenon in the same shape.

Elia reacted to the distortion that had appeared again.

Her gaze was pulled toward it, and white light rose deep within her eyes. But that light did not tremble right away.

Only after the distortion had appeared did the white glow follow, swaying one beat late.

Late.

Lumira did not miss that small delay.

Even Elia’s reaction is beginning to shift.

The phenomenon was repeating.

But it was not exactly the same.

The position, the reaction, and the record were all shifting little by little.

Then the exceptional person turned their gaze toward the left side of the passage.

As if indicating the next point of occurrence.

Lumira looked in the same direction, still supporting Elia. The guardians looked as well.

Nothing had happened yet on the left wall of the passage. There were no white particles, no sinking of space. Only the crumbling stone wall stood in silence beneath the faint light.

A few seconds later, the distortion appeared.

But not where the person had indicated.

A little away from that point, near the floor, the space sank inward. White particles rose late, and the outline of the scenery bent slightly.

The person’s expression changed, just a little.

They were not greatly surprised.

Their gaze only wavered briefly, as if confirming the difference from their prediction.

It was different.

Lumira caught that reaction.

Even the exceptional person cannot fully follow it.

The management display classified that distortion as a separate record.

The occurrence count had changed.

The identification number had changed as well.

It should have been the same phenomenon, yet on the display, it was being processed as a different event.

The shadows of the residents walking through the passage began to shift in directions different from before.

A shadow flowing toward the wall.

A shadow sliding toward the center of the floor.

Some lagged behind.

Some moved ahead.

The shadows no longer moved together. Several shadows separated from the same body moved as if each had its own will.

Then the scenery at the far end of the passage doubled for an instant.

The wall.

The pillars.

The outline of the passage.

The same scenery overlapped in a slightly shifted position, trembling like layers of faint light. A few seconds later it returned, but no one could tell whether the position it returned to was correct anymore.

Did it return?

Or did it simply settle somewhere else?

One of the guardians tried to reference the past observation record.

The luminous pattern on its chest pulsed faintly, and light ran toward the record.

But part of the retrieved record was missing.

The observation that had existed only moments before had changed into something inaccessible.

The record is disappearing.

Or has the recorded past itself shifted?

Lumira looked around.

It was being reproduced.

But each time it repeated, it shifted.

The same phenomenon was gradually becoming something else. Not only the distortion itself. The records, the shadows, the movements of the residents, even Elia’s light could no longer keep the same shape as before.

If this continues, no one will know what the original was.

That judgment sank quietly inside Lumira.

Then the shadow returned to the feet of the exceptional person.

The shadow that should have vanished slowly surfaced on the floor.

Thin, dark, and delayed, as if soaking into that place alone.

But its position did not match.

The shadow was shifted slightly to the side of the person’s body.

The place where the person stood and the place where the shadow fell seemed to belong to different spaces.

It came back.

But it returned to the wrong place.

Lumira held her breath.

A few seconds later, the third distortion appeared deep in the passage.

White particles rose, and the scenery sank quietly inward. The depth of the passage shrank for one instant, and the cracks in the wall slid into another position.

But this time, nothing appeared on the management display.

No warning.

No classification.

No record.

The phenomenon that should have happened before their eyes simply disappeared into the passage as something that had never occurred.

Gone.

This time, it had been made as if nothing had existed from the beginning.

Lumira kept staring into the passage, still supporting Elia.

Behind her, someone made the same small footstep twice.

Before she could turn around, that sound came once more from a place slightly farther away.

— Lumi 🪄💕

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Recovered fragments are available through authorized access only.