[BL] I Didn't Sign Up For This-Chapter 116: In Which Switzerland Is Definitely Not Fine

Standard rift passage to northern Italy, ground transport to Switzerland, and two hours later we were back in Interlaken.

Void had been bouncing with excitement the entire drive, pressed against the window and making hopeful sounds every time we passed anything that might sell chocolate.

"Later," I told it for the fifth time. "Dimensional crisis first, chocolate after."

"Chocolate now?" it tried.

"Crisis now. Chocolate later."

An offended chirp, but it settled back on my lap with obvious disappointment.

"You know," I said to Azryth, "most people’s problems don’t involve negotiating with nexus energy about dessert timing."

"Most people aren’t married to me," he replied.

"Fair point."

The coalition driver, a quiet woman who clearly knew better than to ask questions about the floating ball of darkness or the demon lord in her back seat..took us straight to the affected area.

For the first fifteen minutes, everything looked completely normal. Pretty Swiss countryside, expensive tourism aesthetic, mountains doing their mountain thing.

Then we got closer to Interlaken and things started getting weird.

The sky had a slightly wrong tint to it, like someone had messed with the saturation settings on reality. The air kept making my eyes want to refocus, like I was wearing glasses with the wrong prescription.

"Visual distortions," Henrik noted, already making observations on his tablet. "Beginning approximately two blocks from the epicenter."

"I’m getting readings," Mara added, scanner beeping. "Dimensional energy elevated."

"How elevated?" I asked.

"Concerning but not rift-level. Yet."

"Love the optimism."

We turned onto a familiar street near the chocolate shop, and the wrongness intensified dramatically.

Colors were off...too vibrant in some places, completely washed out in others. The air shimmered like heat waves, except it wasn’t hot. People on the street looked confused and distressed, some of them staring at things that probably weren’t visible to everyone.

"I’m guessing those are the affected civilians," I said.

Coalition personnel had set up a perimeter around a three-block radius. Barriers, warning signs, evacuation notices, several people in coalition gear were managing civilians who ranged from confused to actively panicking.

The driver stopped at the perimeter, and we climbed out.

The wrongness hit me immediately, not painful, just deeply uncomfortable. Like reality was slightly out of tune with itself and my warden senses could hear the dissonance.

Void made an uncertain sound and pressed closer to me.

"Yeah," I said. "I don’t like it either."

Azryth moved close, one hand settling on my shoulder briefly before dropping away, his power manifested slightly around him, instinctive response to whatever was making reality wobble.

A coalition member approached, young and nervous, clearly relieved to see reinforcements who might actually know what was happening.

"Riven Kael? Azryth Valek?"

"That’s us," I confirmed.

"Thank god. Director Chen Wei is at the command post. This way, please."

She led us through the perimeter, and I got a better look at the affected area.

The chocolate shop was still there, but the building looked blurred around the edges, like reality was having trouble rendering it properly. The street in front of it had ripples in the air that made distance impossible to judge accurately.

People who could see the wrongness were being evacuated, others walked past completely oblivious, which was somehow more disturbing.

"How are people just not seeing this?" I asked.

"Ordinary people can’t perceive dimensional anomalies," our guide said. "Only those affected by the reality merger event, or those developing new perception from proximity to... whatever this is."

"So it’s spreading the ability to see how broken reality is... that’s ominous."

The command post was standard coalition mobile setup...tables with equipment, personnel monitoring various readings, and Chen Wei standing in the center of it all looking like she’d aged a decade in ten hours.

She looked up as we approached, and her expression went carefully, professionally neutral.

This was going to be awkward.

"Riven Kael. Azryth Valek." Her tone was so controlled it probably hurt. "Thank you for coming."

"Director Chen Wei," Azryth said with equal formality.

The tension was thick enough to build furniture with.

I decided to make it worse, because I’m helpful like that.

"Thanks for the apology," I said brightly. "That must have been really difficult for you."

Azryth’s hand moved to my waist briefly...warning or amusement, hard to tell.

Chen Wei’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "I appreciate your expertise in this matter, the situation has escalated beyond coalition capabilities."

"So we heard. Reality distortions, energy clumps you can’t disperse, people spontaneously developing the ability to see dimensional weirdness."

"Thirty-seven people now," she said. "The affected area is spreading, we’ve evacuated two blocks, but whatever is happening is accelerating."

Mara had her scanner out, frowning at the readings. "These energy signatures are similar to what we encountered at the nexus, but concentrated differently. Way more localized."

"Can you identify the source?" Chen Wei asked.

"Working on it," Mara said, not looking up.

I looked toward the epicenter...the area around the chocolate shop where the air was doing the most aggressive shimmering.

"We need to get closer," I said.

"The distortions are stronger near the center," Chen Wei warned. "Several coalition members experienced severe disorientation and nausea. We’ve established a safe perimeter for a reason."

"Yeah, but safe perimeters don’t help if we can’t figure out what’s causing this." I looked at her. "Unless you’d prefer we stay back here and guess?"

Her expression suggested she’d prefer we leave entirely, but she nodded. "Proceed with caution."

"That’s my middle name. Riven Caution Kael."

"I thought your middle name was Disaster," Azryth said.

"That’s my confirmation name."

Ryota made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been despair.

We moved toward the epicenter, Azryth staying close without hovering, Mara and Henrik following with their equipment, Ryota taking up a tactical position like he expected something to jump out at us.

Void hovered near my shoulder, eyes bright with interest instead of concern, which was either a good sign or a terrible one.

The wrongness got worse with every step.

Reality rippled around us in visible waves. Colors shifted moment to moment, sounds echoed wrong, arriving too early or too late, distance became completely unreliable...things that looked close were far, things that seemed distant were within arm’s reach.

"This is extremely unpleasant," Henrik said, his usual calm notably strained.

"Agreed," Mara muttered, eyes locked on her scanner like it might provide answers if she stared hard enough. "Energy readings are going crazy. This is concentrated dimensional power, but it’s not behaving like anything I’ve seen before."

"What’s it behaving like?" I asked.

"No idea. It’s not a rift pattern, not a portal signature, not anything in my database."

"So we’re dealing with new and exciting dimensional problems. Great."

Void made an interested sound, eyes getting brighter as we approached.

"You recognize this?" I asked it.

An uncertain warble, then a questioning chirp. Not yes, not no, just confused interest.

"That’s helpful. Very specific."

We reached the chocolate shop, and the concentrated wrongness was overwhelming.

The air shimmered so intensely it looked liquid. Energy was visible even without equipment, rippling outward in waves that made my teeth ache.

And there, standing in the middle of the street where absolutely nothing should be, was something new.

A gate.

Massive, imposing, made of dark metal that looked like it had been pulled from somewhere reality didn’t have a name for. Not a doorway or a frame, an actual gate, two huge panels fitted together, sealed shut, covered in patterns that hurt to look at directly.

The metal absorbed light wrong, creating shadows that fell in directions that didn’t match any actual light source, energy radiated from it in pulses, making the air distort with each wave.

It looked ancient and fundamentally wrong, like someone had forced reality to accommodate something it was never meant to hold.

"Okay," I said. "What the hell is that?"

"That’s what I’d like to know," Mara whispered, scanner shaking in her hands.

The energy signature radiating from the gate was familiar in the worst possible way. Similar to the nexus, similar to the entity we’d sealed, but concentrated into this single point.

"This has to be what the arbiters warned us about," Azryth said quietly, power manifesting more strongly around him.

Void made a sound I’d never heard before, not scared or aggressive, just intensely focused. It started floating forward, drawn toward the gate like a magnet.

"Void, no!" I said, grabbing it before it could get too close.

It squirmed but didn’t fight me, eyes locked on the sealed metal panels.

"The energy signature matches the entity," Henrik said, voice tight as he checked his tablet. "This has to be connected to the fragment that escaped."

"Is that thing a door?" Ryota asked, staring at the sealed gate.

"Appears to be," Henrik confirmed.

"So we’d have to open it."

"Potentially."

"Wow, how sweet. A mysterious dimensional gate radiating entity power, sealed shut, probably for very good reasons, and we might have to open it."

Void made an excited chirp and tried to launch itself at the gate again.

I held it firmly. "We are not opening the scary dimensional gate right now."

An offended sound.

"I said right now, not never."

Behind us, I heard Chen Wei approaching with several coalition members, all of them stopping at what they clearly considered a safe distance.

"Can you do something about it?" Chen Wei called, voice strained.

I looked at the massive sealed gate, at the wrong metal and the pulsing energy and the patterns that made my eyes hurt.

"Define ’something,’" I called back.

"Close it. Disperse it. Make it stop affecting civilians."

"Yeah, see, the problem is this isn’t a rift. This is a gate, an actual gate, which means closing it isn’t really an option."

"Then what is?"

I looked at Azryth. "Thoughts?"

His expression was grim. "The fragment is definitely inside, behind that gate. In whatever dimension this leads to."

"So we can’t handle it from this side."

"No."

"Which means we’d have to go through."

"Most likely."

"Through the massive sealed gate radiating entity power that’s probably sealed for excellent reasons."

"Yes."

"Just checking we’re on the same page about how terrible this idea is."

Mara was staring at the gate with an expression that suggested she was reconsidering her life choices. "We have no idea what’s on the other side."

"Probably nothing good," I said. "Given the whole ’entity fragment’ situation."

"Probably a destroyed dimension," Azryth added. "If this is where the fragment was sealed."

"Even better. Destroyed dimension, entity fragment, mysterious gate we have to open. This is fine. Everything is fine."

Void chirped happily and created a sparkle, apparently agreeing that everything was indeed fine.

"You have very concerning definitions of fine," I told it.

Chen Wei was still standing at the safe perimeter, looking like she desperately wanted us to fix this but had no idea how.

I looked at the sealed gate, at the patterns that hurt to see, at the energy pulsing outward with each beat.

This was what the arbiters had tried to warn us about.

The fragment that escaped during the nexus collapse.

And apparently, it was behind a dimensional gate that we were probably going to have to open.

"Well," I said finally. "This is definitely worse than you described, Chen Wei."