Chapter 21 The S-Rank Tear

Chapter 21 The S-Rank Tear

The data from the Bronx was a mess of jagged lines and pulsing nodes that looked more like a failing heart monitor than a geographical reading. Leo spent the entire morning hunched over his desk, the Weave device plugged into his tablet as he tried to make sense of the feedback.

Xan had been a brilliant teacher, but he was the kind of mentor who taught you how to build an engine while the car was moving at eighty miles per hour. He had taught Leo the basics of reading dimensional stability—how to spot a spike, how to identify a leak, and how to tell when the fabric of reality was about to snap. But this? This was an edge case. This was the kind of thing Xan would have spent three days obsessing over while drinking lukewarm tea and muttering about "spatial harmonics."

Leo scrolled through the logs, his brow furrowed. According to the device, the anomaly in the storage room wasn't acting like an anomaly at all. Usually, these things were parasitic. They showed up at a weak point in the Weave and started tearing at the edges, feeding on the instability until the hole was big enough for something worse to crawl through.

But the readings near this specific entity were... healthy.

Leo cross-referenced the data with his primary map. Three weeks ago, the community center in the Bronx had been sitting on a massive stress point. It was a localized fracture that should have widened by now. Instead, the instability levels had actually dropped. The "thing" in the corner of that storage room was somehow acting as a biological suture. It was sitting on the wound and, instead of reopening it, it was holding the edges together. It was locally stabilizing the area around it.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen until the blue light made his eyes ache. Foxy jumped up onto the desk, his paws making no sound on the polished wood. The spirit didn't say anything. He just sat there, looking at the data with those ancient, knowing eyes.

Neither of them said the obvious thing. If Leo killed the anomaly to satisfy the system’s mission, the stability it was providing would vanish. The wound would reopen, and the Bronx would likely face a dimensional collapse far worse than a single lingering ghost.

Leo rubbed his face with his hands. He was being penalized by a system for not committing an act that would effectively destroy a city block. It was a rigged game, and for the first time, he wasn't sure if he wanted to play by the established rules.



"I’m tellin’ you, it’s the lack of photographs," Jamie said, struggling to zip a suitcase that was clearly over capacity. "It’s unsettling, Leo. It makes me feel like I’m staying in a high-end furniture catalog instead of a home."

Jamie’s visit was officially at its end, though the packing process was taking twice as long as it should have. He couldn't go five minutes without stopping to inspect something or ask a question. He’d already spent ten minutes asking about the thread count of the sheets, and now he had wandered over to Leo’s desk.

"What’s this then?" Jamie asked, picking up the Weave device.

"It’s a measurement tool," Leo said, not looking up from his tablet.

"For what? Carbon monoxide? Radiation? Paranormal activity?"

"Dimensional stability," Leo replied.

Jamie stopped moving. He held the device out at arm’s length, staring at it like it might suddenly grow teeth and bite him. He set it down on the desk with agonizing slowness, moving his hand away as if he were clearing a landmine.

"Okay," Jamie whispered. "Right. Obviously. Why wouldn't you have one of those?"

He turned his attention to Foxy, who was currently sitting on the bed, watching Jamie struggle with his socks. Over the last three days, Jamie had tried every tactic in the book to get Foxy to talk about where he came from. He’d tried flattery, logic, and even attempted to bribe the spirit with a piece of high-quality jerky.

"Last chance, Foxy," Jamie said, pointing a finger at the fox. "What’s the origin story? Lab accident? Ancient curse? Did he find you in a lamp?"

Foxy yawned, stretching his front legs out. "I was a reward for killing things," the spirit said, his voice flat and bored.

Jamie froze, his hand halfway to his suitcase zip. He looked at Foxy, then at Leo, then back at the fox.

"Right," Jamie said, his voice a little higher than usual. "Reward for killing things. Cool. Normal stuff. Just making sure I have that straight before I head to the airport."

He finally managed to get the bag zipped, though a stray thread from a sweater was still poking out. He stood up, wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead, and looked at Leo. The joking energy faded, replaced by that genuine warmth that made Jamie the only person Leo truly trusted.

He stepped forward and wrapped Leo in a brief, bone-crushing hug. Leo didn't hug back—that wasn't really his thing—but he allowed it, which was the highest form of affection he could offer.

At the elevator, Jamie turned back one last time. "Marcus is coming in a few weeks, you know. He’s already been blowing up my phone asking if you’ve gone 'full American' yet."

"I know," Leo said. "He texted."

"He’s going to have more questions than me, Leo. A lot more. And he’s not as easily distracted by talking foxes."

"I know," Leo repeated.

"Good luck," Jamie said, giving a small wave as the elevator doors began to slide shut. "Try not to blow up the moon while I’m gone."

Foxy raised a paw in a mock wave. Leo watched the floor numbers count down until the lobby. The penthouse felt suddenly, overwhelmingly quiet. The noise Jamie brought with him was gone, leaving only the hum of the air conditioning and the weight of the tasks Leo had been ignoring.



Leo spent lunch scrolling through the financial fallout of Ming’s disastrous interview. It was like watching a slow-motion car crash, except the car was made of gold and the driver was someone he used to call a brother.

Zhang Enterprises stock had dropped another two percent. That didn't sound like much to a layman, but in the world of high-stakes tech, it was a hemorrhage. The story had officially breached the containment of the specialist trade magazines. It wasn't just being discussed by tech nerds and industry insiders anymore.

The Financial Times had a piece on the "cracks in the Zhang legacy." A major business publication had a headline questioning whether Wei’s hand-picked successor was up to the task. Even the financial news channels were running "Breaking News" banners about the regulatory investigation.

The tone was the most interesting part. It wasn't alarmed yet. Analysts were still using words like "developing" and "concerning," the clinical language they always used right before they started screaming that the sky was falling.

Wei was nowhere to be found. No comments, no sightings, no "source close to the Chairman" quotes. That was typical for him. Wei didn't deal with fires; he expected his subordinates to put them out before the smoke reached his office.

Ming, on the other hand, had released a statement through the PR team. It was a masterpiece of corporate defensive writing—it addressed nothing, promised a "thorough internal review," and expressed "total confidence" in their compliance protocols. It was exactly what he was supposed to do.

It was also about forty-eight hours too late.

Leo ate his salad, reading the third article on his list. He wasn't keeping a scoreboard—he wasn't that petty, or at least he told himself he wasn't—but the numbers were undeniably in his favor. Every point the stock dropped was another brick pulled from the foundation of the house Wei had built.

The strategy was working. One line, one journalist, and Ming’s own hubris were doing more damage than a direct frontal assault ever could. Leo felt a cold, sharp sense of satisfaction. It wasn't joy—he hadn't felt joy in a long time—but it was progress.



He was about to close his tablet when the mission interface forced its way to the foreground. It didn't pop up with the usual "New Notification" sound. This was a low, resonant chime that felt like it was vibrating in his teeth.

Leo stared at the screen. The two red dots in Brooklyn hadn't moved, but the classification had changed.

The system had re-evaluated the situation. It was no longer two S-rank anomalies. It was one S-rank anomaly and one tear.

But it wasn't just a regular tear. The text was pulsing in a violent, glitchy violet color.

CLASSIFICATION: S-RANK TEAR (CRITICAL)
THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL
TIMELINE TO STABILIZATION: 7 DAYS

Leo read it three times. He’d seen A-rank tears. He’d dealt with breaches that threatened entire neighborhoods. But he had never even heard of an S-rank tear. A tear that size didn't just let things through; it rewrote the physics of the surrounding five miles.

The system didn't give more details. It just sat there, the timer ticking down from seven days. Seven days before the tear reached "stabilization," which was a nice way of saying it would become a permanent, uncloseable hole in the world.

He had a week.

He had seven days to figure out how to handle an S-rank entity that was likely guarding a breach capable of swallowing Brooklyn whole. If he failed, or if he stayed in his penthouse playing corporate chess, the timeline would run out. He didn't want to know what "uncontained" looked like at that scale.

Foxy was leaning over his shoulder, his translucent whiskers almost touching the screen. He didn't make a joke. He didn't even snark about the situation. He was as still as a statue.

Leo closed the interface. He waited three seconds, then opened it again.

The notification was still there. The timer was now at six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-nine minutes.

"I need to train more," Leo said. His voice was quiet, steady, but there was a tremor of something underneath it. Not fear—he’d moved past fear a long time ago—but a grim realization of the sheer scale of the wall he had to climb.

"Yes," Foxy agreed.

"We’re starting tomorrow morning," Leo said, standing up and heading toward the room where he kept his equipment.

"No," Foxy said, his voice echoing slightly in the large, empty room. "Tonight."

Leo stopped. He looked at the sword leaning against the wall, the blade he’d used to survive the ditch, the blade that was currently the only thing standing between New York and a violet-colored apocalypse.

"Tonight," Leo agreed.

He grabbed the hilt, and for the first time in a while, he didn't care about the stock market or Ming's career. He just felt the cold steel in his hand and the ticking clock in his head.

Author's Note:

How do you think Marcus will react when he sees how much Leo has changed?

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