Helena almost lost consciousness the moment she stepped into the crack.

  It wasn’t the mercy she had expected.

  The last time she crossed a fracture between worlds, her mind had shut down instantly. This time, she stayed awake, and she quickly wished she hadn’t.

  A crushing dizziness rolled through her. It felt like she had been drinking for years, her senses drowned beneath a haze that refused to clear. Her eyes stayed shut, heavy and useless, while pressure pressed in from every direction. Her body stretched and twisted in ways no living form should endure, angles that defied nature itself.

  The sensation dragged on.

  Seconds blurred. Then minutes. Then something that felt like far longer.

  A low groan tore from her throat, rough with pain.

  “Damn it… when does this end?”

  There was no answer.

  Only the relentless pull of whatever space she had been dragged into.

  She no longer knew where she was, or what she was moving toward. Thought slipped in and out of her grasp, fragmenting as she fought to stay conscious. Her body resisted, but the strain never eased.

  Eventually, even Helena’s perfected form reached its limit.

  Her breath hitched once. Then steadied.

  The last of her strength drained away, and she let go. Darkness closed in as she slipped into unconsciousness, no longer able to fight the pressure.

  Her body drifted onward through the shifting void, carried toward whatever waited on the other side.

  ---

  Helena didn’t know where she was.

  A groan escaped her lips.

  “Ugh…”

  Her head throbbed, the dizziness lingering like the worst hangover she’d ever had. Her eyelids twitched, struggling to open. But it wasn’t the pain that caught her attention.

  It was a sound.

  Something she hadn’t heard in years.

  Human voices.

  They weren’t speaking to her. Just talking among themselves, casual and unguarded.

  “How long until we reach the City of Salvis?”

  “By night, I think. Maybe.”

  “Really? Didn’t you say it’d take a week? I’ve been bleeding money this whole time. I need to sell these slaves already. You’ve been lying to me for ten days.”

  A pause.

  “Mister Denor, I already explained. We’re late because you kept commissioning us to kidnap more people from villages along the way.”

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  Helena heard a frustrated exhale. The man didn’t argue. He knew the adventurer leader was right.

  Denor was a slave trader. He worked in both legal and illegal markets. Virgin female slaves were in especially high demand, and finding them through legal channels was nearly impossible. Most official slaves were criminals or debtors.

  So Denor preferred kidnapping.

  Rural villages. Young girls. Black markets and illegal auctions.

  That was his specialty.

  The adventurers he hired weren’t any better. They cared little for morality and accepted his requests without hesitation. Together, they had torn people from their homes.

  Those captives were now packed into the carriage behind them.

  The wagon was built like a cage. Thick metal bars lined its sides. Inside, every slave wore shackles on their wrists and ankles, along with a heavy iron collar that dug into their skin. Twenty-two people were crammed together in the confined space.

  Among them was Helena.

  Her awareness returned slowly as the voices sharpened into focus.

  Sunlight pressed against her eyelids. Her head pounded as she forced her eyes open, vision swaying before it settled.

  The sight in front of her felt unreal.

  People.

  Men and women sat around her, wrapped in ragged clothing, iron biting into their skin. Shackles bound their limbs. But what struck her most was that they were human.

  Not mutants.

  Not flesh-eating monsters.

  Living people.

  A small spark of warmth flickered in her chest.

  She had succeeded. She had reached another world.

  Whether this was her original world or something new didn’t matter. What mattered was that life still existed.

  But the feeling didn’t last.

  Something was wrong.

  Every person around her wore the same hollow expression. Empty eyes. The look of people who had already lost everything.

  Helena recognized it instantly.

  She had seen it countless times during the apocalypse. The faces of those who watched their families die, disappear, or turn into monsters. The look despair left behind.

  She didn’t want this to be another doomed world.

  A quiet voice spoke beside her.

  “Are you… alright?”

  Helena turned. A young girl with brown hair leaned closer. Shackles bound her as well. She looked exhausted, but still conscious.

  Helena tried to answer, but no sound came out at first. It had been years since anyone had spoken to her this closely. The moment felt fragile, like a dream that might shatter if she moved too fast.

  Finally, she managed, “Where am I?”

  The girl hesitated, eyes dropping. When she spoke, her voice was small.

  “We’re… in a transport carriage. All of us are slaves. They’re taking us to Salvis.”

  Only then did Helena notice the weight on her limbs.

  She looked down.

  Thick iron shackles circled her wrists and ankles, identical to the others.

  Captured.

  Enslaved.

  Compared to everything she had endured, it barely registered as danger.

  She looked back at the girl. “What continent is this?”

  The girl blinked. It was such a simple question, yet Helena asked it like she genuinely didn’t know.

  “This is the Continent of Zeron,” she said carefully. “Are you from somewhere else, Miss… um…”

  “Helena,” she replied immediately, sudden brightness in her voice.

  “Helena Hale. That’s my name.”

  The girl stared at her.

  They looked close in age, yet Helena spoke with an ease that felt older. Stranger still was her expression.

  Why was she smiling?

  Helena repeated the name under her breath, relief rising with each syllable.

  “Zeron…”

  She wasn’t mad.

  She was relieved.

  This was her old world.

  The girl watched her warily now, unsure what to think. Helena took a slow breath and steadied herself.

  Then she turned back to the girl, eyes sharp with something dangerous and alive. The girl instinctively leaned away.

  “Can you tell me how I ended up here?” Helena asked softly.

  The girl trembled.

  Helena added calmly, “Relax. I’m not going to eat you.”

  The girl nodded quickly, fear overriding confusion. A few other slaves glanced over, then looked away again, their expressions empty.

  The wagon rolled forward, wheels grinding against the dirt road.

  “I saw everything,” the girl said quietly. “They found you lying in the road. You were unconscious. At first, they thought you were dead.”

  She swallowed.

  “But you were breathing. Denor said someone as beautiful as you would sell for a lot. They thought you might be a noblewoman, but… noblewomen don’t usually have short hair.”

  Helena raised a brow. “Hold on. Who’s Denor?”

  Anger flashed through the girl’s tired eyes.

  “He’s a slave trader. Legal and illegal. He captured me four days ago from my village. He doesn’t care about people. Only money.”

  Helena nodded.

  Men like Denor were nothing new to her. She had lived long enough to see far worse. Compared to the horrors of her old world, he was insignificant.

  Breaking out of this cage would be effortless.

  She had once been among the strongest awakened on Earth. Her husband and daughter had even given her a nickname.

  Iron Fortress Helena.

  She had always found it embarrassing.

  She focused on the girl again. “Go on.”

  “They were suspicious,” the girl continued. “They thought you might be pretending. Their magician checked you and said you had no mana. That’s when they decided you were harmless.”

  Helena laughed.

  Sharp. Loud. Unrestrained.

  “Harmless? Capture me?”

  She snorted. “That’s… that’s funny.”

  The girl stared, convinced now that something was wrong with this woman.

  Suddenly, something struck the bars from outside, hard enough to rattle the moving carriage.

  “Shut up!” a man barked from outside. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  The cage rattled.

  The girl flinched and shrank back, panic tightening her face. She leaned toward Helena, voice urgent.

  “Please stop. They’ll hurt us.”

  Helena leaned closer instead, completely unconcerned.

  “Do you know why I laughed?” she asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  “I don’t know…”

  Helena smiled, calm and absolute.

  “Because no one can keep me locked up. No one can capture me.”

  The girl stared. “That’s… impossible.”

  It wasn’t.

  Helena’s ability allowed her to reshape any physical structure. Shackles. Bars. Walls. Stone. Metal.

  This power had kept her alive in the early years of the apocalypse. While others fought monsters, she bent the world around herself. Only later had she learned how terrifying the ability could be.

  Even now, she no longer knew her limits.

  Helena ignored him.

  She looked at the girl and asked gently,

  “Do you want to be free?”

  The girl froze.

  Something fragile flickered beneath her exhaustion.

  She hadn’t answered yet.