Rain hammered my hard hat as the tablet flickered—red flags screaming: the rock layer on the blueprints had vanished. Solid granite on paper, empty air in reality.
I should have called it in. Logged the discrepancy, waited for the morning crew.
Instead, I stepped closer. Flashlight beam sliced through the gloom toward that light-swallowing shadow in the corner.
One more step.
No resistance.
The ground vanished.
I fell.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the crunch.
However, the anticipated fracture never happened.
There was no sharp pain from hitting gravel. Instead, the sensation was... soft.
My hands sank into something warm and yielding, but then came the sticky, wet sensation coating my fingers—blood.
Muscles convulsed under me like a beast hit by a truck. My stomach lurched. This wasn’t a soft landing. I had crushed something alive.
Immediately after, a high-frequency scream capable of piercing eardrums exploded in the dark.
“MEOW——!!!”
That was no house cat begging for kibble. Judging by the Sound Pressure Level, it sounded like a large feline being struck—specifically, its tailbone being trampled by a size 11 steel-toed boot. A roar of raw agony and feline rage.
I dropped my flashlight, the beam spinning wildly before finally settling on the scene ahead.
My brain crashed. The data stream in my head stopped.
It was a girl.
She was curled in the ruins, clad in tattered leather armor stained with blood, yet she glowed. Silver-white hair splayed across the dirt like scattered fiber optics, shimmering with a faint, ethereal phosphorescence that seemed to defy the gloom.
The light caught her face—pale, delicate, and breathtakingly out of place in this concrete tomb. Not cute. Feral. Her ears were flattened against her skull—a predator’s sign of distress. Her tail was bristled, the fur matted with mud and old blood. She didn't look like a pet; she looked like a cornered animal waiting to bite.
Clearly, that had been my landing zone.
Run.
The thought was instinctual. But as I tried to retract my leg, the girl moved with a speed that defied injury assessment. She reached out with a blood-stained hand and clamped onto my wrist.
Then, the impossible occurred.
Pain seared the back of my hand. Blue light erupted from beneath the skin, twisting into a geometric crest that burned like a brand. Simultaneously, an emotionless mechanical voice exploded directly into my cerebral cortex.
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A sharp prick of static surged through my brain, permanently rewriting my synaptic pathways. The feral, guttural syllables escaping the girl's lips instantly decoded into clear English in my mind.
“The Builder...” she murmured, her voice a ghost of a sound, almost drowned by the dripping rain. “You finally... came...”
Hallucination. Concussion symptoms? I slapped the side of my head. The blue text didn't vanish. It burned into my retina like a corrupted CAD overlay.
The girl had collapsed again, her last calorie spent.
But the air around her wounds shimmered—pale green motes drifting like fireflies, stitching torn flesh.
I stared, pulse thundering in my ears.
This wasn’t real.
“Who… what the hell are you?”
The girl stirred. Using her notched blade as a crutch, she staggered to her feet, swaying unsteadily. She was a head shorter than me and fragile as paper, but when she looked up, her golden pupils constricted into lethal needles.
“I am Zayla V. Solaris,” she rasped, every word carrying the weight of fallen royalty. “Last scion of the Sun Clan. Rightful heir of Valsalia.”
She drew breath, like she was about to deliver a throne-room speech.
Then her stomach betrayed her.
GURGLE——
The roar echoed magnificently through the ruins.
Majesty shattered.
Cheeks flushed violent red to the tips of her ears. Tail froze mid-puff, bristling like a bottle brush.
She waved the broken blade in furious shame. “…And you! Mortal in strange, cheap fabric! If you wish to live, explain why the prophecy summoned a fool who dares step on my tail!”
“Builder? Prophecy?”
I echoed her words, still dazed.
She waved the weapon threateningly, but the cross-section of her blade was blunt.
I took a shuddering breath, the metallic tang of blood thick on my tongue. “Listen to me. I don't care about your ancient prophecies or your wars. The only thing I know is that the structural integrity of this cave is failing, and that rift up there is my only way home. I am not dying in a collapsed trench for someone else's fight.”
“Home?” Zayla sneered, ears flattening. “Do you think you can return? The Void Rift is a one-way flow, and—”
She choked on her words.
I aimed my flashlight upward. Five meters above, an irregular, twisting hole in space hummed with an unstable purple halo. Through that rift, I didn't see another world—I saw rusted, bent rebars poking out like the roots of a dead tree.
Through the gaps in the steel, I saw familiar grey rain clouds and the desolately flickering neon sign of the “ZENITH.”
“Are those... the foundation piles of Block B?” My eyes lit up. The structural connection still held.
“Alright.” I turned to Zayla. She was watching me warily, her tail wrapped tight around her leg—a sign of extreme insecurity.
“Sorry,” I grunted, trying to skirt around her. “I have to go. That hole looks climbable...”
A scalding hand clamped onto my ankle. Zayla’s fingers clawed into my denim.
“Don't go...”
“What?”
I looked down.
Her golden eyes were wide, desperate.
“You were summoned,” she wheezed. “The prophecy… the Builder… if you leave now, this world ends. Everything crumbles.”
Before I could respond, something massive breathed in the tunnel behind us.
Heavy. Wet. Close.
My flashlight beam trembled.
The darkness answered with a low, rasping growl—hungry, patient, enormous.
The sheer terror of that sound acted like a bucket of ice water over my short-circuiting brain.
I scrambled backward, dragging Zayla’s feverish body into the shadow of a collapsed pillar...
Architect of the Broken World! Alex just fell into a hole and found a cat girl. Is this every engineer's dream or nightmare?
Question of the Day: If you found a portal to another world, what is the first thing you would bring back to Earth?
(Click your choice to reveal the consequence)
A) Magic.
?? Select Option A
Result: You cast "Fireball" in your living room. The insurance company denies your claim.
B) Gold.
?? Select Option B
Result: Congratulations! The IRS would like to know your location immediately.
C) A Cat Girl/Boy.
?? Select Option C
Result: Zayla is staring at you with judgment. Also, explaining this to your landlord will be fun.