That pale rift was like an eye born naturally in the void.
All alone, it appeared out of nowhere.
It was like a sudden stroke dabbed onto a black canvas, and yet even after it appeared, everything around it remained utterly calm, as if it were only a harmless sight, incapable of affecting its surroundings in any way.
There were no energy fluctuations, no spatial tremors, no gravitational disorder, not even the slightest change in temperature.
It simply appeared there in silence. Within it was an even deeper nothingness, while its edges gleamed with a cold, hard, lifeless pallor, like the color of bones long buried underground.
Yet it was precisely that absolute calm that made Winnie and Xilos tense in an instant.
At their level, they had long since understood one thing.
In the boundless void, the more something surpassed common sense, the more its calm violated all understanding, the deadlier the danger often hidden beneath it was.
What was more, the position where this rift had appeared happened to be an utterly barren zone far from any known world and far from every energy node.
Winnie frowned.
This was no ordinary spatial crack, nor was it some lingering phenomenon left after an energy eruption.
The feeling it gave her was very empty, yet very full.
It was empty because it did not seem to contain any power with clear attributes, and full because it seemed like a passage, an opening, leading to some place that even her Authority perception found blurry and repellent.
The pale-gold power that had originally flowed around her as naturally as breathing subconsciously contracted slowly, constructing a tighter network of defense and perception.
The power of Authority that belonged to her was now faintly transmitting an extremely subtle, unfamiliar throb.
That throb was not