Thursday, November 21, 2097.
Under Xia City's rare winter sunshine, Ronan looked through the window at the enormous Space-Time Bubble woven and supported by the Tattered Divine Cloak above the city. He focused on the great arc formed where it met Inner Earth's atmosphere. Quite a few people had noticed it and taken photos. Some posted them on social media, stirring a small ripple of interest. But before the buzz could grow, the arc vanished without a trace.
Before it disappeared completely, a faint glimmer had pierced it. That was Raven.
She was still awake, not dreaming, yet she was certain she had glimpsed the Karmic Poison Sea.
The Tattered Divine Cloak had used a different method of "weaving," altering part of its structure. That was what had made the difference.
It was possible because the Starry Sky's Solidified Configuration had spread across the Abyss Zone and crossed the invisible barrier between Inner Earth and the Cloud Top World. With Ronan as its center, its ordered rules radiated through both regions of spacetime.
The barrier that had divided the Abyss Zone was, in essence, a wall of rules built by the Tattered Divine Cloak, blurring reality and illusion. Once someone could control the cloak, that wall became remarkably fragile, almost insubstantial. By the same token, whoever controlled the cloak could direct the shifts between reality and illusion within the spacetime and information structures it wove.
Strictly speaking, neither Inner Earth nor the Cloud Top World was entirely part of the True Universe. Then again, after the age of the Ancient Gods, how much of the True Universe's most primordial "reality" remained? For a Great Almighty, everything within the domain he perceived and the reach of his rules left ample room to manipulate so-called reality. The Lord of Illusory Nightmares had