Beyond the barrier maintained by a series of "boundary markers" at the edge of the Crossroads, this was the physical border of the place where spacetime converged. Past the hazy Light Screen and the vast stretches of desolate darkness, at the furthest distance visible from the last outpost established by the Special Operations Bureau, lay enormous chunks of fragmented, floating-island-like land, drifting in the chaotic void.
Aurora-like streams of light flowed between countless broken floating islands. Small spatial stabilizers could be seen everywhere, while starlight from the outside universe occasionally pierced the rifts that appeared at random between the islands, illuminating the skies above those islands—some barren, some lush, and some as illusory as phantoms.
On one island where both the material structure and its own existence were relatively stable, an ancient Western-style mansion steeped in mystery stood quietly amid a lush garden.
Several faceless doll craftsmen with wooden and ceramic textures covering their bodies bustled about the garden. Two clockwork guards in red-and-blue cloaks stood watch before the mansion, while another clockwork doll in a maid uniform, whose entire body was made of alloy, ceramic, and synthetic skin, stood motionless at the entrance, as if waiting for someone to return.
Suddenly, a "ding" sounded from within the silent, standby clockwork doll. As the machinery began to hum softly, she pulled a pocket watch from her skirt pocket and saw its hands spinning briskly toward the slot marked "Doll Printing Room."
The Clockwork Maid tilted her head, then turned and went back into the mansion. She briskly crossed the long foyer and dim corridors before arriving at a secret room deep inside the mansion.
The lights in the secret room had already come on automatically. Silver-gray liquid churned in the tank at the center of the room, while a swarm