Blessed By A Yandere Goddess

"How's the gate?"

The head hunter in charge of Tartarus-B security approached the barrier erected around the gate's perimeter. The shimmering entrance had been acting strangely for hours now, its surface rippling and spewing a viscous fluid that looked disturbingly like pus.

"Unstable. It's likely going to breach soon."

"Wouldn't surprise me. This thing's lasted longer than any other gate on record. Most would've already spilled monsters months ago."

They'd sent an expeditionary team hours ago, hunters specifically chosen for their long-distance communication abilities, supported by A-Ranks. Not a single message had returned.

It was as if whatever waited on the other side had killed them before they could even warn anyone.

"We have a problem."

A pillar of bone erupted from a stack of shipping containers to the left. When the debris cleared, Verne stood among the wreckage, part of his face wrapped in bandages. A wound that had proven stubbornly resistant to healing.

A wound Sarael had given him.

"Sir, what are you doing here?"

"It's urgent." Verne's voice was flat. "Other country-class portals around the world are reporting the same phenomenon. Including New Amsel City."

"Portals spewing fluid like pus?"

"More importantly, everyone inside them has been cut off from communications."

The head hunter's face went pale.

"Cut off? All of them?"

"Every single one."

Verne stepped out of the rubble, his boots crunching over shattered bone. The bandages on his face shifted as he spoke, the wound beneath still raw and dark.

"The Association's already scrambling response teams, but they don't understand what they're dealing with."

"And you do?"

Verne didn't answer immediately. His good eye swept over the barrier, the pus-like fluid still oozing from the gate's surface, and his jaw tightened.

"I know someone who does."

The head hunter frowned. "You're not talking about—"

"Ronan Night. Yes."

"That's insane. He's a wanted fugitive. He might be popular now, but it still hasn't been proven he's completely innocent."

"But he's also the only person who's ever walked out of Tartarus-B alive."

Verne turned to face him fully.

"And right now, every gate on the planet is starting to look exactly like the one he survived."

Before the head hunter could respond, another tremor ran through the ground. The barrier's surface rippled, and a new wave of the viscous fluid spilled out, this time accompanied by something else.

A sound.

Low and resonant, like something enormous breathing on the other side.

"Get everyone back," Verne ordered. "Now."

The head hunter didn't argue. He was already signaling his men, barking orders into his radio.

Verne pulled out his phone. He didn't have Ronan's number, but he had contacts, fixers, information brokers, and at least one retired S-Rank who apparently was his grandfather.

John Neumann picked up on the third ring.

"We have a problem."

"I know."

John's voice was heavy.

"I've been watching the reports. You know where Ronan is? I can't get hold of Sarael, who's likely still out there being interviewed; the girl doesn't have a phone."

"No, but last I heard, someone who looked like him entered the Abyssal Rift."

Verne paused.

"He's inside it with Allysane. Communications are down. We can't reach him, and we can't stop what's happening without understanding it."

"Then we need to get them out."

"Without a stable gate, we can't send anyone in. And if the Rift is transforming like the others..."

He didn't need to finish the sentence. They both knew what came next.

On the other side of the world, the Abyssal Rift's surface was already beginning to ooze.

And inside, Ronan watched as the violet sky gave way to something darker, something that smelled like rot and old blood.

Tartarus-B was calling him back.

And it wasn't going to wait for an invitation.

✧ ✦ ✧

"Ronan, where are we?"

Allysane's arms were still wrapped around him, her voice tight with barely controlled panic. She wasn't asking for reassurance. She was asking him to make sense of a world that had just inverted itself.

The Abyssal Rift was gone.

The coast, the black water, the violet sky, all of it had been replaced by an endless field of dead grass and crumbling buildings. The horizon wavered like a mirage, and the air was thick with rot and ash.

Ronan didn't answer right away. His eyes swept the tree line, tracking movement: Skitters, Bone Faces, and worse. They were already closing in, filling the gaps between the ruins with hungry, familiar shapes.

This wasn't just similar to Tartarus-B. It was Tartarus-B. Or something close enough that the difference didn't matter.

"I'll keep you safe."

His voice came out steady, but his jaw was tight. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he ran, each stride carrying them further from the crumbling shoreline and into the dead forest.

"Don't worry."

Allysane's grip tightened on his collar.

"That's not an answer, Greystar. What the hell happened to the gate?"

He didn't look back.

"Nothing good."

She opened her mouth to press him again, but the sound of splintering wood cut her off.

A Skitter burst from the treeline, its too-many-jointed limbs propelling it forward in a blur. Ronan didn't slow down.

He shifted Allysane in his arms, freed one hand, and flicked.

The Skitter detonated. Black ichor sprayed across the dead grass, and the others in the pack hesitated, their pale heads snapping toward the smell.

"Stay quiet," Ronan said.

Allysane went still.

He kept running, deeper into the forest, into the familiar nightmare. The map wasn't the same, but the rhythm of it was: the way the shadows pooled too dark, the way the silence stretched too long between sounds, the way the air pressed in from all sides like it was trying to swallow them.

It was all too familiar.

And despite everything he'd become, despite the power coiled in his chest and the years of survival behind him, Ronan felt the old panic rising. The kind that lived in the bones. The kind that didn't care about stats or skill tiers or how many S-Ranks he'd killed.

PTSD.

Tartarus-B had marked him long before he'd ever learned to fight back. And now the place was wearing that same face again.

"Ronan... it hurts."

Allysane's voice was small, strained. He looked down and saw his own fingers digging into her side, white-knuckled and shaking.

He forced his grip to loosen.

"Sorry."

"No. It's fine." Her arms stayed locked around his neck. "As long as you don't let go, I don't care if I bleed."

The words were steadier than he expected. Allysane wasn't panicking. She was trusting him, completely, even as the world shifted into something out of a nightmare.

The Skitters were still behind them. The Bone Faces were moving through the trees, keeping pace with the kind of patience that had terrified his old party. They weren't attacking. Not yet.

They were waiting.

They had always been ambush predators.

He kept moving, breath controlled despite the chaos in his head. The landscape kept changing around them, slowly but surely becoming even more familiar: broken walls, rusted vehicles, streets that might have been part of some dead city if the buildings hadn't been arranged like teeth.

"Tartarus..."

He had breathed out.

"We're in Tartarus-B."

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