The nexus chamber wasn't a chamber anymore.
It was a wound in reality.
I stepped through where the walls had been and immediately understood why Ryota had told people not to look directly at it.
The nexus heart hung suspended in the center of the space, pulsing with purple-black energy that hurt to perceive. Not physically hurt, though that too. It hurt in ways that went deeper, like looking at something my brain couldn't properly process and insisting on trying anyway.
It was crystalline, maybe. Or liquid. Or neither. It shifted between states too fast to track, geometric patterns forming and dissolving, angles that curved when they should be straight, surfaces that reflected nothing while somehow being transparent.
Wrong.
That was the only word that fit. The nexus heart was fundamentally, cosmically wrong.
And behind it, pressing against the dimensional barrier with enough force to make reality scream, was the entity.
