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Twenty years. Twenty years looking at that living nightmare, first as a frightened young recruit, then as a hardened veteran. Ten years of mandatory conscription had turned into another ten of voluntary service.

The extra ten mana points per day were a difficult incentive to ignore, even with the increase in attacks in recent months.

Taron suppressed a yawn, the weariness of countless watches weighing heavily on him. The start of the shift was always the hardest. His eyes scanned the barrier once more, searching for any sign of a breach.

The city, his home, his family... everything depended on the constant vigilance of people like him. The responsibility was a constant pressure, a weight he had learned to bear over the years.

Suddenly, something caught his attention. A strange movement in the sea of monsters, a few dozen meters from the base of the wall. Taron narrowed his eyes, trying to focus better.

"What the hell...?" he murmured, leaning over the parapet. His heart rate quickened, a mixture of curiosity and apprehension coursing through him.

The Locus, those insectoid beasts that normally moved in a constant frenzy towards the city, seemed to be... sinking?

At a specific point, the monsters were descending as if the ground beneath them was swallowing them up. The sight was surreal, defying everything Taron thought he knew about the relentless horde.

He blinked several times, sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. But no, the phenomenon continued. More than that, it seemed to be expanding.

With each passing second, the affected area grew larger, the implications becoming more and more alarming.

"Captain!" Taron shouted, not taking his eyes off the surreal scene. "I need you to see this!" His voice carried an urgency that he hadn\'t felt in years, the monotony of his duty shattered by this inexplicable event.

The captain approached quickly, his face showing a mixture of irritation and curiosity. But as soon as his eyes fell on the phenomenon, all irritation vanished, replaced by an expression of amazement and disbelief.

"By the System," the captain muttered, his usual stoic demeanor cracking in the face of the unprecedented sight. "What is that?"

As they watched, the affected area grew. What started as a small point was now a circle several meters in diameter. The Locus on the edge fell incessantly, creating a macabre spectacle of writhing bodies disappearing into the darkness.

The sight was both fascinating and horrifying.

The circle expanded, forming an inverted cone in the sea of monsters. The Locus, with their relentless predatory instinct, showed no fear.

They seemed confused, some falling into the hole while others struggled to return to the highest level of the "sea", climbing each other. Their frenzied movements only added to the surreal nature of the scene.

"Alert everyone you can," ordered the captain, his voice tense with the weight of command. "I want all available eyes on this area. If this is some kind of new monster tactic, we need to be prepared." The implications of such a drastic change in the monsters\' behavior were too significant to ignore.

Taron nodded and ran to fulfill the order, his heart pounding hard. In all his years of service, he had never seen anything like this.

As he moved atop the wall, shouting alerts to his fellow soldiers, a thought nagged at the back of his mind: If the monsters were capable of this, what other surprises might they have in store?

The wall came alive with activity as more and more soldiers gathered to witness the phenomenon. Whispers of awe and fear spread like wildfire, theories and speculations flying from mouth to mouth. But beneath the excitement, a current of dread ran deep.

♢♢♢♢

News spread rapidly along the wall. Soldiers crowded the parapets, observing with a mixture of fascination and horror the phenomenon unfolding before their eyes.

The air was thick with tension, mingling with the distant roars of the Locus.

Among the growing crowd, a figure moved with determination. Zara, her face pale and eyes reddened from crying, pushed her way through the throng.

She had heard the rumors, the exclamations of awe, and something deep within her screamed that this had to do with Elio.

Finally, she reached the edge of the wall. Her hands gripped the parapet so tightly her fingers turned white. Her eyes, still moist from shed tears, fixed on the phenomenon developing below.

What she saw stole her breath away.

"Impossible," Zara murmured, her gaze locked on the spectacle before her. The word felt inadequate to describe the sheer magnitude of what she was witnessing.

Just below her, mere meters from the wall, an enormous depression was forming in the sea of monsters. It was no longer a complete cone, but rather half of an inverted cone, with one of its sides pressed against the city wall.

The deepest part was right next to the base, extending outward and upward in an irregular slope.

The sight was both terrifying and mesmerizing, a testament to the unpredictable nature of their world.

What had begun as a small depression now spanned hundreds of meters in diameter. The edges were chaos incarnate, Locus fighting against the force dragging them towards the center. Their legs and arms flailed frantically, climbing over each other in a desperate attempt to stay as close as possible to the top of the wall.

The cacophony of their screeches and the sound of chitinous bodies scraping against each other filled the air.

"What\'s happening?" someone near her asked, their voice tinged with awe and fear. The question hung in the air, unanswered and perhaps unanswerable.

Zara also had no response. Her eyes scanned the edge of the depression, trying to comprehend the magnitude of what she was witnessing. The sheer scale of it defied logic, challenging everything she thought she knew about their world and the monsters that threatened it.

Hours passed, and the depression continued to grow. Now it encompassed almost a tenth of the wall\'s circumference, and its depth was impossible to calculate from Zara\'s position.

The bottom, right next to the wall, was an impenetrable darkness, an abyss that seemed to have no end. It was as if a piece of the night sky had fallen to earth, a void that swallowed light and hope alike.

"Elio," Zara whispered, her voice barely audible over the roar of the monsters. "You\'re still down there, aren\'t you?" The words were part question, part prayer, carried away by the wind before they could reach the depths below.