When school time arrived, things were no different from yesterday.

  Phúc, Tài, and Linh all avoided Minh.

  Whenever he drew near, they turned away.

  Phúc and Tài pushed him off with firm resolve, while Linh, though her eyes lingered on him, hid among her friends.

  Yet what hurt Minh the most was not their distance from him, but the distance between each other.

  His three closest friends no longer played together.

  Instead, he found them scattered, each spending time with new companions.

  One of their schoolmates was fooling around near the gate and accidentally slammed into Tài’s shoulder.

  Tài turned on him with eyes burning in anger, so sharp the boy instinctively stepped back.

  His friends moved in, ready to challenge Tài but before anything could ignite, Tài’s father arrived.

  With a firm grip, he pulled his son away, and the others quickly scattered.

  Minh stood watching in silence.

  He saw it clearly now: the Chaos Realm had already left its mark on Tài.

  The nightmares weren’t just haunting him they were hollowing him out. It was only a matter of time.

  Tonight, or perhaps the next, Tài would be dragged into the darkness of his own Chaos.

  A cold dread settled over Minh.

  He knew there was no escaping it.

  To face Tài meant stepping into that abyss.

  And tonight, the abyss was waiting.

  Minh spent his day on edge.

  Every tick of the clock felt too loud, every lesson too long.

  He tried to listen, to write, to study, but nothing stayed in his mind.

  When he looked down at his homework, the words on the page seemed to belong to someone else.

  He was sure tomorrow he’d be marked down, maybe even scolded but the thought slid past him without weight.

  What unsettled him most was the silence inside: no focus, no calm, only the steady thrum of unease pressing against his chest.

  By the time night came, he was worn thin.

  Relief washed over him, sudden and cold, as if the day’s heaviness had finally loosened its grip.

  Without hesitation, he climbed into bed.

  But the stillness that welcomed him was too deep, too expectant like a door quietly opening to someplace he did not want to go.

  Minh entered the Chaos Realm and wasted no time he teleported straight to Tài’s domain.

  What rose before him made his breath falter.

  The air itself felt heavy, damp with a rot that clung to his skin.

  Ahead stretched a twisted schoolyard, but broken and distorted, as if someone had rebuilt it from fragments of memory.

  The walls bent at unnatural angles, windows stretched tall and narrow like watching eyes, and the ground was cracked with veins of black shadow that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

  The atmosphere pressed against him, haunted and threatening.

  Every breath he took carried the taste of ash.

  The urgency he had carried all day drained away, replaced by a cold dread.

  Forcing his hands to remain steady, Minh shaped the pill.

  Two glimmering orbs appeared in his palm.

  He slipped them into his pocket, drew a long, uneven breath, and stepped toward the jagged entrance of Tài’s domain.

  Minh found himself in the room where he had once fought the Chaos in his own shape.

  Now it was empty, silent.

  For the moment, it seemed safe.

  But beyond the door stretched a hall of darkness.

  When Minh stepped forward, torches flared to life, unveiling a corridor steeped in crimson.

  Familiar shapes emerged in warped patterns: desks stacked like jagged cliffs, chairs bent and broken like twisted bones, books circling overhead as if caught in a storm.

  Red zeros burned in the air, hovering like hateful spirits.

  The weight of the Chaos thickened.

  Minh felt it before he saw it, the pull of something vast and hostile pressing through the shadows.

  Then the darkness split open, and the creature erupted.

  It was no human shape.

  Its body was a hulking mass of sharpened rulers and snapped pencils, bound together by torn pages that writhed like flesh.

  From its spine jutted desk legs, bent into spines and claws, while its head was nothing but a gaping hole filled with shredded paper, screeching as if the sound came from every failed grade Tài had ever feared.

  With a lurch, the Chaos-beast charged, heavy and relentless, the storm of flying books trailing it like wings.

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  The Chaos-beast charged again, its limbs of jagged rulers crashing down like axes.

  Minh didn’t panic this time.

  He had learned from his first encounter with Chaos, every creature, no matter how twisted, had a weakness.

  He watched carefully, letting the beast thrash.

  The flying books circled like vultures, the torn pages writhed like muscles, but amid the chaos Minh saw it: the glowing red zeros spilling from its hollow head flickered each time it struck. That was its core.

  Minh steadied his breath, then moved.

  The monster swung, but he slipped past its reach and struck upward, aiming directly into the darkness of its face.

  His blade carved through the storm of paper, piercing the core.

  The creature shrieked once, the sound like a hundred failures screamed at once, then collapsed.

  The rulers snapped, the chairs splintered, the storm of books burst apart and fell silent. In seconds, all that remained was dust and scraps on the crimson floor.

  Minh lowered his weapon, calm settling over him.

  This time, the battle had been swift.

  He had found the weakness, and with it, the victory came easy.

  But in the back of his mind, he knew this was only the beginning.

  The easy victory filled Minh with confidence.

  He understood now, brute strength alone would not win these battles.

  Observation, patience, and finding the Chaos’s weakness would.

  No matter how monstrous, each enemy carried a flaw, and Minh’s mind was sharp enough to see it.

  The Chaos could be strong, overwhelming in form and power, but Minh had something it did not: a human brain, the ability to think, adapt, and strike where it hurt the most.

  That thought steadied him as he moved forward.

  With this resolve, he stepped deeper into the domain, the crimson hallway stretching ahead like an endless wound.

  The chaos thickened, its creatures swelling with a power that seemed to feed on Minh’s very struggle.

  Each clash forced new strength from him one born skill,

  Focus Strikedrove his blade with bone-breaking force.

  Yet the deeper he pressed into the domain, the more the corridors closed in, walls breathing like throats eager to choke him.

  The battles turned savage, the monsters’ claws raking so close he could feel their heat on his skin.

  With nowhere left to flee, Minh called upon

  Fasthis body snapping through the suffocating dark, his speed the only edge keeping him from being torn apart.

  Minh stepped into a hollow chamber. For the first time since entering Tài’s domain, the air was still.

  No claws scraping, no shadows moving only silence.

  It felt wrong, yet inviting, like a trap disguised as mercy.

  His body ached, his spirit power thin as smoke.

  He lowered himself to the floor, legs crossed.

  He dared to close his eyes, slipping into meditation.

  But even as he steadied his mind, he knew the truth: to meditate here, in the open, was foolish.

  Chaos prowled endlessly, drawn to the pulse of living spirit.

  If one wandered near, he would be helpless.

  Still… the chamber held.

  No shrieks.

  No footfalls.

  He risked everything, gambling that this room was sanctuary, hoping the dark would not notice him.

  As Minh sank deeper into meditation, his spirit began to mend, threads of power weaving back together, his mind sharpening like a blade held steady in fire. The exhaustion eased, and with it came clarity.

  The silence of the chamber felt safer than it should, and he allowed himself to remain, drawing out the meditation until his body and soul steadied.

  Then, A voice.

  It slipped through the silence like a crack in glass, faint yet pressing against his ears.

  Minh’s breath caught.

  The voice sounded close, so close he could almost reach it but distorted, drowned beneath a hundred layers of noise.

  Static, whispers, broken echoes.

  The words tangled, impossible to understand.

  No matter how he strained, they blurred into meaningless fragments.

  Unease cut into his calm. If he lingered longer, he feared he might lose himself chasing the sound.

  With a sharp breath, Minh ended the meditation, rose to his feet, and stepped forward, toward the voice that beckoned from deeper within the domain.

  Minh’s breath quickened. His nails dug into his palms as if to anchor himself.

  The rage gnawed at him, urging him to shout, to smash, to .

  But he shut his eyes. He forced the fire down.

  he told himself.

  The voices still circled

  Each repetition was sharper, like blades against his skull.

  But Minh straightened his back, inhaled until his lungs burned, and pushed the sound aside.

  He clung to his humanity, to the part of him that knew patience, that knew compassion, that knew fear could be mastered.

  The fury pressed harder.

  The walls seemed to lean in, the crimson veins throbbing, daring him to break.

  But Minh whispered to himself, a low growl of defiance:

  And with that, the storm of anger faltered.

  The voices lost their edge, thinning into distant echoes.

  The hallway darkened again, but the grip on his chest loosened.

  Minh had endured, his will, for now, was stronger than the chaos.

  As Minh pressed deeper, the words grew heavier, louder, no longer whispers but pounding echoes.

  They rolled through the crimson halls like thunder, rattling in his ribs.

  Minh slowed his steps, realizing something uncanny.

  The chaos had stopped attacking.

  The air was still, almost reverent, as if no creature dared to linger here.

  His mind replayed the meditation room, quiet, untouched, a line drawn in the dark.

  Now it made sense.

  That place had not been mere chance.

  It was the boundary.

  Behind him, the chaos.

  Ahead, the centre.

  The closer he walked, the more certain he became: this was no battlefield, no random maze.

  This was the heart of Tài’s torment.

  And Minh was crossing into it.

  At the end of the suffocating hallway, a faint sphere of light wavered.

  Not bright, not pure, its glow was sickly, as though the dark itself had hollowed it out.

  Within it, the voices still echoed Over and over, each word scratching deeper into Minh’s skull.

  He stepped inside.

  The air changed, thick, heavy, metallic like blood left too long in the sun.

  There, on the ground, lay Tài.

  His body trembled, eyes wide and hollow, as chaos pressed against him in swarms.

  They whispered, they clawed, their whispers becoming blows, their blows becoming agony.

  Every wound on him seemed to open and close again, as though time itself was mocking his pain.

  Then the chant broke off.

  Silence fell like a blade.

  One by one, the chaos turned to Minh. Their faces shifted, features twisting into his own. Dozens of Minh.

  Hundreds. All with the same eyes.

  The Crimson Domain.

  In this verse, Minh finally steps into the heart of Tài’s Chaos. What he faces is no longer just monsters, but the weight of Tài’s fears, anger, and the twisted reflections of himself.