And the thoughts kept piling in- when he parted with Junsu, did he meet the same fate? Was Yunho leaving him to die when he left? It was painful to take it all in.

Yunho slowly paced back up the wall. Each click of his heels resounded sharply. He came to a halt beside Changmin, crouching next to the man drenched with gravity. His fingers were white in the effort to keep hold of the pipes, half slipped away. One hand was moments from losing grip. Yunho knew as soon as one detached, he wouldn't be able to hold himself up. It was hopeless.

Even with his superb armour, Yunho knew Changmin wouldn't make the fall unharmed. If it didn't kill him, he wasn't getting up again. The expression on his porcelain face, that of determination yet a slight betrayal of inevitability creeping across his resolve, exposed it all. But how was Yunho to catch him? He stormed off back towards the floor in frustration, dropping onto the ground gracelessly, marching over to Yoochun instead.

He began to try and clamber through the debris, in the hopes an offered hand would be enough to pull Yoochun out of this mess- but the black being appeared in the silence, standing in front of Yoochun's statue with a halting hand held up. With a solemn look the being shook their head, and hesitantly, Yunho lowered his outstretched arm. Yunho stood in a moment of confusion, before the reality truly sank in.

His heart fell. Was that it? Just like that? There was nothing he could do? He felt scorned. Perhaps it was a trick- but no, when he looked away in anger, he saw the white counterpart of the cruel entity, and they shook their head sadly, eyes closed shut. It's not your sympathy I want, Yunho bitterly thought.

Yunho looked down at the stopwatch fisted tightly in his hand. His knuckles strained white at the strength of his grasp. It was Yoochun at stake, but Yunho trembled at the idea of what was to come. Slowly, he turned his back on the chaos, drawing his turbulent feelings to the second problem at hand- Changmin.

-----

Yunho wiped a line of cold sweat from his brow. How would this work? The reality Changmin was stuck in was burdened with rules and constraints. He was crouched once again on the pipes where Changmin gripped, stretching down with both hands around Changmin's wrists. He'd wrapped the chain of his stop watch around his forearm, ready to restart time and grab Changmin. He made sure to plant his feet firmly on the rounded metal, in a way gravity wouldn't pull him forward once it came back into the equation. If anything were to go his way once time rolled on, it would be reliant on the white being's mercy.

It turned out that fate was not on his side.

Noise and colours blurred around them, nothing but smooth, gripless cylinders below his feet and a grip worthy of machines around his arms, Changmin looking up at him with an unreadable look on his face and formidable grasp in his fingers. Changmin's damp hair beaded off into tendrils where pieces had fallen from the top piece, sticking to his forehead and falling in his wide mahogany eyes. The strain of his physical exertion rippled in stark lines across his reddening face, the turmoil of the cascading paraphernalia casting shadows and dancing lights across his glossy eyes. "It's here," Changmin screamed, although the sound hardly made it to Yunho's ears.

Changmin began to struggle, unbalancing Yunho, forcing him to let go of the offending arm, swinging all of Changmin's weight onto their final connection. Changmin lifted a knee and dug into his boot, sliding from it an entirely curious object, ing it up into Yunho's free hand. Without a choice, Yunho swiftly took it and slid it into his pocket, before reaching for Changmin's stray hand, panting at the immense strain on his shoulders. Doing a quick assessment of the crumbling world, he saw the growing blackness seeping into existence beneath them, so vast no light could penetrate it. In amongst the endless scatterings of things, Yunho spotted the scholar, encircled by a vortex which was quickly lifting materials from the flooring around him and into streams of power, a mighty force which seemed to rift between realms, destroying the patterns of reality and streaming all it catches in its wake as if it were driftwood plunged under water, like wood breaking off the heaving sides of a sinking ship.

Yunho dragged his eyes away from the scene. Yoochun was standing tall, hands simply behind his back, no fear betrayed in his composure. Yunho didn't want to watch, he couldn't; but something forced a steal of a glance, to catch Yoochun's gaze just before the floor was stripped from under him, and thus- he disappeared.

His muscles seized up in a great revulsion which spread like venom through his limbs, heart skipping a beat. Changmin looked up at him confused, wondering what could have possibly stirred such a visceral reaction, one which drained the colour from Yunho's entire body.

Yunho took deep breaths, trying to release the sudden vice to stun and paralyse his body. His arms were numb to the weight on them, curve of his back locked in place as if he were a soul trapped in a statue. An impossible wind in a perpetually moving and yet entirely motionless world ruffled the hair on his head and clothes on his body.

There were shadows on Changmin. Shadows which shouldn't exist in this world contrary.

With juttering, mechanical movements in his anaesthetised body, Yunho turned his focus on the new constructions around him, all the while bringing back details he'd seen along his journey since he first groggily sat up on the park bench of nowhere. The door which didn't fit the frame, the sundial with no shadow, the mirrors with no reflection. Something was starting to turn a key in the lock which held behind it the secrets of this puzzle which he'd been pondering in the back of his mind the entire time in the world which made no sense.

The human biology is only equipped to perceive up to the third dimension. This world was confusing not because those staircases didn't lead anywhere, but because he couldn't comprehend that they did. And now, things were coming together the more chaotic they became- Yunho was beginning to think multi-dimensionally.

It's all in my head.

An unfamiliar holler begins ascending in volume. He sharply looks back down to Changmin, and finds the other to be shaking his head, eyes tight shut, producing this awful noise. "I can't see," He manages to form in the incomprehensible sound, quickly following with "Make it stop!" And another wail as if to release some great pain with it.

It quickly occurred to Yunho that he needed to get Changmin to the 'ground', but with the world its head, he didn't quite know where that was. He decided he would follow the force which relentlessly pulled at Changmin, despite having long since submitted to Yunho. He, without thinking, body slowly released from the poisonous torment of losing Yoochun, hopped gingerly onto the surface of the wall, keeping a careful hold of Changmin as he followed the linearity of the force gripping the other. Changmin, while not squinting a peep, could clearly feel what was happening, and reacted the only way the average human would react- in sheer terror. "What are you?" He screams at Yunho. Yunho doesn't answer.

Yunho walks out of the way of flying objects and warping rifts in this broken reality. He sees briefly through a thin film viscous in the air the image of the black being, flickering and fading as they did before at the glyph. They were watching. They were everywhere.

As he walked, things were slowly coming into place anew. The blackness was a much bigger and ominous theme, taking over from the white dome which had before existed over Yunho's head. Now, there was no ceiling, there was no ground. He gently rested Changmin on the surface next to him, perpendicular to each other. Changmin finally squints open his stinging eyes to see the sideways profile of Yunho's head.

At first, he was startled to see that what he had sensed was true. After a moment, Changmin grasped his wits and tried to join Yunho's adjacency; however, he only fell straight back to his ground with a staunch thud.

Yunho watched curiously. "It seems we have a problem."

-----

Changmin was in a pickle. Before, when he looked around him, while strange there were clear paths and boundaries to journeys he could make. Now the world was rife with optical illusions- things which at first had depth then suddenly jumped out at him, things which started in one place but ended where they weren't supposed to, things which looked like they went one way but went another. The surfaces all operated as if they were the 'ground', as if gravity should pull that way, but for Changmin's reality, they were not. He couldn't predict any patterns any more. Completing the puzzles of the world had taken him out of depths he never imagined he could move beyond. Every so often, Yunho would see how Changmin would shake his head in surprise, rubbing his eyes as the perspectives suddenly switched from looking at it too long.

For Yunho, it was an entirely different story. His eyes didn't have to decide which perspective he would 'see'- he saw in multiplexity, acknowledging all possibilities without it confusing his brain. Every time Changmin's mind made that switch, it seemed to hurt immensely, bringing a great ache to him, reflecting in the strains of his face. The world around Yunho took on a great, spiralling geometrical effect, new depth and new possibilities.

Now, it was only a matter of finding where Changmin's curious item fit into the multi-dimension.

Yunho took the cold item from his pocket, looking it over properly for the first time. Changmin hovered over him nervously, the calmness of Yunho's demeanour unsettling him; minutes ago, they were both battling through forces unknown. The smooth surface had the glossiness of marble, the shine of a diamond; the colour was that of the glyph upon which he fell before. Its shape was as if someone had plucked one of the falling shards of pure light from the air before they disintegrated, as Yunho remembered the effect before he entered the mechanical mansion. Yunho couldn't help but feel as if it didn't fit anywhere- it was too abstract, too unreal. However, once he thought about it and took a good look around, he found in this new state it exactly fit in.

It came to light that this place had finally lost all of its previous structure when the birds which had been previously so shrouded in mystery flew above them, flickering in and out of spaces, travelling through paths which Yunho could fathom but Changmin could not. "This hell is their home," The warrior quietly commented.

"Changmin."

The two men met eyes, Changmin doing his best to forget Yunho was standing on the wall.

"I need you to trust me."

It took many moments of considering before Changmin solemnly nodded. He'd watched Yunho struggle, but now, he was ready to watch him succeed. Changmin wasn't in charge any more.

Yunho gazed off into the multi-dimension. The possibilities were endless to him; not only were there so many more places available, there were rifts of time scattered all over the place, worm holes to other parts of the dimensional space, and pieces of flat surface scattered everywhere, objects attached and all.

"Changmin, there is something I have to do that only now you will understand. I'm going to tell you to go and find me."

Yunho didn't stick around long enough to see the look on Changmin's face.

He walked back up the wall, and hopped onto and continued up a curving surface, which spiralled away from the warrior and left him skewed like a corkscrew from Yunho's new perspective. He wouldn't be gone for long.

At the end of the spiral, there was a small hole, where Yunho had to crouch on all fours and lean in to peer down and see what was through. It were as if he were looking through a fish eye into the past, almost a full hour ago. Everything was so linear and boxed together. These rifts in time were giving him glances into the recent past of the place, and now he was watching Changmin and Yoochun travel and converse in the newly moving environment. He couldn't hear what they were saying. They seemed agitated about something.

Yunho decided he wasn't going to find anything here, and backed out of the spiral, looking around for an alternative path. There was one that caught his attention which went two ways, depending on how one walked it. Yunho used a very much 'sticky feet' logic, which seemed to work, as wherever he put his foot, it always took that surface as the ground. It made it very easy to navigate surfaces which seemed to go through each other to the lower dimensional eye. He wondered if Changmin could watch from where he was.

He followed the path which seemed to lead behind the spiral he'd been peeping through. His logic seemed to serve him, as he came to a larger rift, one which was like looking through liquid glass. However, this time, it was looking up at the ceiling through the floor. Yunho needed a better angle.

Yunho was beginning to get the hang of the acrobatics that was traversing multidimensional space. He placed his hands where his feet were and pushed up into a handstand, one which didn't ruffle his clothes or put pressure on his hands. From this perspective he found there was a path on the other side of this surface, he just needed to go through a small gap to his right. And so, he found himself on the opposite side, a rift behind him which exposed a ceiling-down view. This was better, but not quite right. He was wasting time he didn't have. He needed to find the Changmin who saved him from the beginning, and guide him to the Yunho who didn't know what he was getting himself into, and find the place for this shard of glyph which somehow made it to Changmin's possession.

He soon realised this upper space was filled with bubbles of previous times and had various paths and machinations in order to interact with them. The next glossy rift he found was next to an object or two, ones he could reach out and push. There were tiles he could move and paths he could create or destroy. He was now a part of the darkness which had so irked him before.

This ability to interfere with the past was giving him a lot to ponder in his own life. Even as he went around tweaking this and pressing that, separating Changmin from Yoochun with the shove of a wall, a part of his self was distracted by what was impending on him- he knew their time was almost up.

Changmin was on the outside. If he crossed the courtyard, Yunho would have failed to steer him towards the corridor Yunho knew his previous self was struggling within. Yunho had failed to realise how far he was leaning into this world through the rift, and before he knew it, he had fallen, and he was falling hard.