Darkness...
Darkness was everywhere I looked. It wasn’t just the absence of light; it was an absolute, suffocating void that seemed to swallow sound and thought alike.
"Hello?"
I spoke up, but no echo returned. The silence was so heavy it felt like it was pressing against my eardrums. I raised my hand in front of my face, but I couldn’t even see the silhouette of my fingers. I could only feel my hand moving, nothing else.
"Where am I?"
I asked myself, my voice sounded flat in this empty space. I realized I was standing on something. I looked down, but there was nothing—just an endless abyss. Yet, my feet could feel a solid, polished surface beneath them, providing support even as my eyes told me I was floating in nothingness.
I raised my foot and tried to take a step forward. As my foot touched the "ground," a different sensation began to wrap around me—a tingle that felt like static electricity crawling up my spine.
My eyes suddenly felt a little hot. I blinked rapidly, rubbing it with the back of my hand. When I finally forced it open, the darkness didn’t break; it transformed. The void was no longer empty.
"Huh?"
There, directly in front of me, stood two massive figures, each encased in a towering cage of shimmering blue glass. They were like exhibits in some cosmic, forbidden museum.
The first figure was terrifyingly beautiful. Deep red scales covered its muscular body like a suit of organic armor. Two grand horns swept back from its head, and two massive, leathery wings were folded tightly against its back. It radiated a suppressed heat that I could feel even from the distance.
The second figure was its polar opposite. Its skin was as dark as obsidian, looking almost as if it were made of solidified shadows. Jagged, yellowed teeth protruded from its mouth in a permanent snarl, and it possessed twisted, gnarled horns that looked like petrified wood.
Both were humanoid in shape, yet they were undeniably something else. Something ancient.
’Who are they?’
Their eyes were closed, and their bodies were slumped forward as if suspended by invisible chains. They seemed deep in an unbreakable slumber, unconscious and drained.
I walked forward toward them, my heart hammering against my ribs. As I closed the distance, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A thin, wispy smoke was rising from both of their bodies—a crimson vapor from the scaled one and a violet mist from the dark one.
The smoke didn’t dissipate. It snaked through the air, tendrils reaching out like grasping fingers, and it was all flowing toward a single point.
Toward me.
But even though the mist was mixing with me, I felt nothing else. No surge of power, no agonizing heat, no boost in strength. It was completely neutral.
"Why is the smoke coming toward me when it isn’t gonna do anything?"
I asked the empty air, my voice swallowed by the cages. I stepped forward, closing the final few inches until I was inches away from the glass. I raised my hand, my palm trembling slightly, and pressed it against the cold, blue surface.
Tap!
As soon as my skin made contact, both glass cages began to drift backward. They moved with a sudden, silent velocity, as if being pulled by an immense, unseen magnet. The red scales and the obsidian skin faded into the distance, shrinking until they were nothing more than pinpricks of colored light in the infinite dark.
Then, everything else turned dark again. The blue light died, the smoke vanished, and the floor beneath my feet dissolved.
"Wait! Where are these going?"
I reached out into the void, but my voice was already drowning. The silence returned, heavier than before, pulling me down into a deep, dreamless well.
.....
"Urg,"
My eyes slowly opened.
The first thing I felt was the softness of silk beneath my fingertips—a stark contrast to the scorched ground I remembered. The second thing was the scent of expensive incense and a faint, metallic tang of blood.
My vision was blurry, swimming with flickers of different lights that hadn’t quite settled yet. I tried to sit up, but my body felt like it was made of lead. Not the weak, brittle lead of before, but something dense and heavy.
I just let myself fall back into the silk. I waited, breathing slowly, until the dancing spots of light in my vision finally coalesced into something recognizable.
As soon as my sight cleared, I began to look around the room.
The high-vaulted ceiling, the familiar mahogany wardrobe, the soft glow of the magic lamps—it was my room.
’Did Elena take me here while I was unconscious?’
I wondered. The last thing I remembered was the scorched earth of the garden and her desperate, tear-filled eyes. To move me all the way back here without the guards or maids noticing... she must have worked herself to the bone.
"Mmhmmm."
A soft, muffled sound came from my right. My eyes widened and I slowly, carefully turned my head to the side.
"Wha...!!!"
I almost choked on my own breath.
There was Elena. She was sitting in a wooden chair pulled right up against the edge of the bed. Her head was resting heavily on the sheets, her chestnut hair splayed out like a messy fan across the silk. Her eyes were closed, her long locks casting shadows against skin that looked paler than usual, marked by the exhaustion of the previous event.
She was deep in sleep, her breathing rhythmic but heavy. But it was her hand that caught my attention—she was clutching my left hand with both of hers.
Even in sleep, her brow was furrowed, etched with a lingering trace of the panic I’d seen in the garden.
I looked down at my hand in hers. The wounds I had self-inflicted were gone—not even a scar remained, thanks to the ’Supreme Physique’ or whatever it was. But her clothes were still ruined, the shoulders of her tunic torn and stained with dark, dried patches of her own blood.
I tried to move my fingers, but her grip only tightened instinctively in her sleep, her head shifting slightly on the bed.
"Rio..." she drifted out in a mumble, her voice barely a thread of sound. "Don’t... don’t go..."