When Raine lunged toward the entity, he didn't expect to step directly into the void itself. But he did.
The moment he touched the shadow surrounding the door, he felt no resistance. Instead, it was as if the world had been pulled from under his feet. There was no longer ground. No longer air. No longer anything—just absolute nothingness.
He tried to move, but his body no longer responded in the usual way. This wasn't just an empty space; it was something deeper… something more real than reality itself.
Then, suddenly, the entity appeared before him—not as a shadow, nor as a hand reaching from the abyss, but as something whole.
It was him.
Or at least, a distorted version of him.
"Oh, great… Now I'm facing myself, but uglier," Raine muttered sarcastically.
The entity didn't laugh. It simply stared at him. Or rather, it did what could be considered "staring," despite lacking eyes.
Then it spoke.
"You are not the first, nor will you be the last."
Its voice wasn't merely a sound—it was an understanding. As if the words weren't spoken, but forcibly planted into Raine's mind.
But Raine wasn't the type to let his mind be violated so easily.
"That's all very deep and poetic, but I'm not in the mood for existential philosophy. Either fight me or disappear."
The entity didn't move.
It simply smiled.
And that was its biggest mistake.
The moment the entity's mouth stretched into a smile, voids opened within it, revealing millions of tiny mouths—all smiling, all speaking in a language that was never meant to be heard.
"Raine Irthon… You are merely a fragment of something greater."
Then, suddenly, darkness erupted.
Not a physical explosion, but a conceptual one.
Everything around Raine began to fade—his memories, his body, his very existence.
He saw images of his past, a present that hadn't yet happened, and a future that had no right to exist. He saw himself being born, dying, and transforming into something undefinable.
But he wasn't the type to surrender easily.
"Ah, so this is your game? Identity theft?"
His voice was more stable than he expected.
Then, slowly, he raised his hand.
The Black Butterfly fluttered its wings.
The air—or what could be called the "manifested void"—began to crack. Every fragment twisted, as if Raine's power was reacting to this place in a way the entity hadn't anticipated.
Because the Black Butterfly wasn't just a spirit insect.
It was a nightmare.
A nightmare that didn't belong to this world or any other.
The entity tried to retreat, but Raine didn't give it the chance.
"I enjoyed your game, but the party's over."
With a single movement, the butterfly's wing tore through a piece of the void—not like ripping physical space, but as if severing an idea itself.
The scream the entity let out wasn't a cry of pain.
It was a cry of negation.
As if its very existence had been denied.
Then, as if it had never been there at all, it vanished.
And the door?
The door didn't just close—it ceased to exist entirely.
Raine returned to the real world, finding himself standing in the same place, over the stranger's corpse… except it was no longer torn apart.
It was no longer there at all.
As if the person had never existed.
Raine sighed, then gave a faint smile.
"I hate this kind of nonsense."
But the Black Butterfly fluttered its wings again, as if whispering something else to him.
Something he wasn't ready to hear yet.