In the beginning, there was nothing at all.
No ground under his feet.
No body to move.
No voice to speak with.
Only a thin, trembling weave of fibers, stretching forever in the dark. They shimmered faintly, like glowing strands of light, reaching outward as if trying to tear open the endless shadow of an eclipse.
Kaito tried to grab hold of something—his hands, his own name, the sound of his heart. But every time he reached, it slipped through his grasp and broke apart, fading into static like a broken signal.
His breathing didn't feel real. It wasn't air filling his lungs, just the memory of what it should have been. His heart didn't truly beat either. It only gave back a faint echo, hollow and far away, as if it had been left behind in another place.
In that emptiness, surrounded by silence that wasn't silence at all, Kaito understood something.
The Core did not welcome him.
It disintegrated him.
