"Now tell me, Sol, are you ready to know why you're here?"
Sol sat in silence, staring at the tea he hadn't touched. Gods. Primordials. Void prisons.
None of it mattered to him. Not really. It felt like he was listening to the backstory of a game he didn't ask to play.
He didn't care about ancient or divine prisons forged from nothingness. All he wanted, desperately, was to understand what had happened to him.
Why was he still here, breathing in a body that wasn't his, stranded between life and death? What did this mean for his future? His freedom?
The woman before him might have held the secrets of the universe, but Sol only wanted the truth about his own damn life.
"That is all I want to know."
The woman, or rather, the void, chuckled at his response and answered.
"Certainly. Well, first of all, you are dead."
Sol's breath caught, but she continued before he could interrupt.
"At least your body is gone. Mostly decomposed by now."
"Decomposed!?"
"Yes. I don't exactly have a sense of time, but if I have to guess, it's already been almost two years since then. Enough time for a body to reduce to bones."
".."
Sol didn't know what to say. He had actually expected something like that, but the truth still rattled him completely.
"Then how am I here?" Sol asked in a low voice.
"You already have the answer to that question. Do you remember having any crystal stone on you when you died?"
At the mention of the crystal stone, Sol remembered a yellow tourmaline he had found outside the Paymon castle. It was a very special stone for him.
Whenever he was on the verge of a breakdown, just looking at the stone had always, by some magic, managed to calm him down.
But it was an insignificant stone. Even Paymon had inspected it and didn't find it of any value, but he let Sol keep it as it helped him keep Sol under control.
"You mean the yellow tourmaline? Yes. I always kept that with me."
"That is your answer. You see, that stone was not just any stone, but one of the keys to the Void Prison. I don't know how it ended up in mortal hands, but that key is why you are still sitting here."
"Then who is the person whose body I was possessing?"
"I don't know. All I know is he had the same name as yours."
"...What do you mean you don't know!? You seem to know everything about me."
"That's because yours was one of the few souls that were able to preserve their ego even after death. Usually, after death, most souls—except the high-ranking ones—turn to essence after entering the void, but yours was able to preserve itself, including your memories."
"Then what happened to the soul of that body?"
"He died, and since he was holding the key, his soul got sucked into the void, turning into essence... which means he is gone completely."
Sol was left speechless for a while.
"How was I able to survive that?" he muttered to himself.
"That would be because of your unique trait."
"A unique trait?" Another term Sol didn't understand.
"You will be able to understand it later. Now, for the important part... Sol, do you wish to live?"
Suddenly, the smile vanished from the face of the void.
Sol knew that now was the time to discuss some serious matters, so he answered immediately,
"Yes, I do."
But as soon as the words left his lips, Sol froze.
Did he mean it?
He wasn't sure. He had died. He had felt it—the cold surrender, the final breath, the slipping away of everything. And yet… something in him had resisted. Something had clung to the fading pieces of his soul like a child lost in a storm, refusing to let go.
Now, faced with the question, that same instinct had answered for him.
But what did living mean now?
He wasn't going back to his old life, the city, the people, the small dreams he had once held. His body was gone. The world had moved on. Even if he returned, nothing would be the same.
Still… even as his mind reeled, his soul ached with something raw and stubborn, longing.
A longing not for comfort or safety, but simply… to continue.To mean something.
He thought of the yellow tourmaline, that strange stone that had always brought him calm in his worst moments. Maybe it wasn't just coincidence. Maybe it had resonated with that deeper part of him, the part that didn't want to fade, that refused to break.
"Yes," he whispered again, more quietly this time, but with certainty.
"I want to live. Not for revenge. Not for glory. But because I'm not done yet. Not with this world. Not with myself."
The Void was silent for a time, as if weighing those words.
"Then I have an offer for you,"
the Void said, her voice deepening with gravity. "The crack through which you escaped, it wasn't meant to exist. One of the prisoners forced it open. I've sealed it since, but… it was enough. A good number of them slipped out."
Her expression grew sharp, almost grim.
"They're just fragments now, souls without form. But the longer they remain in the living world, the stronger they'll become. Especially if they find hosts. Some of them are pure malice, Sol. They don't want power. They want ruin. They want to unmake the world."
She stepped closer.
"And I can't leave this place. I am the prison. But you, you're already out there. You have the key. You have that unique trait of yours."
She held out her hand to him.
"Help me return them to the void. In return, I'll bind your soul permanently to that body. No more drifting. No more questions. You'll be alive again. Free. The rest is yours."
Sol didn't move.
He stared at her, blank-faced. Then he exhaled slowly, almost amused.
"...No thanks."