The void trembled around him.
Luther stood in darkness, listening to the hollow echo of his own heartbeat. Then, without warning, a radiant beam of light tore through the void and swallowed him whole. His body stiffened, bracing for the suffocating white emptiness he had been thrust into before.
But when his eyes snapped open, the scene before him was not the cold void.
It was a garden.
Rows upon rows of roses stretched endlessly, their petals glittering as if woven with fragments of starlight. The fragrance of them was sharp, almost intoxicating. Birds sang faintly in the distance, though there was no sky above—only a strange, pale glow that hung over everything, as if the world itself was lit from within.
And there, in the center of it all, stood the marble statue.
The statue of Yieli.
Silent. Unmoving. Arms folded with eternal calm. The same figure he had once found in this very garden.
