The ground shook and the sky split like a torn curtain. The moment the matrix exploded was like lightning tearing through space and time. The blood-red light flooded everything, and the sound of collapse rose as if the entire universe was falling over Ashen's head.
He did not understand what had happened. He only felt his body being violently pulled toward a raging spatial tunnel. The vortex that was supposed to bring him safely had torn apart, and everything twisted like a beast's intestines, writhing in darkness and devouring everything in its path.
In the blink of an eye, he found himself alone. No Raizen. No Earth.
He opened his eyes to a scene that froze the blood in his veins.
Above him, no sky, no clouds. Around him, an endless void, dark as death, scattered with faint fragments of light like the ashes of stars that had gone out millions of years ago. Beneath him, the scene was like a breathing hell.
A massive planet, unlike any other, was covered in an endless sea of blood. Its entire surface writhed and boiled, rising and falling like a giant, beating heart. Each pulse sent waves of ancient brutality, as if breathing the life of a primitive being that had never been born or had never died. The metallic scent of blood reached his nose even though he was in space, as if his senses had been drawn into the planet itself.
But what froze Ashen was not the planet's size but the chains.
Huge gray threads, like celestial chains, wrapped around the entire planet. Some sank deep into its bloody crust, cracking its surface with every movement, while others stretched into the void, linking it to something beyond space itself. Each thread glimmered with a faint light, half alive, half dead, as if they were not just chains but sleeping beings guarding or imprisoning this world.
Was the planet imprisoned? Or was the whole world tied inside a tomb with no doors and no end?
"What is this?" Ashen whispered, his voice disappearing into the emptiness.
Only then did he realize he was breathing. More than that, he was not dying despite being in the void. He looked at his body and saw a dim, blood-gray light surrounding him like a shield of eerie mist. He realized quickly that it was the bottle he had broken.
It was protecting him now. Otherwise, his body would have evaporated instantly.
But the protection did not stop him from feeling the gravity. A mad, unbearable force was pulling him down toward the bloody planet. Every particle in his body trembled under the weight, as if thousands of mountains had fallen on him at once.
His teeth ground together, and his knees nearly shattered from the pressure, yet he remained suspended in the void. The gray light resisted the gravity, pulling him upward while the planet tried to swallow him downward.
The scene did not give him time to think further.
Suddenly, a tremendous roar echoed like lightning cracking the universe from end to end. It was not just a sound; it was an earthquake breaking through the void itself. The blood-red light around the planet rippled, and the gray chains shook as if about to snap.
Ashen covered his ears in vain; the sound could not be heard. It was felt, embedding itself in the marrow of his bones. Tears welled in his eyes from the pain, and his heart trembled as if its beats no longer belonged to him.
Amid the terror, something began to appear to him, flashes like lightning.
Visions of cities drowned in blood, people screaming as rivers of red swept them away, bone pillars rising like monuments in massacre grounds, and armies of shadows kneeling under a cracked sky. Each image vanished before his mind could fully grasp it, but each left a wound deeper than any sword.
And amid these visions, he felt something watching him. Not a single eye, but thousands of bloody eyes hidden inside the planet. All focused on him, as if searching for something or acknowledging him.
His body trembled, and a single thought rose in his mind. "I am too small in front of this world."
But another voice whispered inside him, one he could not tell if it came from the planet or from the gray chains. "You are not a stranger to this place."
Ashen froze, cold sweat running down his forehead despite the void's chill. Was the planet calling him? Or were the chains rejecting him? Or was the gray light surrounding him not for protection but to pull him toward this tomb of blood?