The rain fell with no intention of stopping.
In the middle of a crowd running to hide from the cold, Yami stood alone—calm and empty—as if he were only a body that had forgotten it possessed a soul. Yami's gaze was darker and deeper than the night sky. The rain hit his skin like thousands of ice needles, washing over a fresh, gaping wound in his stomach. It all happened so fast, he couldn't even realize when or how it had happened.
He fell and closed his eyes.
But… He didn't feel a thing. The cold did not bite. The pain did not sting. His body did not react.
'This is exactly what I deserve.'
Ever since the light in his life vanished, his pain had died with it. His world was left in only black and white—without ache, without feeling, without God.
When Yami opened his eyes— The sky had turned a deep, dark red, much redder and thicker than the blood flowing without end from his wound. It wasn't just red. It was the color of something that had died the wrong way.
The people around him froze. Time stopped breathing. Their faces were blank, their eyes turned to stone like nameless statues.
And another world… opened its eyes.
The ground cracked open. The asphalt melted like warm flesh. Yami's body sank into it. His body was stretched by an invisible force. He was pulled inside—into a crack in the world that felt soft and cold, as if the world were breathing through his very pores.
The sky collapsed. The light died.
And before the darkness swallowed his consciousness completely— He saw something.
The entity stood amidst the ruins of the sky. Tall. Beautiful. And wrong.
Its wings spread wide, but they weren't made of feathers—instead, they were made of thick shadows, like living smoke. Its face looked like an angel that had forgotten how to be pure. Too perfect. Too calm.
The entity's eyes— Were darker than Yami's. Deeper than the night. Emptier than death.
It smiled. Not a kind smile. Not an angry smile. But the smile of someone who had been waiting for a very long time.
A backdrop of the bleeding red sky framed its figure. And in a voiceless whisper, the entity said:
"Finally." "Your shell… has cracked."
The entity's hand reached out. Not to attack—but to touch Yami's chest, as if it recognized his form. And when its fingers pierced through Yami's body— He still felt no pain.
But one thing changed. He felt… Loss. The loss of something he didn't even know he once had.
Darkness swallowed everything. Then— Silence.
When Yami opened his eyes once more… There was no rain. There were no people. There was no sound of the city. There was no wound in his stomach.
He was lying on black ground that throbbed like a pulse. The sky above had no color. Buildings towered high like giant bones. The air felt… too silent.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how he got there. The coldness of the ground felt piercing at his fingertips, and his head felt heavy as if he had been hit by a massive stone. The scent of blood filled the air. Yami touched the source of the pain on his head. It felt warm and wet, but the color was different; it wasn't like the blood Yami had known all his life. It was darker, like the color of the sky he saw before it collapsed.
His logic told him this was a dream, but the feelings he had long forgotten were coming back to him.
This was no dream. And the entity… was no hallucination.