[THE VOID — DEPTH UNKNOWN]
Kai fell.
At first, there was no sensation at all—no rushing wind, no pull of gravity, no sound. There was only an endless, suffocating darkness swallowing him whole.
Then, the cold arrived. It wasn't the ordinary, physical bite of winter; it was something vastly deeper. It was a cosmic cold that bypassed the skin, invaded the bones, and seeped directly into his thoughts, freezing the very memory of warmth.
Kai clenched his teeth as his body began to dissolve. He was breaking down into drifting particles of digital light as the dimensional tear carried him deeper into the void.
Damn it…
Then, everything changed. The endless falling abruptly stopped. A violent kinetic force twisted his stomach, feeling like a rollercoaster plunging blindly off the edge of the sky.
THUD.
Kai slammed hard into solid ground. He groaned, pushing himself upright and brushing a thin layer of pale, ash-like sand from his hoodie.
His head spun violently as his eyes struggled to focus on his new environment.
A thick, grey mist surrounded him. It felt ancient and unnaturally silent. Even the sound of his own breathing felt too loud in this place.
When Kai took a hesitant step, the crunch of sand beneath his boot echoed through the fog like a distant explosion.
The environment felt profoundly wrong. It felt like a memory that time itself had abandoned.
Then, a faint whisper drifted through the mist.
"Kai… save me."
Kai froze. His heart skipped a painful beat. He knew that voice.
"Nyra?" The name left his lips like a desperate prayer.
Without a second thought, Kai sprinted into the fog. The mist parted sluggishly as he moved, revealing massive, towering fragments of strange visions.
They were memories, frozen like statues in the fabric of reality.
To his left, two enormous, god-like figures stood upon the horizon. One radiated a blinding, absolute white light, while the other was carved from darkness deeper than the abyss.
Between them floated a colossal Cosmic Wheel, its twelve centers glowing with raw power.
The White Figure spun the wheel forward, and daylight flooded the world.
The Dark Figure reached out and spun it backward, allowing night to swallow everything.
Day and night. Over and over. Endlessly.
Kai stared in awe for half a second before forcing his legs to move. Not now.
"Kaai… this way…"
The voice tugged at something deep inside his chest. He ran harder.
Another vision materialized in the mist. A colossal giant knelt in a ruined, blackened valley.
Its head had been cleanly severed, yet the massive body still struggled, its hands buried in the mud as it tried to lift a golden chariot.
A blazing sun burned upon the chariot's wheels, but it refused to rise.
The giant strained, its cosmic muscles tearing as it desperately tried to drag the sun back into the empty sky.
Kai slowed down, staring in stunned silence.
The Fallen Sun… An unexplainable, profound sadness settled in his chest.
Was that the god who ruled before Nyx?
The thought lingered only briefly.
"...Kai…"
The voice was clearer now. Closer.
Kai pushed forward through the thinning fog until the world suddenly ripped open before him.
A vast, dead desert stretched endlessly into the distance. The sun above had lost all its brilliance, hanging in the sky like a dull, lifeless copper coin.
The wind carried dust across the dunes—sand that looked as though it had not touched a drop of water in a thousand years.
Far away, a lone woman wandered the wasteland. She moved with agonizing slowness, her voice breaking as she screamed a name into the empty horizon.
"Iyad…!"
Her cry carried through the dead air, echoing with unbearable grief. But the wind gave her no answer.
Kai felt his own heart twist. Is that… Nyx? It was a memory of the terrifying Goddess,
reduced to a weeping mother mourning her lost son.
He forced himself to look away. This place wasn't just showing him random scenes.
These were echoes. Fragments of forgotten time. And somewhere within this graveyard of history, Nyra was waiting.
"Kai… here."
The whisper guided him forward, pulling him through the dunes and the heavy silence until a structure finally loomed in the distance.
It was a ruined temple. Its massive stone pillars had collapsed, and the statues that once guarded its halls were broken, their faces eroded by centuries of abandonment.
Yet even in ruin, the architecture carried a strange, terrifying dignity.
Kai walked inside.
Thick dust covered the cracked marble floor. Along the shattered walls stood damaged murals of a woman weaving a massive black cloth across the heavens. The Endless Night.
At the very end of the great hall stood a single door. Unlike everything else in the ruined temple, it was entirely pristine.
No cracks. No decay. It looked shockingly real.
Kai approached slowly, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
He instinctively reached into his pocket for the Harpe , only to find it empty. He had lost his sword in the black water. He was completely defenseless.
His hand trembled as he reached for the heavy iron handle.
CREAK.
The door swung inward. Kai stepped inside—and froze.
It was a prison cell.
Cold, damp stone walls surrounded a single figure sitting quietly in the corner.
A woman.
Her blonde hair had grown impossibly long, spilling across the dirty floor like tangled golden threads, twisting around her frail body as if trying to shield her from the cold world.
Her clothes were reduced to torn rags. Her wrists were bound to the wall by thick, heavy iron chains that were heavily rusted by the passage of time.
She looked horrifyingly thin. Broken. Like someone who had been locked away and forgotten for decades.
Slowly, the chained woman lifted her head. Her eyes were dull and clouded with despair.
But the exact moment her eyes met Kai's, something sparked back to life.
A fragile, trembling light returned to her gaze. A small, disbelieving smile cracked her dry lips.
"Kai…" she whispered. Her voice was rough and raspy, like someone who hadn't spoken a single word in years.
"I missed you."
Kai felt his chest tighten so hard he could barely breathe.
This wasn't the terrifying Goddess of Endless Night playing a trick on him. This wasn't the confident, energetic journalist he had fought beside in the city.
This was Nyra. The real Nyra.
And she had been trapped here in the dark. Waiting.
Alone.
A single tear slipped down Kai's cheek before he even realized he was crying.
"Nyra…" he breathed, stepping slowly into the cell. His voice broke completely. "What did they do to you?"