There was an old saying buried deep in the Trinova Universe's history:
Beyond your comfort zone lies a wilder world, waiting for you to explore. Beyond that wilder world, energetic cluster galaxies guard ancient secrets. And beyond them… the so-called unreachable universe.
But the question few dared to ask was this—what exists beyond the universe itself?
Some claimed it must be a vast expanse filled with other universes. Others swore it was a dark realm that devours life. A rare few whispered of an endless domain that balances all things—the known and the unknown.
They weren't entirely wrong… but they were also far from the truth.
***
"Damnit! What's this pain?"
Morca's vision blurred. A sharp, burning agony radiated from a deep wound at the back of his right leg. He had no idea how he'd gotten injured.
Snap!
He didn't have time to process the pain. The sound of breaking branches drew his eyes upward, tracking the dense, suffocating canopy of leaves.
"Huh? A forest...?"
To Morca's horror, he wasn't just stranded in the middle of an unknown forest—a corpse was lying right beside him. It would have been a relief if the body belonged to something he actually recognized.Instead, it was a biological nightmare.
The creature had been sliced cleanly in half. Even so, its head was monstrously large, matching the scale of its entire torso. At first glance, it looked like a grotesque gremlin; at second glance, a human infant. It was a rotting, mutated zombie bush baby.Morca wanted to avert his eyes, but terror paralyzed him.
The lower half of the creature—a bloated, lessened potbelly strewn with a horrific mix of innards and black blood—lay tangled in the dried forest leaves. Some of the warm spray had even splashed onto Morca's face.
This can't be real, Morca panicked. He distinctly remembered being abducted just moments ago. I must be dreamin—
BANG—BOOM!
Deafening explosions shattered the night, cutting his thoughts short. The forest shook. Disturbed birds and bats erupted from the trees, scattering wildly into the dark sky.
"What the hell is happening? Was 'he' intercepted by monsters along the way? Did something go wrong?"
Ever since coming into contact with that terrifyingly powerful man, Morca knew extraordinary forces existed. But right now, reality didn't matter. Escape did.
Struggling to stand, the agony in his calf flared so violently that he crashed hands-first back into the dirt. He let out a sharp, ragged cough, barely holding back the urge to vomit.
Gritting his teeth, he tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and crudely bound the gash. He forced himself back up. This time, he grinned through the pain, balancing on one foot.
Strangely, despite the pitch-black night, his vision was unnaturally sharp. He could see clearly nearly ninety meters ahead. The surrounding trees bore deep, violent gashes, some completely cleaved in half.
He spotted a clear path leading out of the woods, but his gut told him otherwise. Instead, he leaped into the opposite direction, plunging straight into the overgrown brush and thick grass.
Rustle, rustle.
A crisp, crunching sound echoed from the bushes behind him. Something was closing in. Morca quickened his frantic leaps.
A moment later, a horde of a dozen monsters burst through the foliage. They were identical to the sliced corpse, but fully formed. They were pale, child-sized nightmares with blood-stained skin. They had no eyes, no tongues, and a row of jagged, yellowish-brown teeth like a decaying corpse. Brittle strands of hair lined their distended potbellies, stretching up toward withered, dried chests.
And at the very top of each of their heads was a hollow, empty hole.
The creatures immediately began sniffing the air. Two of them descended upon the sliced corpse, greedily tearing into the flesh. The first one to finish let out a series of low grunts, its sharp ears twisting as it signaled the pack.
The moment the grunting stopped, the entire horde began to sob.
It was the high-pitched, agonizing wail of a human baby.
"Uhn—uhn—ghai!"
The sound made Morca's hair stand on end. Cold sweat poured down his spine. Forgetting the agony in his leg, he ran. He sprinted through the tearing briars, driven by pure adrenaline.
Suddenly, the tree line broke. Morca skidded to a halt, his boots sliding over loose dirt. He was standing on the edge of a massive mountain cliff.
Behind him, the crying babies had already caught up.
With blood soaking through his crude bandage and his breath rattling in his chest, Morca took a desperate step backward, staring into the abyss of the cliffside. He braced himself to leap, to fight, to do anything—
But his body suddenly refused to move. The connection between his mind and his limbs vanished.
Strangely, the world began to tilt. The dark horizon spun violently, turning round and beautiful as the sky and earth flipped upside down.
It was only when he saw his own headless torso collapsing onto the dirt below that the truth hit him.
I've been beheaded.
"His body belongs to the Federation Council!" a booming voice rang out from the distance, though the sound felt muffled, as if underwater.
Even after I'm dead, Morca thought bitterly, they're still fighting over my corpse.
"After waiting for those tokoloshes to behead him, you lot from the Federation Council dare to step up?" a second, mocking voice hissed. "In your dreams! We, the Holy Nightguardian Church, shall take him for a holy departure!"
"Mmh! Now that he's dead, can Evoslon rest?" a cold, aristocratic voice interrupted. "We, the Shermans, shall take over from here. Federation Council, vanquished! Nightguardian Church dogs, get lost!"
Darkness finally closed in, but even as his consciousness faded into the void, the muffled arguments of humans echoed in his detached ears.
*****
Somewhere within a mysterious, dark expanse, a consciousness woke. It possessed no physical form, no spiritual power—only pure thought, and a pair of crimson gazes drifting through an eternal void.
Where is this place? Why is there only darkness? My body… why can't I feel anything? Am I truly dead? Is this dark expanse the final destination of the deceased?
Confusion swirled through Morca's disembodied mind. His crimson gaze rippled. Too many incomprehensible events had occurred in a single day. He began to doubt whether this was even the same Evoslon he had grown up in. Horrors that should only exist in dark fairy tales kept manifesting one after another.
There must be a clue leading to an answer in this void, Morca reasoned. All I can do is search.
With that singular goal, his awareness drifted onward, scrutinizing the cosmic abyss.
An unknown amount of time passed—perhaps a day, perhaps centuries. In the timeless expanse, nothing changed. Only distant clouds of star-stuff forming colossal pillars of cosmic dust, and shifting voids of clustered starlight, illuminated his path.
Suddenly—
"Morca! You fiend—how dare you trespass into the forbidden sanctuary of the most holy! This is no place for the likes of you. Withdraw now, and you shall be forgiven!"
A mighty, thunderous voice shattered the void, violently snapping Morca's drifting awareness to attention.
Someone called my name. There are people here? Have I been discovered? Did I end up in a forbidden ground?
Relieved to find a clue, yet instantly cautious, Morca willed his awareness toward the source of the sound. The sheer pressure of that voice alone felt potent enough to annihilate everyone on Evoslon—rivalry that of the mysterious man who resembled his father.
The shockwaves of the voice still vibrated through the expanse with lethal force. Morca could feel the blinding rage burning within the tone, yet beneath that anger, he detected an undercurrent of profound caution. Fear, even.
Tracing the sound, Morca's awareness came upon a staggering, impossible scene: five fearsome, colossal entities stood arrayed in a massive circle, enclosing a singular figure at the center of their formation.
As he drew closer, Morca realized three of the giants resembled radiant, divine beings, while the remaining two were disturbing, abyssal horrors.
The first divine being was a Golden Cloud Entity. It towered to an impossible height of hundreds of miles, its shifting, nebulous body and snow-white mane of brilliant hair dwarfing the neighboring stars.
Six blazing eyes—three on each side—lined its golden-scaled face, burning with the intensity of a miniature sun. It stood majestically, anchoring one-fifth of the celestial battlefield.
To its left stood a being of pure essence: a titanic form cloaked in endless layers of multicolored wings. Its faceless head was a crystalline cluster of swirling galaxies. It radiated a purity so absolute that Morca felt a mortal might achieve immortality just by breathing a single breath of its aura.
Around it, time itself seemed to stop, holding no judgment over its existence.
Further away stood an enchanting figure with flowing emerald hair, clad in pristine white robes with floating, celestial ribbons. A halo of living vines and leaves crowned her back, and her pointed ears hinted at an alien origin.
Her beauty was flawless, save for the unique, dangerous red glow of her eyes and the devilish, mocking curve of her lips. She looked like the literal embodiment of right and wrong.
In stark contrast to the divine, the fourth entity was a nightmare. It was a massive, cocoon-like mountain of flesh bristling with crimson tendrils. Its pulsating surface was studded with countless blinking, black-purple pupils, with a single, massive eye dominating its center.
Behind it stretched a dead void of absolute darkness. Twenty-one thick, grayish tentacles veined in deep crimson acted as its limbs, coiling around and crushing nearby stars like toys. It was an abyssal creature completely deprived of light.
The final entity hovered to the right of the Golden Cloud. Shrouded in thick, suffocating gray smoke and bone, it was a colossal skull wreathed in grinding chains of smaller skulls. Its hollow sockets burned with ghostly blue fire, and pillars of swirling gray fog chained it to the void. It was a true engine of nightmare, built to devour life and breed destruction.
The pair of crimson eyes belonging to Morca's awareness widened in sheer terror. Never had he imagined witnessing such cosmic, godlike lifeforms. The sheer presence of the abyssal horrors made his soul grimace in fear. He instinctively wanted to retreat, but remembering he was currently formless and invisible, he forced himself to stay.
If any of the first three appeared on Evoslon, they would be worshipped as supreme gods, Morca thought. And those other two would be feared as apocalyptic world-enders. Yet, they have all teamed up just to encircle a single entity.
Drifting into the center of the divine blockade, Morca's awareness finally caught sight of the target.
Standing firmly in the epicenter of the cosmic gods was a seven-foot humanoid figure completely cloaked in black.
A deep black hood shadowed most of his face, leaving only a pale left cheek exposed. Yet, that single glimpse alone was enough to make the fabric of space tremble. Gravity warped violently around him—not as if he were absent from reality, but as if existence itself was actively bending to make room for his presence.
And then, there was his left eye.
It was a void. An abyssal black orb radiating an unholy aura of total oblivion. Three silver pupils rotated endlessly around a pitch-black core, and with each rotation, the eye seemed to draw light and space into a depth where countless screaming souls writhed. It wasn't an eye—it was a prison realm.
The moment Morca met that gaze, a strange, undeniable connection snapped into place between his awareness and the cloaked man.
Could this be the one they addressed as Morca? he wondered. Surrounded by cosmic deities, he stands entirely calm. He must be a fearsome existence in his own right.
For a moment, the conversation between the entities blurred, blocked out by the sheer pressure of the space. But Morca knew they were exchanging words.
Without warning, the green-haired goddess let out an agonizing, soul-tearing scream. The void around her recoiled. Space warped and reality shattered as if trying to flee from the sight. Her divine form began to fold inward, collapsing like a dying star. Her life essence drained in great, rushing tides, violently pulled into the black eclipse of the hooded figure's left eye.
Silence instantly claimed the vast expanse.
With a brief, final flash of a black blade, the green-haired goddess's body dissolved into streams of emerald mist, scattering like petals in a cosmic storm before being erased from existence.
Witnessing this, Morca's formless awareness felt a wave of profound aversion. If he had possessed a physical body, he would have vomited his lungs out on the spot.
Before anyone could react, a massive torrent of blood and veins suddenly exploded outward, enveloping the remaining three cosmic entities and the hooded figure. The giant, cocoon-like abyssal creature had sacrificed its form, transforming itself into a massive, claustrophobic world of living flesh to trap the swordsman.
Morca's awareness fled backward, refusing to be caught inside that disgusting, pulsating mass. If this is just a nightmare, the trauma from waking up will break my sanity, he panicked.
But what happened next completely shattered his understanding.
The newly formed flesh world began to implode. Brilliant fractures ruptured across its surface like drops of boiling oil hitting water.
Then, with a deafening, world-shaking explosion, the flesh world detonated—bursting like a horrific, apocalyptic firework across the dark expanse.
Following the cataclysmic blast, Morca saw the hooded figure again.
He was seated casually atop the nightmarish monster's colossal bony skull, his cloak flowing gently in the still air. He was completely untouched. Not a scratch, not a stain, not even a single sign of struggle marred his frame. He simply perched atop the dead titan, watching the eerie fireworks of the cosmic entities' deaths as if the slaughter had absolutely nothing to do with him—a faint, amused grin playing on his lips.
That hooded figure must be a psycho murderer, Morca's awareness realized with a shudder.
He watched as the figure casually tapped a single finger against the massive bony skull beneath him, whispering a phrase Morca couldn't quite catch.
In response, the skull's ghostly blue flames flickered violently. A localized rot instantly spread from the point of contact. The ancient bone crumbled into ash, its divine essence unraveling into the void until nothing remained.
At this moment, only two things existed in the vast dark expanse: the cloaked figure, and Morca's drifting awareness.
The figure spoke again, and this time, his words cut clearly through the silence.
"An Ancient Killing Formation. Truly fitting to be the signature move of one of the previous Seven Fellows of the Second Epoch. Sacrificer. Separation. Concentration. Extraction. Refinement—Execution..."
The swordsman's gaze swept across the endless void, piercing past the boundaries where time itself refused to tread, before shifting back toward the farthest reaches of the expanse.
"Can you actually handle that?"
When that chilling gaze swept past Morca's formless awareness, he froze, completely dumbfounded. Somehow, he knew with absolute certainty that for a brief, terrifying fraction of a second, the hooded figure had locked eyes with him.
Was he talking to me? Did he actually see me? And that question... is he asking if I can handle what just happened, or was he mocking the battle he just fought?
Panic flared, and Morca's awareness struggled to remain calm, willing itself closer to the entity.
"So… from here on, the fate of the nine is not to be decided by any," the figure murmured, his voice echoing with finality. "The Mysteries is the ninth, and the ninth is the evidence of the truth."
The moment the figure finished speaking, a windless breeze swept across his body, violently pushing back his deep hood.
Snap. Snap.
The instant the fabric fell, the expanse itself seemed to recoil, groveling before his unveiled presence.
His hair flowed in an erratic rhythm, shifting fluidly from ink-black to crimson-red, and then to a brilliant silver. It repeated the cycle endlessly, as if reality itself couldn't decide which truth to hold.
Seeing the figure's face, a wave of intense goosebumps rippled through Morca's formless mind. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the sight before him.
"How is this possible...?" Morca's thoughts screamed in pure disbelief. "How can he look exactly like me?!"
And then—the scene froze.
Cracks spread through the expanse like a spiderweb before the image shattered into glittering shards, revealing yet another dimensional space beyond.
A dream that broke through reality.