In a dim, silent room, a young man lay sprawled across the cold wooden floor. The air was heavy with stillness, broken only by the faint sound of his breathing.
After what felt like an eternity, his eyelids fluttered open. Grey blinked, dazed, as the familiar contours of his room slowly took shape around him. His first instinct was to reach for his chest. Fingers trembled as they pressed against the spot where the phantom blade had once pierced him.
There was no wound. No blood. No pain.
Only skin clammy with sweat, but intact.
A deep breath escaped him, shaky but relieved. Grey pushed himself upright, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Beads of perspiration rolled down his face and neck, soaking into his clothes. For a while, he simply sat there, inhaling the still air like it was the rarest elixir.
And then a faint, almost imperceptible smile crept across his lips.
He rose to his feet slowly, raised his right hand, and laughed softly, a dry chuckle echoing off the bare walls.
"Sure enough… it wasn't a dream."
Ten Hours Ago
Grey's consciousness had sunk into an endless void.
A darkness so absolute, even thought seemed to echo through it.
He sighed inwardly, a soundless murmur in the silent abyss.
"So, this is how it ends, Seems I failed after all."
His mind circled back to the moment of death the sword of shadow, the instant pain, and the loss of control. He hadn't even had time to resist.
"Who was it…? Who could've struck me down so swiftly that I couldn't react, let alone defend myself?"
He found no answer.
"But... if I died, how am I still thinking?"
The thoughts continued to swirl. "That formless thing it was the same one I saw when I first meditated. So that was its true intent? It waited until I reached the transition state… then struck. But why wait so long? Why not kill me back then? What was it waiting for?"
And then, the question he couldn't ignore:
"Why can I still feel my body?"
Grey flexed his fingers. He could feel them. He could feel his face, his arms, his legs. All of it. In this darkness, he was blind, but not numb. Was this what the soul felt like after death?
Time passed though how much, he couldn't tell. In this place, time did not tick. There was no hunger, no thirst, no fatigue. No markers. No motion. Just eternal, oppressive black.
He tried to move countless times, swinging his arms, walking blindly, seeking an end. But there was nothing to find. Just more of the same void.
Eventually, his thoughts grew abstract, disjointed.
"What does it matter now, who killed me or why? I'm dead. The rest is meaningless."
"This world, it was always a stage. And we actors, playing roles. Whether our choices were truly our own or puppeteered by unseen hands does it even matter anymore?"
Grey laughed. It was hollow, but real.
Then, something changed.
A shimmer barely noticeable at first. A point of light, violet and deep like a bruised sky, emerged ahead of him. He stared, stunned, unsure if it was a trick of the mind.
But the attraction was undeniable.
His body responded instinctively, legs moving as if pulled by an invisible thread. Step by step, he drew closer. The light grew, until it bathed him in its glow. When his fingers touched it, a wave of warmth enveloped him, chasing away the cold ink of the void.
And then it appeared.
Suspended in the space before him was a great wooden gate, ancient and cracked, drifting silently like a ship in the void. Its surface was etched with time-worn symbols, and above it, words blazed in eerie purple flame:
〚 TRIAL OF DARKNESS 〛