A day and a half had passed, yet Lican hadn't left his cave. The refinement process had dragged on for far longer than he had anticipated. At some point, the blood had swallowed the bracelet entirely, and he had watched it disappear beneath the surface.
He had barely slept. His eyelids were heavy, and his body was exhausted, but he dared not look away for too long. For hours, he had remained beside the jar, watching the same spot and making sure nothing went wrong. After investing so much time and effort, he couldn't afford to lose everything at the final stage.
Slop!
The sudden sound drew his attention. Lican turned towards the jar, where the blood had reduced to barely twenty percent of its original volume, leaving dark stains along the inner walls. He stared at it for a moment before releasing a tired sigh. It was time for the final step.
He rose to his feet and approached the jar. After producing a knife, he hesitated briefly before slicing his wrist. Blood dripped into the jar, one drop at a time, mixing with the remaining beast blood.
His own blood was meant to serve as a secondary medium. It wasn't that he lacked animal blood; the method he had borrowed required the owner's blood to establish an identity, or something along those lines. He didn't fully understand the principle behind it. The book had described the process, but its explanation had been vague, leaving him to piece together what he could. Still, since he had chosen to borrow the method, he had to follow its requirements.
"Ah!"
A sharp pain shot through his wrist. Lican's expression changed as he felt something pulling more blood from his body. It wasn't the slow dripping he had expected. Something inside the jar seemed to be drawing it out of him, eagerly pulling at the blood beneath his skin. He immediately pressed his other hand against the wound, but it didn't help. His fingers refused to move.
Lican's eyes widened as an unfamiliar sensation spread through his limbs. His body had become completely paralyzed, and before he could understand what was happening, his feet left the ground. He was levitating, his wounded wrist still pointed towards the jar as blood streamed from the wound, rising against gravity as though an invisible thread connected his veins to the liquid below. Yet the blood inside the jar barely increased. Where was it all going?
His face grew deathly pale. His vision blurred, and his body began to convulse uncontrollably. He tried to scream, but his throat tightened, refusing to produce anything beyond a faint, strangled sound.
Then the whispers began.
At first, they were so faint that he mistook them for the wind passing through the mouth of the cave. Lican strained to listen, but the cave was silent. Yet the whispers continued, coming from everywhere and nowhere, slipping through the darkness like countless voices speaking from behind a wall. None of them formed words he could understand. Some sounded distant, while others seemed to breathe directly beside his ears. He tried to turn his head, but he couldn't.
The whispers grew louder, and beneath them, something roared.
It was a strange sound. His ears barely registered it, yet it shook his consciousness with such force that his entire body convulsed. The roar seemed to come from a place far beyond the cave, from somewhere buried beneath layers of darkness and time. Another followed, then another. Each roar carried a different emotion, yet they shared one thing in common: resentment.
An overwhelming, suffocating resentment poured into his mind like a flood, carrying fragments of rage, despair, and hatred that didn't belong to him. Lican felt as though countless unseen creatures had gathered around him, staring through the darkness, their attention fixed entirely on his existence. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them.
Something struck his mind, and blood trickled from the corners of his eyes. Another impact followed, harder than the first. His ears began to bleed, and the whispers twisted into a deafening chorus that seemed determined to tear through his consciousness. Lican's body convulsed violently in midair as he struggled to break free. He wanted to reach for the knife, cut whatever invisible connection bound him to the jar, and escape whatever he had awakened, but his body wouldn't obey.
The blood continued to drain from his wrist, and within the jar, something stirred. The surface rippled. For a brief moment, the whispers stopped, and the silence that followed was worse.
Then, from somewhere deep within the blood, came a roar so full of resentment that Lican felt it strike the very depths of his soul.
It wasn't a sound. It was a grudge that had survived death.
Groan.
Lican's eyelids trembled before slowly opening. For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was. His head felt heavy, his thoughts sluggish, as though he had just awakened from a dream that had lasted far too long. He blinked several times, waiting for his vision to adjust, but the darkness surrounding him remained unchanged.
Was it night already?
He stared into the endless blackness, trying to make sense of his surroundings. There was no moon, no distant starlight, and no familiar outline of the cave walls. Even the faint light he had grown accustomed to was gone. He could see nothing, not even his own hands when he raised them before his face.
But as he examined his surroundings, an unsettling realisation crept into his mind.
He wasn't in his cave.
He was somewhere else entirely.
There was no ground beneath him, no ceiling above him, and no walls to mark the boundaries of the space. He could breathe, yet there was no wind against his skin, no movement in the air, nothing to suggest that air even existed here. He drew another breath, then another, each one coming as naturally as before. The realisation should have comforted him, but instead, it made his stomach twist.
Where was the air coming from?
How was he breathing?
Lican's breathing quickened as he ran his hands over his face, his neck, his chest, and his stomach. He touched his arms, pressed his fingers against his ribs, and checked his legs, searching for any sign that something had changed. His skin felt real. His bones were solid beneath it. Even the faint aches in his body seemed familiar.
Everything felt normal.
That was what frightened him.
If he had been injured, transformed, or turned into something he couldn't recognise, at least he would have had something to explain his situation. But there was nothing. His body was the same, his senses still worked, and he could breathe without difficulty. Yet the world around him had ceased to make sense.
"Where am I?"
His voice escaped into the darkness.
Lican waited for an answer, but none came. He couldn't even hear the sound of his own breathing once the words left his mouth. It was as though the darkness had swallowed his voice before it could travel more than a few steps.
He swallowed nervously and forced himself to stand still.
Don't panic. Think.
He had encountered dangerous beasts, escaped captivity, and survived in a wilderness where a single mistake could cost him his life. He had fought opponents stronger than himself and endured wounds that would have left others helpless. He had always found something to do, some weakness to exploit, some direction in which he could move.
There had always been something.
Here, there was nothing.
Lican took a cautious step forward.
Then another.
He stretched out his arms, feeling for an obstacle, but his hands met only emptiness. He continued walking, slowly at first, then with greater confidence as he realised there was nothing immediately threatening him. Perhaps this was some kind of spatial treasure. Perhaps a formation had trapped him inside an illusion. Perhaps he had died during the refinement and this was what awaited him beyond death.
The last thought made him stop.
Am I dead?
He stared into the darkness, waiting for fear to settle into something he could understand. But death was supposed to mean something. It was supposed to have an ending, a transition, or at least an explanation. This place offered none of those things.
He pressed his fingers against his wrist, searching for his pulse. It was there.
He was alive.
Or something was making him believe he was.
Lican resumed walking, hoping to find a boundary, a change in the darkness, or any sign that this place had an end. He counted his steps to keep his mind occupied. One hundred. Two hundred. Five hundred. A thousand.
Nothing changed.
He walked until his legs began to ache, yet the darkness remained exactly as it had been when he first opened his eyes. There were no landmarks, no shadows, and no indication that he had travelled any distance at all. He could not tell whether he was moving forward or walking in circles. He could not even be certain that the ground beneath his feet existed beyond the small area supporting his weight.
He stopped and turned around.
The darkness looked the same in every direction.
For the first time, a cold sensation crept down his spine. Lican quickened his pace, then broke into a run. His feet struck the unseen ground as he pushed himself forward, desperately searching for something, anything, that might prove he was not trapped in an endless void.
He ran until his lungs burned.
He ran until his legs trembled.
He ran until the muscles in his thighs began to cramp and every breath scraped against his throat.
Still, nothing changed.
The darkness did not thin. The space did not end. There was no distant light waiting for him, no wall to strike, no door to open. He could have been running for minutes or days, and the result would have been the same.
Eventually, his legs gave out.
Lican collapsed onto the unseen ground, catching himself with trembling hands. He remained there, bent forward, desperately dragging air into his lungs. Sweat ran down his face, and his heart pounded against his ribs, but even the sound of his own heartbeat seemed strangely distant.
He raised his head.
The darkness stared back.
Something inside him began to crack.
He had been alone before. In the wilderness, he had spent days without speaking to another person. He had eaten alone, fought alone, and slept in caves where the slightest rustle could signal the approach of a predator. He had endured the silence of the mountains because he knew what lay beyond it. There were beasts to hunt, water to find, and dangers to avoid. Even when he had no companion, the world had continued to exist around him.
But this place was different.
There was no rustling of leaves, no distant roar, no whisper of wind, and no sound of water flowing over stone. There was no heartbeat beyond his own, no living presence, and no sign that anything had ever existed here.
The silence was absolute.
It pressed against him from every direction, filling his ears until he began to imagine that the darkness itself was listening. He covered his ears, but that did nothing. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, only to find that his own voice seemed to have abandoned him.
His lips trembled.
"No..."
The word came out barely above a whisper.
He tried again, louder this time.
"No!"
His voice vanished into the emptiness.
Lican's breathing became ragged. He pressed his palms against his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to shut out a silence that had no source. His thoughts began to race, colliding with one another until he could no longer hold on to a single idea long enough to examine it.
Where am I?
How did I get here?
How do I leave?
What if I can't?
The questions repeated themselves, growing louder with every passing moment. He tried to answer them, but his mind kept returning to the same unbearable conclusion.
He didn't know.
For someone who had survived by observing his surroundings, learning from his mistakes, and finding ways to overcome his weaknesses, that ignorance was a kind of torture. He had nothing to study, nothing to understand, and nothing to overcome. His knowledge was useless here. His strength was useless. Even the bracelet he had worked so hard to create offered no answer.
He was alone, and he had no idea why.
A strangled sound escaped his throat. He struck the ground with his fist, then struck it again, harder, until pain shot through his knuckles. The pain should have grounded him, reminded him that he was real, but it only made him angrier. He hit the ground again and again, as though he could force the world to acknowledge his existence through sheer violence.
"Answer me!"
His scream tore from his throat.
"ANSWER ME!"
Nothing.
He stared into the darkness, his chest heaving. His eyes widened as he waited for even the smallest response, some echo, some movement, some indication that his words had reached another living thing.