A single petal drifted through the air.
Its surface was a deep crimson and edges black, pulsing faintly with something that shouldn't exist in a place like this.
The petal descended gently before touching the still surface of a pool of water. Faint ripples spread outward across the glassy surface the moment it made contact.
The water reflected a sky of soft red light.
Somewhere nearby, a voice arose.
"Not yet."
The ripples widened.
Then, everything faded into black.
A man opens his eyes. Cold air brushes against his face.
He inhales sharply. For several seconds, he doesn't move. His body felt heavy.
Above him stretches an endless void of nothingness. His eyes searched for something to focus on, but the empty sky went on forever, fading into a pale gray haze that seemed far beyond the limits of his sight.
"Where… am I?" he asks in despair.
His voice was rough. It sounded strange to his own ears.
He pushed himself up slowly, stopping halfway and remaining seated on the ground. His palms pressed against the surface beneath him.
It was ice. Solid, frozen ice.
Then, his memory returned, all at once.
The towering wall. The narrow passageway. The gatekeeper. The sword. His hand.
A sharp phantom pain surged through his missing hand, so sudden and vivid that he instinctively jerked his arm upward in panic.
The limb was whole again.
His fingers trembled violently as he stared at them.
"…What?"
The sensation lingered anyway. His stomach churned as the memory of the blade cutting through flesh returned with brutal clarity.
The blade spinning through the air.
The impact. The sound.
For a moment, he thought he heard it all again.
Elias squeezed his eyes shut, but that only made it worse. The memory forced itself back into his mind. He could feel the severing again.
His breath caught in his throat.
For a long moment, he simply stared.
He couldn't get the image of the towering figure of the gatekeeper standing over him out of his mind. He instinctively pulled his arm closer to his chest.
"…No"
The word came out under his breath.
Elias pushed himself halfway upright.
The frozen wasteland stretched around him exactly as before, silent and endless beneath the pale sky. Jagged frost covered the ground and distant shards of ice rose like broken teeth.
Yet something felt wrong.
A strange, flickering sensation pulsed through his body, almost like static crawling beneath his skin. His vision distorted for a brief moment. The world warped faintly along the edges as though reality itself had briefly misaligned.
The feeling, however, passed just as quickly.
"…System."
Before any response came, a quiet voice spoke beside him.
"Oh. You're back already."
Elias froze.
His head snapped to the side.
His vision wavered for a moment. The frozen wasteland blurred at the edges of his eyes before slowly settling back into focus.
When his sight finally steadied, he realized someone was sitting beside him.
A woman sat near him on the frozen ground as though she had been there the entire time. Her posture was relaxed and calm, yet something about her presence felt strangely out of place within the barren wasteland. There was a quiet, dreamlike softness to the way she held herself, as though the harsh cold and endless ice surrounding them simply did not affect her.
A smooth mask covered the upper half of her face, which was pale and expressionless. Only her lower features were visible. The curve of her lips carried a gentle, absentminded smile.
Strands of her pale hair slipped free from beneath the mask's edge, drifting lazily in the cold winds like threads of moonlight.
She wore layered garments. A long, flowing cloak of deep silver fabric draped over her shoulders. Beneath it, lighter cloth wrapped around her form in soft folds.
At the same moment, pale blue text flickered faintly in his vision.
[ Host re-registration complete.
System initialization restored. ]
The woman glanced at him with mild curiosity, tilting her head slightly.
"I wasn't expecting you to die that quickly," she said softly. "If you keep going like that… you won't last long. A flower only has so many petals before the stem stands bare."
Elias stared at her.
"…Die?"
His mind struggled to reconcile what he remembered with the fact that he was still quite clearly alive. Elias stared at his hands again, as if expecting them to vanish.
"You did die," the woman replied calmly, as though discussing something trivial. "The gatekeeper made sure of that."
"…Then how am I still… here?"
She tilted her head slightly.
"This place doesn't let mistakes end so easily."
The answer was vague enough to be meaningless.
Elias frowned.
"That explains absolutely nothing."
The woman studied him quietly for a moment. Though the mask hid her eyes, he had the strange feeling that her gaze was gentle rather than cold.
Then she sighed softly.
"Well, if you're going to keep getting yourself killed, I suppose I should make things a little easier for you."
She lifted one hand and gestured towards him. The movement was light and fluid, like a drifting leaf carried by a slow current.
"I'll imprint the Sigil of Vitality on you."
Elias blinked.
"The what?"
"It will help you recover from minor injuries. At least till you're able to resonate properly."
"…Resonate? With what?"
She did not answer immediately.
Instead, she simply looked at him, her eyes settling on his face with quiet curiosity. The sudden attention caught Elias off guard, and for a brief moment he forgot what he had been about to say. Something about the way she looked at him made his thoughts stall.
Elias ran a hand through his hair, frustration creeping into his voice.
"Okay, hold on. I remember the… blade. I remember the moment it went through me. I remember the cold after that… like everything inside me just… stopped."
He pressed a trembling hand against his chest. "And now I'm here, breathing like nothing happened, while you're talking about sigils and what not. Maybe we should start with something simpler."
He pointed towards her.
"Who even are you?"
The woman smiled faintly.
"Well… that is not a question I plan to answer, at the very least… not now."
Elias stared at her.
"…You're kidding."
"No."
He exhaled slowly.
"Fine. Then at least tell me how I came back to life."
"That question is a tad bit more complicated," she replied.
Elias waited, but she did not continue.
"…You're really bad at explaining things."
The woman shrugged.
"You can ask the system if you want answers."
Elias blinked.
"…Wait, you know about the system?"
"Well of course."
That response only raised more questions.
"How do you know about it?" Elias asked immediately. "What exactly is the system? Why am I here? Is it connected to this place?"
The woman watched him for a moment. Her gaze flickered, just for an instant. Her expression was unreadable.
"You still like to ask a whole lot of questions huh," she murmured.
Elias frowned. "Wha-?"
She blinked, and the moment was gone.
"Lay down."
The interruption came suddenly.
Elias was taken aback.
"…Excuse me?"
"If you keep talking," the woman said calmly, "we'll be here all day."
Before he could protest, she placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back onto the frozen ground.
Elias tried to sit back up.
"Wait, hold on, I still have – "
Her palm pressed against the center of his chest.
The moment her skin touched him, the world exploded.
Sound vanished. Then returned all at once.
An overwhelming flood of sensations surged through Elias' body as though every nerve was being struck simultaneously. Heat and cold collided violently beneath his skin while a deep vibration resonated somewhere within his bones.
His vision fractured into fragments of color.
Something burned into his chest. Intensely.
Symbols he could not understand seemed to carve themselves into existence beneath his skin, glowing faintly for an instant before sinking deeper into his body.
Elias tried to speak.
No sound came out.
The sensation intensified until his mind could no longer process it.
Darkness swallowed him.
When awareness returned, Elias found himself standing in complete emptiness. There was no ground beneath his feet. No sky above.
It was simply nothing.
A vast, silent absence.
For several moments he stood there without moving. The emptiness around him felt vast and weightless. A quiet stillness that pressed gently against his awareness.
Then he heard a faint him. It vibrated through the void like a distant echo, soft yet impossibly steady.
Elias turned towards the source of the sound.
Something slowly emerged from the darkness.
A tree.
Its trunk was tall and slender. Its bark was pale and smooth like polished ivory. Branches stretched upward into the darkness, spreading into a canopy of delicate leaves that glowed faintly with a dim, silvery light.
The light pulsed. Slow and rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.
The tree seemed ancient.
Older, perhaps, than the ice itself.
He approached it cautiously.
The faint humming sound grew stronger with every step when suddenly –
Something crunched beneath his foot.
He glanced down. A small branch lay snapped, fading into dull grey. He hadn't even felt it break.
He stepped over it carefully.
Elias reached out.
His fingers brushed the surface of the bark. It felt thin and dry beneath his touch.
But the moment he touched it, the world vanished.
Cold air rushed against his skin again.
Elias gasped as consciousness returned abruptly.
The frozen wasteland stretched around him once more.
He lay on the ice exactly where he had been before.
The woman was gone.
No footprints marked where she had sat, and no sign remained that she had ever been there at all.
For a long moment Elias simply lay there staring upward. His mind struggled to process everything that had just happened.
The System flared to life before him.
[ New capability unlocked: Celestial Sigils. ]
"…What even are sigils?"
[ Information restricted. Host is not yet ready to understand. ]
Elias stared at the message.
"…You've got to be kidding me. You know, I've been wanting to ask you some questions here bu-"
[ The truth lies above. Ascend, and perhaps, you will understand… eventually, even that vision of yours. ]
Elias panicked. "How do you know about that?"
… No response.
"Ignoring me now, huh? Fine. Whatever." He exhaled sharply, forcing himself to calm down. "But that woman… Who was she?"
… Silence.
Once again, no response.
[ The Sigil of Vitality will aid in your recovery. However, since this Sigil was forcefully integrated into your body, it has a high risk of corruption. ]
"Oh. So now you are completely changing the topic. Besides, Corruption? What does that even mean?" asked Elias, not expecting a proper response.
[ Corruption as in loss of your identity, memories and even sanity. ]
"Ho? So you DO know a lot of stuff yet refuse to tell me?"
[ The answers lie above… as always. ]
Elias let out a slight chuckle at the way the System always responded cryptically.
He had no recollection of how he got there, why he was there, or what had happened to his memories. The only thing he could cling onto was the System and the only way to obtain the answers to all his questions was to continue moving forward.
The icy wasteland stretched infinitely before him. The silence pressed against him making his thoughts feel louder than they should.
[ You are now leaving a temporary Protected Space. ]
"…You know what? I'm not even gonna ask."
Before he could say anything further, a thunderous roar tore through the frozen wasteland.
The sound echoed across the Ninth Circle like a collapsing mountain.
Elias's stomach dropped instantly.
He recognized that voice.
The gatekeeper.
Its roar rolled across the ice with terrifying force.
Elias turned slowly toward the distant wall.
"…Right."
His expression tightened.
"…Definitely going the other way."
And without another word, he began walking.