Consciousness returned like a slow tide.
First came the cold.
Not the biting cold of winter wind or the sharp ache of ice—but something deeper. Something that seemed to seep through his skin and settle in his bones.
Itsuki's eyes fluttered open.
White.
Everything was white.
He lay on what felt like solid ground, but when he pressed his palm against it, the surface gave slightly—like hardened snow or crystallized light. Above him stretched an endless expanse of nothing. Not sky. Not ceiling. Just... absence.
His breath misted in the air.
Where...
Itsuki pushed himself up on shaking arms, his white hair falling across his ice-blue eyes. Every movement felt wrong—too slow, too heavy, as if the air itself was thick as honey.
He looked around, searching for anything—a wall, a shadow, a single point of reference.
There was nothing.
The white expanse stretched in every direction, featureless and infinite. No horizon line where ground met sky. No variation in light or shadow.
Just endless, perfect emptiness.
"What is this place?" he whispered.
His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence, each word seeming to hang in the air longer than it should.
But no echo came back.
No echo at all.
"Hello?!"
Itsuki's shout shattered the oppressive quiet.
"Where am I?!"
He waited, straining his ears for any response—a voice, a sound, even the whisper of wind.
Silence.
Complete, suffocating silence.
This has to be a dream, he told himself. Or some kind of illusion.
He reached for his essence, trying to activate Abstract Shift—to change the nature of this empty space, to give it meaning, to make it something.
Nothing happened.
His power felt... distant. Like trying to grasp smoke with numb fingers.
Panic began to rise in his chest.
"Hello?!" he called again, louder this time. "Someone! Anyone!"
The words died in the white void, swallowed by nothingness.
Itsuki began to walk.
One step.
Two steps.
Ten.
A hundred.
The ground beneath his feet remained the same—solid but yielding, cold but not quite frozen. His footsteps made no sound. Left no prints.
It was as if he wasn't really there at all.
How long have I been walking?
Time felt meaningless here. There was no sun to track, no shadows to measure. Just the endless white and the sound of his own breathing.
His legs began to ache.
That's impossible. He was seventeen, in peak physical condition from years of training. A simple walk shouldn't exhaust him.
But with each step, his body grew heavier.
His breathing became more labored.
What's happening to me?
He tried to run, desperate to find some end to this emptiness.
But his legs betrayed him, moving sluggishly as if he were trying to sprint through deep water.
After what felt like hours—or maybe days—he collapsed to his knees.
The silence pressed against his eardrums.
"Please," he whispered to the void. "Someone... anyone... just tell me where I am."
No answer came.
Only the sound of his own ragged breathing, unnaturally amplified in the perfect stillness.
Is this punishment?
The thought crept into Itsuki's mind as he knelt in the endless white.
For failing to protect Astralyn? For not being strong enough?
He thought of the Verythra—that massive, twisted creature that had torn through the dojo like it was made of paper. He remembered the fear in everyone's eyes. The screams.
Kairo.
Takumi.
Sayaka.
Are they safe? Are they even alive?
The questions gnawed at him, worse than any physical pain.
He had sworn to protect them. Sworn to reach Tier 5, to join the Beyond Order, to become strong enough to face any threat.
Instead, he was trapped here.
Alone.
Powerless.
Useless.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the white void. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough."
His voice cracked.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save anyone."
The silence that followed felt like judgment.
Maybe this is death, he thought. Maybe that creature killed me, and this is what comes after.
The idea should have terrified him.
Instead, it brought a strange kind of relief.
At least if I'm dead, I can't fail anyone else.
He closed his eyes, letting the exhaustion wash over him.
His body felt like lead. His essence remained frustratingly out of reach. Even his thoughts were becoming sluggish, as if the white void was draining not just his strength but his very will to exist.
Mom. Dad.
Their faces floated through his memory—Nina's gentle silver eyes, Kaito's strong presence, the warmth of their small house in Mistfall.
I should have told them I loved them more often.
I should have hugged them longer.
I should have been a better son.
The regrets piled up like stones on his chest.
Every moment he'd taken for granted. Every opportunity to show kindness that he'd missed. Every time he'd been too focused on growing stronger to simply be present with the people who mattered.
Shion.
His friend's face appeared in his mind—quiet, observant Shion with his silver-blue hair and teal eyes that saw too much.
I should have protected him better. Should have noticed how much the trial failure hurt him.
Where is he now? Is he safe?
More regrets. More weight.
I failed them all.
The white expanse seemed to pulse around him, as if feeding on his despair.
His strength continued to ebb away, drop by precious drop, until even kneeling became too much effort.
Itsuki's hands pressed against the strange ground, his body trembling with exhaustion that went beyond the physical.
Soul-deep weariness.
Is this how it ends?
He thought of all the stories he'd heard as a child—heroes who faced impossible odds, who found strength in their darkest moments, who saved the day through sheer force of will.
Where's my moment?
Where's my strength?
All he felt was empty.
Itsuki collapsed forward, his cheek pressing against the cold, yielding ground.
His ice-blue eyes stared sightlessly into the endless white.
Can't... move...
His breathing became shallow, labored.
Each exhale seemed to take more out of him than he could afford to give.
This is it, he realized with strange calm. This is where I die.
In nothing.
Becoming nothing.
But as his consciousness began to fade, something changed.
The white expanse around him rippled.
Like the surface of a perfectly still lake disturbed by a single dropped stone.
The ripples spread outward from where he lay, creating concentric circles of distortion in the perfect emptiness.
What...
Itsuki tried to lift his head, but his body wouldn't obey.
The ripples grew stronger.
More urgent.
As if something vast and powerful was moving beneath the surface of this white void.
Something that had been waiting.
Watching.
Approaching.
The silence—that oppressive, suffocating silence that had been his only companion—began to change.
Not broken, exactly.
But... pregnant with possibility.
Like the moment before thunder.
Itsuki's vision blurred as exhaustion finally claimed him.
But in that last moment of consciousness, he could swear he heard something.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Getting closer.
The white void continued to ripple around his unconscious form, waves of distortion spreading outward like the first signs of an earthquake.
Something was coming.
Something that had been waiting for him to reach this exact point of despair.
This exact moment of surrender.
And in the perfect white silence, a presence began to take shape.
Ancient.
Alien.
Hungry.