The white void began to change.
It started as whispers in the air—faint harmonics that made Tsuyari's silver eyes narrow with recognition. The uniform emptiness around him started to... sing. Not with sound, but with something deeper. Something that resonated in the spaces between atoms.
Creation's pulse.
The ground beneath his feet shimmered, and suddenly—
Reality bloomed.
Crystalline spires erupted from the white plain like frozen lightning, their surfaces reflecting colors that had no names. Rivers of molten starlight began to flow beneath bridges made of solidified moonbeams, their gentle babbling carrying echoes of forgotten songs. The air itself grew thick with possibility, humming with the raw potential of unwritten stories.
Tsuyari stopped walking.
His breath caught in his throat—an impossibility for one who had transcended such mortal needs centuries ago.
"This... this is..."
The words died on his lips as the truth crashed into him like a tidal wave of memory.
The Kurieitā's world.
Ancient legends stirred in the deepest recesses of his mind—stories older than the Trueborns themselves, whispered in the dawn-times when reality was still soft and malleable.
The Kurieitā.
The First Dreamer.
The Author of All Things.
The being who had crafted Vilaris from pure thought. Who had breathed life into the first essence flows. Who had shaped the Trueborns themselves from the raw stuff of possibility and then...
Vanished.
Over three millennia ago, the Kurieitā had simply... faded. Retreated into a slumber so deep that even their presence became myth. The Trueborns had searched for centuries, but found nothing. No trace. No whisper. No sign that the original creator had ever existed at all.
Until now.
"This place..." Tsuyari's voice was barely a whisper. "This isn't a prison."
His silver eyes traced the impossible architecture surrounding him—towers that spiraled through dimensions, gardens where flowers bloomed backwards through time, fountains that flowed upward into skies painted with aurora that spoke in mathematical poetry.
"This is a shard of the origin itself."
A fragment of the realm where all stories began.
Where the first word was spoken into the void and answered with the birth of worlds.
He began to move again, but now his steps were reverent. Awed. Even a being of his power felt small in the presence of such fundamental... rightness. This place existed before concepts like good and evil, before order and chaos. It simply was, in the purest sense of existence.
And somewhere in this divine landscape...
The boy.
Tsuyari's pace quickened.
He found Itsuki at the base of a crystalline waterfall that sang lullabies in languages that predated speech.
The sight made even the Nullweaver's eternal composure crack.
The boy was broken.
Not just injured—though the blood seeping into the prismatic ground and the unnatural angles of his limbs spoke of devastating trauma. Not just unconscious—though his breathing was so shallow it barely qualified as life.
He was broken in ways that went deeper than flesh and bone.
His essence signature—normally blazing with the chaotic potential of Abstract Shift—flickered like a candle in a hurricane. Fading. Dying. The very core of what made him him was unraveling thread by thread.
For the first time in millennia, Tsuyari felt something that might have been... concern.
"Young child..."
He knelt beside Itsuki's still form, his usual air of amused superiority completely gone. Up close, the damage was even worse. Ribs crushed inward. Skull fractured. Internal bleeding that should have killed him hours ago.
But somehow, impossibly, he was still alive.
The realm itself was keeping him breathing.
Why?
Tsuyari reached out with his senses, probing the edges of Itsuki's fading consciousness. What he found there made his blood run cold.
Pain.
Not just physical agony, but something far more insidious. Despair so complete it had become a living thing, burrowing into the boy's soul and feeding on his hope. Fear so pure it had crystallized into psychic poison, seeping through every memory and dream.
Vorthak.
The Tier 4 beast hadn't just broken his body.
It had shattered his spirit.
"You've suffered more than you were meant to," Tsuyari murmured, raising his hand to hover over the boy's chest.
More than anyone should.
For a moment—just a moment—the Nullweaver hesitated.
His plans. His carefully orchestrated schemes to recruit this boy to his cause. To turn Abstract Shift into a weapon against his fellow Trueborns.
All of that seemed… Null.
Looking down at Itsuki's broken form in this place of pure creation, Tsuyari was reminded of something he'd forgotten in his millennia of plotting and manipulation.
Power without purpose is just destruction.
And destruction without meaning is just waste.
The boy was too valuable to lose. Too unique. In all his eons of existence, Tsuyari had never encountered an essence signature quite like Abstract Shift. The ability to alter the fundamental concepts that held reality together was something that could reshape the very nature of existence itself.
But more than that...
He was just a child.
Seventeen years old.
Barely more than an infant by Trueborn standards.
And he was dying.
Without conscious thought, Tsuyari bit down on his own thumb, drawing a bead of silver blood that gleamed with concentrated essence. The drop fell onto Itsuki's chest, directly over his heart.
The effect was immediate.
Color flooded back into the boy's pale cheeks. His breathing deepened, steadied. The worst of his internal injuries began to seal themselves as Trueborn essence flowed through his system like liquid starlight.
But more importantly, the crushing despair that had been eating him alive began to... lift.
Not disappear entirely—trauma that deep couldn't be healed with a single drop of blood. But it became... manageable. Survivable.
A faint pulse stirred within Itsuki's essence signature.
Whether from Tsuyari's blood or the realm's inherent power of renewal, something flickered back to life in the boy's core.
Hope.
That's when the temperature dropped.
Not physically—temperature was more of a suggestion in this place of crystalline impossibilities. But something colder than winter, darker than void, heavier than gravity itself pressed down on the divine landscape.
The singing waterfalls went silent.
The aurora-painted sky dimmed to the color of old blood.
Even the rivers of starlight slowed their flow, as if afraid to make too much noise.
A shadow stretched across the realm's gentle glow.
Massive.
Predatory.
Hungry.
Tsuyari didn't need to turn around to know what he'd find, but he did anyway.
Slowly. Deliberately.
His silver eyes met burning amber ones.
Vorthak.
The Tier 4 beast stood at the edge of the crystalline grove, its obsidian form drinking in the divine light around it. Steam rose from its hide where the realm's purity touched its corruption, and when it breathed, frost formed in the air despite the absence of moisture.
For a long moment, neither moved.
Ancient predator regarding cosmic force.
Nullweaver meeting void-beast.
Creator's nightmare facing author's design.
When Vorthak finally spoke, its voice was the sound of glaciers breaking.
"TRUEBORN."
The word carried weight that made the crystalline spires ring like bells. Challenge. Recognition. Hunger.
Tsuyari rose slowly, stepping between the beast and Itsuki's recovering form.
"Vorthak."
His own voice was silk over steel, carrying harmonics that made reality itself shiver.
"I was hoping we'd have a chance to talk."
The beast's massive head tilted, amber eyes burning with predatory intelligence.
"TALK? THE CHILD IS MINE. I HAVE TASTED HIS FEAR. DRUNK HIS DESPAIR. HE BELONGS TO THE VOID NOW."
"Does he?"
Tsuyari's lips curved in what might have been a smile, if smiles could cut glass.
"Because from where I'm standing, he seems quite alive. Healing, even. Perhaps the void isn't as... absolute... as you believe."
A sound like breaking mountains rumbled from Vorthak's throat.
"YOU DARE—"
"I dare many things," Tsuyari interrupted, his aura beginning to manifest around him like heat shimmer. "But what I know is that you've made a mistake."
He gestured to the impossible realm surrounding them—the singing towers, the liquid light, the very air that thrummed with creative potential.
"Did you really think you could bring him here without consequence? This place remembers everything, Vorthak. Every story ever told. Every dream ever dreamed. Every possibility ever born."
The beast's eyes narrowed to burning slits.
"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"
Tsuyari's smile widened, becoming something that belonged on a shark.
"I'm saying that the Kurieitā may be sleeping..."
Behind him, Itsuki stirred. Color continued to return to his features. His essence signature grew stronger with each passing moment.
"But their realm is very much awake."
"And it doesn't approve of visitors who break its guests."
The last words echoed across the crystalline landscape with the weight of prophecy.
Storm clouds began to gather in the aurora-painted sky.
And somewhere in the distance, something that might have been laughter—ancient, vast, and pregnant with creative fury—whispered through the singing air.
The Kurieitā's realm had found its voice.
And it was not pleased.