Chapter 3
Ashen Raizen thought he had reached the end of everything.
There was no time in this abyss. No sun. No moon. No sky. No stars. Only darkness stretched endlessly in every direction, swallowing even the concept of distance. He did not know if he was floating, falling, or simply suspended in nothing.
The void was quiet, yet the silence was not kind. It was the kind of silence that suffocates, the kind that wraps itself around you like an iron grip. No breath of wind brushed his face. No warmth touched his skin. There was only the endless pull of emptiness pressing down on him, as if the darkness itself wanted to crush his existence until there was nothing left to break.
And then came the pain.
It was not the kind of pain that screamed and left. It was a steady and patient agony, a cruel artist carving away at his soul without end. Sometimes it came as knives, invisible but sharp, cutting through what remained of his being with cold precision. He could not see the blades, yet he felt them as they sliced deeper and deeper, scraping against the fragile strands of his essence. Other times it came as fire, liquid and living, flowing through veins he no longer possessed, burning him to ash that never scattered.
But the worst part was not the tearing or the fire. The worst part was the rebuilding.
Something unseen always pulled him back together, as if the void itself took delight in remaking him for its amusement. It stitched his broken soul with invisible threads, restoring what had been ruined only to begin the torment again. It was a cycle without mercy. Pain. Fire. Reconstruction. Again and again until even his screams faded into silence.
At first, he had resisted.
In the beginning, if there was such a thing as a beginning here, Ashen had fought the void with everything he had. He shouted into the darkness until his voice bled into nothing. He begged gods he had never believed in. He cursed every star that had ever shone on him. He called the names of people whose faces were already fading from memory. But no one answered. No one came.
Eventually, his voice broke. His will cracked. His spirit, once stubborn and alive, was ground into dust beneath the weight of endless suffering.
And so he stopped fighting.
He floated in the darkness, his body and mind too tired to resist, too tired to hope. Time did not exist here, and without time, even pain lost its edges. There was only endurance. The darkness had taken everything else from him.
Then the roar came.
It shattered the silence like a blade striking glass.
The sound was not human. It was not beast. It was something older, deeper, something that had existed long before stars learned to burn. The roar came from everywhere and nowhere, a wave of sound so strong it made the void tremble.
Ashen's eyes snapped open.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he saw something. At the edge of the darkness, something stirred. A shape moved, rising from the void like a nightmare that had grown tired of sleeping.
The creature that appeared before him was beyond comprehension.
It was vast. Larger than the tallest mountains he had once seen with his own eyes. Wider than any ocean he had ever imagined. Its wings spread out endlessly, covering what little there was of the void. Each wing pulsed with veins of glowing energy that beat like the heart of a living storm. Its body was covered in black scales that gleamed like polished stone beneath a light that did not exist. Its very presence made the nothingness around it bend, as though the void itself feared this creature.
And its eyes.
There were many. They burned like suns trapped in the flesh of a beast, each one moving and shifting, watching everything and nothing all at once. They carried the weight of ages, of things older than men or gods. Looking into those eyes was like staring into the heart of creation and destruction at the same time.
Ashen held his breath. He had not felt fear like this in years.
No, not years. There were no years here. But it felt like the kind of fear that could erase a man.
This must be another trick, he told himself. The void had always found ways to torment him. It gave him illusions of people he once knew. His mother's smile that turned to ash as she reached for him. His father's stern eyes that crumbled into smoke. Children from the street where he once lived, their laughter twisting into screams as their faces melted into shadows. The void knew how to use hope to cut deeper than any blade.
So surely this creature was another illusion.
But the creature did not turn to him. It did not even seem to care he existed.
The void trembled again. Then lightning struck.
Bolts of white light fell from above, though above meant nothing here. Each strike burned brighter than a thousand suns. They slammed into the creature's enormous body with such force that Ashen felt the shockwaves ripple through the void itself. The beast roared again, this time louder, shaking everything that was and was not real.
Ashen shielded his face out of instinct, though there was nothing to protect him from. The lightning ripped through the creature's scales, tearing chunks of its flesh apart. Dark blood floated through the void like ink spilling through water.
The roar that followed was not the sound of pain. It was fury.
The beast raised its claws, each one longer than the tallest towers Ashen had ever seen. It slashed at the bolts of lightning, breaking them apart like thin branches. Its wings beat once, and the storm that filled the void scattered like frightened birds. It opened its mouth, and what came out was not fire or air but a flood of darkness, swallowing the lightning whole.
The battle between light and shadow exploded around Ashen.
The void was no longer silent. It was alive with sound and fury. Lightning cracked and shadows roared. Bright white met endless black. Sparks fell like stars being born and then crushed in the same breath. The colors that emerged were beyond what Ashen remembered from the world he once knew. There were whites so pure they blinded the soul, blacks so deep they swallowed all hope, and strange colors that had no name, swirling like living storms.
For the first time in a very long time, Ashen forgot his pain.
He could only stare at the battle. A storm of gods and monsters.
He thought of stories he once heard as a child. Tales whispered by old men around dying fires. Myths of divine serpents that shaped the earth. Of gods of thunder who ruled the sky. Of wars between light and darkness when the world was still young. He had never believed those stories. But now he was watching something far greater than any myth.
The lightning grew more violent. It came faster, angrier, striking the creature again and again. Eyes burst like molten stars. Flesh tore. Wings cracked. Blood spilled in rivers through the darkness. Yet the creature did not fall.Its roar grew louder, shaking the very fabric of the void.
And then the greatest strike came.
A single bolt fell from above. It was larger than the others, brighter than them all, so bright that Ashen felt it burn his soul. It pierced through the creature's skull and exploded in a light so pure and terrible that the entire void screamed.
The creature convulsed. Its massive body shook. Wings shredded. Flesh split open like stone under fire. But it did not die. It roared again, not with fear but with rage.
Ashen stared as the rivers of blood spread wider. The black liquid moved like it had a will of its own, flowing through the emptiness until it reached him.
The moment it touched him, the pain returned.
It was worse than before. Worse than being stabbed with knife. Worse than being roasted alive in fire. The blood was alive. It burned him from the inside. It forced its way into his soul like a tide, flooding every part of him with a power that did not belong to any man.
Ashen screamed, though no sound left his lips.
The creature's essence poured into him. It was ancient and wild, filled with the memory of battles that could tear worlds apart. He felt its rage. Its strength. Its unyielding defiance.
Then lightning struck again.
This time, the bolt was small compared to the ones that had attacked the creature. But to Ashen, it was more than enough. It pierced him straight through the soul, colliding with the blood inside him.
The power of the storm met the power of the beast within him, and they clashed.
It was as if his entire being became a battlefield. Light and darkness tore at each other. They shredded everything that made him who he was.
The pain consumed him. It dug deeper than anything the void had ever done. His mind cracked. His soul splintered. His last thought before everything went white was not fear but a strange, calm certainty.
Something was being born.
The void disappeared.
The darkness. The light. The pain. All of it fell away like shattered glass.
Ashen Raizen's soul was gone.
For a moment, there was only silence. A pure and heavy silence that filled the space where he once existed.