The rain wouldn't stop.
Each drop echoed louder than my heartbeat, washing away the warmth I once called friendship.
I stumbled backward, clutching my chest where the sword had entered. My hands were slick with blood—my blood. The metallic taste filled my mouth as I tried to speak, but all that came out was a cough and a bitter laugh.
"Why…?"
Across from me stood Arlen, the one person I thought I'd die for—not because of. His blond hair, once so bright in the sunlight, looked dull beneath the storm. His eyes, the same ones that used to smile when we shared secrets as kids, now looked hollow.
"You should've stayed out of my way, Ren."
That voice. Cold, detached. I barely recognized it.
My knees hit the mud. My sword slipped from my grasp, vanishing into the puddles. I could still feel the warmth of his hand—the one that once saved me from bullies, the one that used to help me up—now the same hand that drove the blade through my chest.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to curse him, to ask what I had done to deserve this.
But my lungs refused to obey.
Instead, I stared up at him and smiled—a smile twisted by pain.
"You're… really doing this, huh?"
He didn't answer. He turned away. The rain drowned out everything else.
And just like that, the world that once held color faded into endless gray.
How long I drifted after death, I couldn't say.
There was no light, no sound, no warmth. Just nothing.
A void that neither hurt nor comforted.
If this was the afterlife, it was cruelly quiet.
"...I was betrayed."
My voice didn't echo. It didn't even exist. But I could feel the thought burning in whatever was left of me.
"He took everything… and I can't even hate him properly because I'm already gone."
For the first time, I realized what eternity meant—an infinite silence filled only by regret.
I screamed.
It didn't make a sound.
Then—
Something listened.
A whisper. No, not a sound, but a presence—vast, ancient, and impossibly close. It filled the nothingness like ink bleeding into water.
"A broken soul calls out… interesting."
I froze. My thoughts trembled, rippling through the void.
"Who—what are you?"
"Names mean little here. You stand in the place between endings and beginnings."
Its tone was neither male nor female—more like the hum of the universe itself.
"You seek vengeance. You wish to rewrite the story that led to your demise."
"I just… want to live again. To make him pay. To understand why."
"And what would you give for that?"
"Anything."
Silence stretched again, but this time it felt… alive. Then, the darkness moved. Shapes formed—ripples, faces, wings, eyes—and then all of them collapsed into one piercing void of lightless brilliance.
"Then so be it."
The nothingness embraced me like cold silk. I felt my body dissolve, every memory rewritten by shadow.
"You shall no longer be who you were. You shall be my child—my daughter—born of nothingness."
"D-daughter…?"
"Yes. Rise, Serena. Daughter of the Void."
Pain erupted. My soul ignited, torn apart and remade in colors my human eyes could never perceive. When it ended, I gasped—and lungs filled with air for the first time since death.
I opened my eyes.
A dark sky stretched above me, filled not with stars but swirling violet rings that pulsed like heartbeats. My reflection shimmered on the surface of a nearby black lake.
Silver hair.
Pale skin glowing faintly in the dark.
Eyes like galaxies—shifting between purple and blue.
And a voice, softer, higher, trembling as I whispered my new name:
"Serena…"
The void's whisper echoed one last time—
"Live, my daughter. Take what was denied to you."
And with that, the abyss fell silent once more.