Uriel ran forward and pierced through the wall of azure energy.
The moment he did, everyone else seemed to disappear and he entered an entirely new world.
Darkness.
That was all he could see. Dark and silent, an expanse of nothing stretching infinitely around him, suffocating and unfeeling.
It was cold, it was quiet and it was large.
But he didn't linger.
He ran.
He tripped more than once, falling and forcing himself back up, his ankles rolling and his hips giving out on him repeatedly.
In the empty darkness, the only sounds were his heaving breaths, his wheezing lungs, and the dull thud of his body hitting the ground before scrambling forward again.
He wasn't moving fast. In fact, he was slow, painfully so, but his sheer determination pushed him onward, momentum building not from strength, but refusal.
'One step.'
His vision swam. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth, and his entire body screamed in protest.
'And then another.'
As he ran, violent coughing tore out of him, his eyes burning as blood sputtered from his lips in harsh waves.
He didn't stop.
'And then another.'
He didn't look back even once. Nothing chased him. Nothing attacked him. And yet, it felt as though death itself was right behind him, breathing down his neck.
Fear coiled in his chest alongside anxiety, his body ravaged by weakness, years of inactivity and imprisonment layered atop an illness that had never truly left him.
Still, he pushed on.
'And then another. And another.'
At some point, with each step he took, a strange spark of warmth coursed through his body, fighting back against the cold aches tearing through his bones. He noticed immediately, but he didn't stop. His steps continued to stack, one after another, and the warmth rapidly intensified.
'…Is that aether?'
Almost instinctively, he reached for it. He tried to commune with the warmth inside him, fully expecting nothing to happen.
Instead, something detonated in his mind.
[You have sensed Natal Aether!]
The warmth surged violently, so overwhelming it felt as though he were burning from the inside out. And yet, his speed skyrocketed.
With every step, his shriveled body filled out just a fraction more. Fat returned. Muscle followed.
Not to anything inhuman, just enough to resemble a normal body again—relatively so, of course. He looked like he was dying.
At that point, Uriel stopped questioning it.
He trusted his instincts.
He pulled on the warmth, and it no longer came in bursts tied to his steps. It simply overflowed, unceasing, relentless.
The pain dulled, though it didn't vanish. He was still out of breath, but no longer wheezing. Still dizzy, but no longer on the verge of blacking out.
His body burned.
And then, he noticed the contrast. His body was hot.
Everything outside of it was cold.
Cold like the void. Cold like the darkness itself.
The cold seeped in, clashing against the heat, not smothering it, but balancing it. And like the warmth, it empowered him.
His speed climbed even higher. His body became a crucible of endless heat and unfathomable cold.
[You have sensed Atmospheric Aether!]
He didn't seem to grasp the madness of what he'd just done. He didn't notice the speed at which he moved compared to before.
His only focus was not being last.
His heart pounded so violently it felt ready to burst from his chest.
'Please… come on.'
His jaw clenched as he forced himself faster, a groan of pain caught deep in his throat.
'Faster.'
…
Uriel couldn't see anyone else. He couldn't see anything at all.
Only darkness.
But the others faced a completely different reality.
When they stepped through the barrier, they too entered darkness, but theirs was alive.
The expanse was filled with shadowed creatures, half flesh and half amorphous black mass. Each one carried the strength of several grown men, their movements as swift and erratic as living shadows.
And that wasn't all.
The darkness itself pressed down on them. Every step felt like lifting mountains. Every breath came strained and shallow.
Even those who had awakened strength-enhancing abilities struggled just to move, fighting was a luxury.
In moments, people formed groups, combining abilities to push forward and fend off the shadow creatures together.
Unlike Uriel, they could see one another.
They could see him too.
And in stunned silence, those nearest watched as the shadow creatures screamed and fled from Uriel's path, scattering in pure, instinctual terror.
They watched him run, unbound by the crushing weight of the darkness, his speed rising with every second until he vanished completely into the void ahead.
Shock rippled through them, but no one could afford to linger.
Across the darkness, others displayed terrifying speed of their own. Awe meant death here.
BANG!
Enoch's fist tore through the air and buried itself into the chest of a shadow creature. He ripped its heart free and activated his awakened ability.
The heart shuddered, then warped, stretching and reshaping into a long blade of flesh and blood.
With a single, clean arc, he decapitated the creature.
He discarded the blade without a glance and surged forward.
Shadow creatures fell one after another in his wake, each movement sharper than the last, each use of his ability more fluid, the rust in his mind flaking away as something old and dangerous stirred awake.
PAH!
His palm shot forward, gripping nothing but air, and the world in front of him froze.
For meters ahead, shadow creatures shattered in a rain of blood and darkness, condensing midair into writhing blades.
They assembled beneath his feet.
Enoch leapt, landing on the formed board, and shot forward like a comet.
Death and gore trailed behind him.
As if unaware of it, he stared ahead, toward where Uriel had already disappeared.
Despite his own terrifying speed, he couldn't close the gap.
A grin spread across his face as he shook his head, a low laugh escaping him as he recalled Uriel's earlier worry.
'Arrogant prick.'