#1
Ning Ruishen's final note, 5:47 a.m., before death:
"I'm done writing.
I'm done breathing.
I'm done.
Thank you for everything.
I'm going home."
But the universe—or something that claimed to be the universe—had other plans.
Ghei woke up not gasping for air, not screaming, not with a pounding heart like in the movies.
He woke up in silence.
As if surfacing from an impossibly deep sleep—so deep that you forget how to breathe again.
His eyes opened.
There was no sky. No ground. No color that could truly be called color.
Only gray.
Static gray. A gray that was unfriendly yet not hostile. A gray that felt like waiting without hope.
He sat up. His body felt light—too light, as if it had no weight. Yet it still had shape. He still had hands he could clench. A tongue that could wet dry lips.
"Where is this?"
His voice sounded strange—not echoing, not absorbed. It simply drifted through the gray air before vanishing as if it had never existed.
He stood. His feet rested on something solid yet invisible—like thick glass, or perhaps the concept of a "floor" that had forgotten to manifest.
Around him floated massive stone monoliths. They did not bob or sway; they remained fixed in place, as if anchored to coordinates defined at the beginning of time. On their surfaces were inscriptions in an unrecognizable language—or perhaps not a language at all, just patterns that suggested meaning.
Ghei walked toward the nearest monolith. His hand touched the stone.
Cold.
Not the cold of ice or night. The cold of the absence of temperature.
He drew a breath—or performed the motion of breathing, because there was no air here. Only a habit carried over from death.
"You are awake."
The voice came from no particular direction. From all directions at once. Not male, not female, not old, not young. Just a voice.
Ghei didn't turn. His hand remained on the monolith.
"Yes," he replied simply.
"You don't ask where this place is?"
"Does it matter?"
A pause. The monolith before him began to glow faintly, projecting rapidly shifting images: mountains, oceans, unfamiliar cities, faces he did not recognize.
"This is the Liminal Veil. The in-between space. A place for those who should not depart, yet cannot arrive."
Ghei nodded faintly, as if acknowledging a weather report.
"So my death was incomplete."
"Your death was perfect. But something pulled you back."
This time, Ghei turned—or rather, rotated his entire awareness toward the source of the source-less voice.
"Who?"
A shadow began to form from the gray mist. Not a human figure, nor a monster. Just the concept of a shape—something implying existence without fully being there.
"I am Devaros. God of the Second Awakening. Opener of Sealed Doors."
"God?"
"No. A god. There are many of us."
Ghei regarded the "form." In his eyes there was no fear, no awe. Only recognition, like acknowledging a table or a chair.
"Why did you revive me?"
"Because you are interesting. Your soul… is clean of desire. Empty. Like clear glass. Most souls are full of longing—wanting to live again, to take revenge, to reunite with loved ones. You? You only wanted… to stop."
"And that is wrong?"
"Not wrong. Just rare. And what is rare deserves to be studied."
Ghei frowned. For the first time since waking, something like emotion surfaced—not rage, not sorrow. Just a mild irritation, like being disturbed while trying to sleep.
"So I'm your experiment."
"Observation. You are free to do anything in your new world. Live again. Seek new meaning. Or… try to die again, if you can."
"If I can?"
"My resurrection grants a blessing—and a curse. You can no longer die an ordinary death. Only a godslayer can kill you. Or… a god itself."
A thin smile appeared on Ghei's face for the first time. A smile without happiness.
"Ironic. You revive me, and at the same time make it harder for me to die."
"Every gift has a price."
"I didn't ask for your gift."
"But you accepted it."
"Not by my will."
Devaros's shadow trembled, like silent laughter.
"Will. An interesting concept. Now choose: remain here forever, or I will deliver you to the real world. Perhaps there you may find… what you are looking for."
Ghei looked at his own hands. Still human hands. The same lines on his palms as before. The same small scar on his index finger—from a kitchen knife while cooking instant noodles, three months before he died.
"What I was looking for, I already found. And you took it from me."
"Then seek it again. Or stop seeking. That is your freedom."
"Freedom," Ghei repeated, tasting the word like a new flavor. "What does it mean to be free, when my primary choice was already stolen?"
There was no answer.
Devaros's shadow began to fade.
"Welcome back, Ning Ruishen."
"That name is dead."
"Then what is your name now?"
Ghei looked at the surrounding monoliths. On one of them, he saw a faint reflection—his own face, yet unfamiliar. The same eyes, but with something deeper hollowed out.
"Ghei," he said spontaneously. "Ghei Niruise."
"Niruise?"
"The remnants of something that doesn't wish to be remembered."
Devaros was silent for a moment.
"Very well. Ghei Niruise. Go. The world awaits you."
The floor beneath Ghei's feet vanished.
He fell.
Not in freefall—more like being pulled downward, toward something denser, more real, more… alive.
At the last moment in the Liminal Veil, he heard Devaros's whisper:
"If you still wish to die, find me. Kill me. Then you will be free."
Then the gray was replaced by color.
He landed gently, as if carefully lowered from a height of only a few centimeters.
The ground beneath him was dusty, pale purple. The sky above—there were two moons. One bright white, one pitch black. Both hung in a deep-blue daytime sky.
He stood. Observed.
A vast plain stretched out, overgrown with strange plants that moved slowly, as if in a dream. In the distance, mountains with crystalline peaks reflected the light of the white moon.
He drew a breath—and this time there was air. Cold, thin, smelling of metal and something sweetly rotten.
Then he felt it.
Silence.
Not the absence of sound—there was wind whispering, the hum of strange insects—but a layer of stillness beneath it all. As if quiet were embedded in the soil, in the air, in himself.
He raised his hand, opening his palm to the sky.
And saw—fine black dust scattering from his skin, like smoke without fire, before dissolving into the air.
It was the first manifestation of his Null Echo—the unconscious power of rejection, canceling the will of the world around him.
He did not know it was magic. To him, it was merely leakage from the emptiness inside.
Ghei took his first step in the new world.
Without purpose, without hope, without fear.
With only one certainty:
There was a god that needed to be killed.
And after that, perhaps—finally—he could go home.
Somewhere in the Empyrean strata, Devaros watched through a mirror of reality.
His true form—not the shadow in the Liminal Veil—was an entity with thousands of eyes and a single heart that had long since stopped beating.
One of his eyes, reflecting the image of Ghei walking alone across the purple plains, blinked slowly.
"Show me," Devaros whispered to the universe, "whether there is meaning in the absence of meaning. Whether there is purpose in the rejection of purpose."
No one answered.
But Devaros was accustomed to the universe's silence.
He only wished to know—before he was eventually killed by his own experiment.
Ghei Niruise walked.
He did not look back.
There was nothing left behind.
Nothing waiting.
Only step after step,
toward a question that already had its answer,
toward an end that had been set from the beginning—
merely delayed,
by the arrogance of a god.