…Breathe…
He didn't even know if he still could.
Everything was black. Cold. Bottomless.
Then… pain. Gentle at first. Then tearing. As if every cell in his body was being ripped apart, reshaped… burned from the inside.
He screamed. But no sound came out.
Or maybe the world had gone deaf.
His chest heaved open and shut. His blood boiled. He felt his bones cracking, twisting. His veins glowed beneath his skin. His heart pounded at a monstrous rhythm.
He fell to his knees.
Or perhaps he was still floating in that abyss.
But one thing was certain:
He was no longer human.
The dragon's mana — pure, ancient, unleashed — had changed everything. Violated everything. Rebuilt everything.
Then, in that ocean of darkness, a light.
A black mask, a few meters away. Still there, like a star in the void.
He stood up slowly, every muscle screaming.
And he walked.
Black hands burst from the ground, trying to grab him, to hold him back. They clawed, they bit, they begged.
But he was no longer someone they could drag down.
He reached for the mask.
Touched it.
And everything changed.
The world shattered into a thousand fragments.
Memories. Voices. Screams. Symbols.
An unknown god.
A silent pact.
Then a voice, in his head:
"You were born in oblivion… you shall be reborn in the void."
And only then did he understand:
He was not dead.
He had been remade.
His body still burned… but this time, it wasn't pain.
It was power.
His muscles were harder than steel. His bones, reinforced. His senses, sharpened. His skin, marked with dark veins pulsing with energy.
He looked at his hands.
They were no longer the same.
They belonged to a predator.
He raised his eyes.
The black mask still floated before him.
An ancient object. Alive. Cold and ravenous.
He reached out. The mask rested in his hand as if it had always been meant for him.
Slowly, he brought it to his face…
And the instant it touched his skin, a wave of energy exploded around him. The ground trembled. The air grew heavy. Shadows stirred, drawn to him.
The mask fused with him, rooting into his flesh, into his soul. He could no longer remove it. And deep inside… he knew he didn't want to.
He stood tall.
He no longer trembled.
The wounded boy… was gone.
A new name was born in the abyss.
"The old me… no longer exists," he whispered, his voice deeper, echoing through the void.
"Now… I am Void."
Silence.
That was what greeted Void after his declaration.
Not a breath. Not a whisper.
Just darkness… deep… infinite.
He looked up. No light. Even the sky had vanished.
Only that suffocating void remained.
The ground beneath his feet was cracked, scorched by the released mana of the dragon.
Fragments of blackened scales were scattered everywhere.
Everything reeked of an ending — of collapse, of the aftermath of catastrophe.
But he… he was still standing.
And alive.
He walked.
One step, then another.
His feet struck the rock — sometimes soft, sometimes sharp. But he felt no pain.
This new body wasn't just stronger… it was more enduring, more resilient, as if it had been sculpted to survive hell itself.
Void didn't know how long he had been walking.
There was no day or night down here.
Just that faint half-light, lingering from the mana still hanging in the air.
"This abyss is too deep… Maybe it was carved by that dragon. Or something else."
His thoughts raced, but he remained calm.
That cold, detached calm he had never known before.
"Find a way out. Survive."
He climbed a steep slope, then followed the edge of an underground cliff.
Below, a black river flowed slowly — formed from what was left of liquefied mana.
He considered drinking, but something warned him… it wasn't water.
It was alive. Dangerous.
He kept going.
The walls of the chasm grew narrower as he advanced.
Sometimes, he had to crawl beneath jagged arches of stone; other times, climb steep walls with his bare hands.
But not once did he slow down.
His breathing remained steady.
His legs, though tested, never tired.
"This body… it's like I've been born again."
He touched the mask.
He couldn't remove it.
But strangely… that didn't worry him.
After a few hours — or maybe days — he emerged into a vast cavern.
Huge. So enormous he couldn't see the other end.
There, he stopped.
In front of him: bones… massive ones.
Dozens of skeletons. Not only dragons, but creatures he couldn't even recognize.
Beings with multiple wings, twisted heads, tails lined with blades.
A forgotten graveyard.
He stepped forward slowly.
The ground cracked beneath him.
The bones, nearly fossilized by time, crumbled at his touch.
"How many years… or centuries… since anyone last came here?"
He knelt before a skull.
A faint, strange energy still vibrated around it.
Then, he moved on.
He followed a faint current of air — almost imperceptible — that seemed to blow from a narrow passage.
It was risky.
But it was the only lead.
He slipped through.
And he walked again.
And again.
For miles.
His feet sometimes slipped, he fell, stood up again.
The scenery began to shift slightly.
Less ash. Less mana.
The walls grew more rocky, more natural.
He heard a sound.
Faint. Very faint.
But real.
Water.
He quickened his pace.
The sound grew clearer, sharper.
Finally, he emerged into another cavern.
There, a waterfall cascaded from a high natural opening, lit by a thin beam of light from the outside.
Not sunlight…
But the sky.
There was a way out.
Too high to reach now, but the fresh air flowing in was enough to fill his lungs with a breath of hope.
He sat down.
For the first time since awakening… he allowed himself to breathe.
To relax his muscles.
"I will get out. I don't know how… but I will get out. And this world will remember me."
His gaze rose toward the light above.
The abyss hadn't destroyed him.
It had transformed him.