The silence in the cove wasn't real. It breathed.
It pulsed through the roots and stone, hummed behind Shin Kurosawa's ears like something alive and listening. Every footstep felt like a message—carried by the thorn-covered walls and relayed into something deeper. Something watching.
This was not a cave.It was a living trial.
The world Shin had fallen into didn't obey the laws of the real one. There was no sun. No ceiling. Just endless stone twisting upward into blackness, and roots—thick, pulsing, blood-touched roots—that wrapped across everything like veins. The walls sweated. The air reeked of rust and ash.
This was the Thorn Castle, one of the Void's oldest testing grounds.
He'd been told—by whispers, rumors, desperate half-truths muttered in the slums—that those who entered the Void either came back changed... or didn't come back at all. The Void wasn't just another realm. It was a parasite built from fear itself. And Thorn Castle? It fed on pain. Slowly. Lovingly.
Shin's cheap, dark-blue sword was stained black. He had already fought.Twice.The creatures here didn't bleed—they unraveled, like smoke trying to remember how to be solid.
His hands stung with cuts. His coat was torn.
Still, he moved forward.
Until a sound broke the quiet—soft, deliberate footsteps echoing through the thorn-carved halls.
He turned, weapon raised.
A towering figure stepped from behind a jagged wall of coiled vines. At first, all he saw was a battered, dented helm—white, streaked with old blood. Long blonde hair spilled from beneath it, brushing over armor that had clearly seen real battle.
As she emerged into the faint glow of a pulsing root, Shin blinked. She was tall. Easily over six and a half feet. Her muscles were visible even through her ragged, thorn-cut coat. One arm held a chipped metal shield, the other a dagger that had clearly been sharpened one too many times.
She walked like a seasoned fighter. Calm. Efficient. But her expression?
She looked… bored.
"Stop swinging like a blind idiot," she muttered as she approached. "You'll end up mulch."
Shin's eyes narrowed. "You're not one of them."
"Nope." She gestured toward a nearby root with her dagger. "I'm not brainless or drooling. Usually."
"Then who are you?"
"Ephyra."
She tilted her head, eyes flicking over him. "You're new. Still breathing. Which means you're lucky or very, very dumb."
"Shin."
"Well, Shin, welcome to the worst school trip of your life."
They walked in tense silence, Shin still gripping his sword tightly.
Eventually they came to a cleared chamber—a hollow where the thorns were thinner and the walls weren't twitching.
"Sit," Ephyra said. "Rest matters here."
He hesitated, then sat across from her.
"You know where you are?" she asked.
"I figured it out when the wall tried to eat me."
She gave a dry chuckle. "This is Thorn Castle. First Trial for most Void entrants. It's... alive. It likes to test patience. People who panic die fast. People who hesitate die slower."
Shin nodded. "The thorns... they pulse when you're scared."
"Exactly," she said. "Fear fuels the roots. Pain guides them. If you're bleeding and thinking about your regrets, they love it."
He looked down at his sword. "I've killed three already."
"You'll kill more. Or die trying."
She leaned against the wall, eyes closed for a second. "My parents passed their Trials years ago. Made it out. Got rich, clean, safe. Then I got chosen. They didn't even cry. They just said, 'Don't disappoint us.'"
Shin stared. "Must be nice, having people who even noticed you."
He didn't mention his past. He didn't remember enough of it to call it one.
"…Everyone gets abilities, right?" he asked.
Ephyra nodded. "Void gives everyone a gift. Some get curses instead."
"You have yours?"
"Light manipulation," she replied. "Refraction, flashes, decoys. Doesn't kill, but it helps me fake angles and blind beasts."
Shin thought for a moment.
"I have extraction," he finally said. "I can pull energy. From objects, I think. Maybe more."
"That's rare," Ephyra said. "Useful. Better than a guy I met last week. Could only heat his fingernails. Burned himself before the first monster even touched him."
Shin raised an eyebrow. "He dead?"
"Big time."
A sharp clicking cut through the air.
Ephyra tensed. "Crawler."
A centipede-like monster crept into view, massive, plated with jagged bone and rusted claws. A cracked porcelain mask was fused to its skull—etched with symbols neither of them understood.
Shin didn't wait. He moved fast.
The blade glowed faintly as it struck. The monster shrieked, flailing—but Ephyra was already beside it, flaring a blinding flash of light into its face and jabbing her dagger beneath the plate.
The crawler twisted—convulsed—then burst into smoke.
Behind it, etched in dry black on the wall, words appeared:
"There is no end. Every step forward is deeper into yourself."
Shin stared. "It's watching."
"It always is."
They walked on—slower now. The Void whispered through the roots. Not language. Just pressure. Names. Regrets. Echoes.
They passed names carved into the bark of the walls, followed by one line each:
"She told me it wasn't real.""He smiled as I bled.""I lied. I'm still lying."
Shin looked away.
The corridor opened into a chamber where the air felt colder.
A man stood in the center.
He wore white armor, polished to a mirror-like shine. Long white hair fell over his shoulders, wild and unkempt like a bored prince's. He looked young. Smirked like a child. Eyes gleamed with mischief.
"Ephyra," he said, clapping slowly.
She stopped.
Shin felt her freeze beside him.
"You're alive. That's just adorable," the man grinned. "I figured you'd be fertilizer by now."
Shin stepped slightly forward, but the man ignored him.
"You brought a pet," he said. "Is that allowed in Thorn Castle? Or is he a stray?"
Ephyra spoke slowly. "Riven."
The grin grew. "Still remember my name. Sweet."
"What do you want?"
"Oh, just a visit," he said, twirling a white-bladed dagger between his fingers. "Wanted to see how the girl who left her whole team to die was doing."
Shin blinked. Turned to Ephyra. Her jaw clenched.
Riven's voice turned mocking. "They cried for you, you know. Screamed. Especially Renna. You remember her? The healer you abandoned when you sprinted for the gate?"
"Shut up."
Riven laughed.
"You're still fun."
His eyes locked on Shin. "Word of advice, blue boy: don't trust her when things go bad. She saves herself."
He turned around.
"No need to fight," he called over his shoulder. "Not yet. Just wanted to say hi."
He vanished into the dark like he belonged there.
Shin looked at Ephyra.
"…What the hell was that?"
She didn't answer."Let's move." She yelled
They walked again. But something had changed.
Shin kept his sword close—not because of the monsters or the thorned walls—but because of the two people he had just met. One walked beside him. The other had vanished into mist.
Both left a weight in his mind.
Ephyra had saved him. She'd shared food. Explained things. Helped. But now… her eyes felt colder. Her steps less human. Like each one was calculated to seem just reckless enough.
And that man—Riven—he didn't seem like a lunatic or some warped survivor. He acted like a child playing a game he had already won.
Shin had been raised in a city of rot. Lies lived longer than people there. And something in how Ephyra reacted to Riven's taunts—it didn't sit right. Her anger felt too contained. Her guilt too rehearsed.
She never denied it.Never defended herself.
She owned the betrayal so completely, it felt almost… practiced.
And then there was the question she hadn't asked.
Riven had mocked Shin directly, called him her "pet," her "stray." Ephyra didn't say a word. Didn't snap back. Didn't correct him.
She let him say it.
That silence dug deeper than any blade.
Shin didn't know who to trust. Maybe no one. Maybe that was the point of this place—to make you see monsters in everyone, even your allies. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being nudged forward, step by step, toward something someone else had already seen coming.
Something neither of them had told him.
Even now, as Ephyra walked ahead, her hair flickering like gold flame in the dim red light, Shin felt it:
Who was Riven? And why did he want to mee Ephyra and warn Shin about something?