Zay blinked as the Resonance Lens message faded from his vision.
Then silence. Complete silence.
He stood beneath towering trees—or what should have been trees. Their trunks stretched impossibly high into mist, bark stripped of color, leaves pale like faded bone. There was no green, no brown. No life.
"What... the hell?" Zay muttered.
His voice didn't reach his ears. Not at first.
Three seconds passed. Then he heard it.
The delay made the sound feel detached—like someone else had spoken for him.
He crouched down, breathing hard, and pressed his hand into the dirt. But it didn't feel like dirt. It didn't feel like anything. No resistance, no grit, no warmth. Like touching a dead memory of dirt.
His lungs worked furiously, dragging air in and out, but again—three seconds later, the sound of his breathing followed.
He looked down at himself, chest rising and falling, cuts still raw from his escape, ribs aching… but his body was already beginning to heal faster than it should.
"A damn Shattered Sequence…" he said aloud.
Three seconds.
Then the words came, echoing around him.
There was no wind. Not even a breeze.
And yet, the branches above him swayed, gently rocking as if caught in a storm that didn't exist. A silent gale.
Zay stood frozen.
Then his heart twisted.
His thoughts dragged him back—Renzo.
The way he'd looked. The way he stood behind the guards. The silence in his eyes.
'I… I can't believe he did that,' Zay thought bitterly. His hand clenched over his chest, fingers curling into trembling flesh as he tried to hold himself together.
He had lived so many lifetimes.
So many.
But this was the first time he had brought Renzo with him.
And this was the first time Renzo had betrayed him.
Zay's breathing slowed, syncing with the aching pain inside him, until he finally forced himself to move. His legs felt like stone, but he pushed forward, eyes scanning the colorless, jungle-like expanse.
Then he saw it.
A crater.
He stepped closer, hand falling from his chest, mind sharpening.
But as he reached it, his entire body froze.
It wasn't a crater. It was a footprint. And it was massive. The kind of massive that made the Ovaris Empire feel like a courtyard.
Zay's throat tightened as he swallowed hard.
'I have nothing left...'
Still, he kept moving. One foot in front of the other.
"Arbiter: Resonance Lens."
The notification hovered in his vision, unprompted. His eyes snapped to it.
⌈Name: Zay Yuso⌋
Resonance Name: Forsaken by Dawn
Aura Reserves: 80%
Passives: Disabled
Contracts: Cancelled
Seals: 7.5% reduced effects.
He hadn't summoned the information it displayed—and worse, it was incomplete. There was no time, location, or even his cores. No condition alerts. There was nothing of actual use in the current situation he wanted to view—well, besides his aura reserves. It was a good thing that was there.
He exhaled slowly and shook his head, clenching his chest again as another ache surged through his heart, before breathing deeply as he tried another command.
"Arbiter: Vault," he said quietly, through a shaky tone.
[Command Failed. The vault has been disabled.]
His heart dropped. He swallowed hard as he realized he couldn't even access his vault. He couldn't use the whistle that the former Dragon Queen had given him, as that's where it was stored.
Zay heard a loud groan behind him—a sound so loud and distorted that the swaying trees stopped. The ground shook, and he heard loud, heavy footsteps.
The swaying trees froze. The earth shivered beneath him.
Thump.Thump.
He immediately took off running, knowing the time between the sounds he heard and when they were made was delayed by a few seconds.
A thunderous growl rumbled above him.
Zay looked up.
There was nothing in the sky. Nothing but drifting pieces of stone falling like ash.
His eyes widened.
"FUCK!"
Aura wrapped around his legs instinctively as he dove into a nearby bush—pale, colorless, lifeless—and rolled to the side just as a monolithic chunk of stone plummeted into the ground.
It hit the ground with the force of a divine hammer, shattering into pieces and carving a new crater beside him.
And then the pieces turned to dust. Dust that was carried away… by wind that wasn't there.
The mist above twisted, thickening as it churned into clouds. Then came rain.
At first, soft—almost unnoticeable. But as the droplets fell around Zay, he noticed the ground beneath him beginning to erode. Not just dampen, but dissolve. The earth hissed quietly with every drop, as if the land itself recoiled from the touch.
He tilted his head upward.
The rain was growing—not just in volume, but in size and speed. Each drop fell heavier, faster, with a strange weight to it.
And then he saw it.
Color.
The rain was a deep, unnatural green—dark and viscous, like tainted ink bleeding from the sky. It was the only thing in this pale, lifeless world that held any color at all.
'Damn it…'
That was all he could think, forcing every other thought down into the pit of his gut as the leaves above began to dissolve, melting like paper in acid. He broke into a run, boots splashing through the ground. After only a few seconds, he spotted it—a cave in the distance.
The cave was brown. The second thing in this entire realm that had any trace of color.
He glanced around and saw no creatures, no footsteps and no sounds beyond the hissing rain as it devoured everything around.
His gaze snapped to his shirt. It were starting to dissolve as well.
Aura surged around his legs, flaring in defense as he pushed forward, sprinting harder. Every step came with the soft hiss of rain as it poured down all around him.
He reached the cave. His aura faded the moment he crossed the entrance of the cave. He collapsed onto his back, chest heaving, before taking off his shirt and throwing it onto the ground beside him, not wanting to risk the chance of having any residue of acid gnawing at his skin.
A few minutes passed with heavy breathing before he sat up and laid his back against the stone wall of the cave, leaning his head back to look at the brown ceiling—made of dirt and a sort of material that was pale.
He exhaled slowly, chest still rising and falling with shallow breaths, then closed his eyes.
Darkness took over.
The silence of the cave blended into the stillness behind his eyelids, and slowly… memory crept in.
He saw Renzo again. Three resets—three different versions of the same boy.
In the first, they were at home in Ovaris. Renzo was younger then, always following Zay around the house, tugging at his sleeve, asking questions he didn't know the answers to even though Renzo was older. Their mother's voice would echo down the hallway, calling them for dinner, while the scent of fresh bread filled the air.
In the second reset, Renzo was older—stronger, more curious. Zay remembered the clink of tools and the deep scent of iron and coal as they worked beside Dale in the mines beneath Ovaris. Their father's laugh was rare, but in those dim tunnels, coated in dust and sweat, it had echoed off the stone. Renzo would try to carry loads twice his weight just to prove himself. And every time he stumbled, Dale would pick him up with a gruff pat on the back.
The third reset… That one stung the most.
Zay had joined them part-time. Helping where he could, just to be around them longer. He had promised himself he wouldn't leave again—not yet. Not until he was sure they'd be safe.
But then the war came.
Conscription swept through Ovaris like a tide, and they were taken. Dale and Renzo both. Drafted into battles they had no reason to fight as they were simple miners.
And neither made it back.
Zay's breath caught in his throat.
His eyes opened slowly, and the world came back into view. He shook his head as another surge of pain erupted in his chest, his face contorting into a grimace. His right hand shot up from the ground, clutching his chest tightly. He inhaled sharply and in short bursts, exhaling in slow, staggered breaths—hoping it would have some sort of effect.
His eyes flicked around the cave, the dim, brown-toned interior stretching farther than he'd first noticed. Shadows clung to the walls, and the path ahead sloped downward into deeper darkness.
'There might be a pickaxe... a dagger? Hell, I'll take anything as a weapon at this point. I won't survive in this hellhole without one. That's for sure... and this pain in my heart, it's making things... much more difficult.'
He pushed himself up slowly, his breathing still uneven. One hand stayed pressed tightly to his chest, fingers trembling over the fading ache. With the other, he braced against the wall, steadying himself.
Then, step by step, he walked deeper into the cave, praying to Nira that there would be something. Anything at all.
[Prayer has been blocked.]
'Oh... lovely. I can't even pray to my goddess. I understand the contract is cancelled for a week in this place... but at least let me talk to someone...'