After a while, Izumi forced himself to organize his thoughts before they could drown him.
His mind was a whirlpool of borrowed memories and unfamiliar sensations — a storm threatening to swallow what little of himself remained.
He drew a long, trembling breath. Then another.
Each inhale steadied the pulse that wasn't his, each exhale reminded him that he was still alive.
At first, everything around him was pure darkness — a suffocating void that pressed against his eyes like velvet. No horizon, no sound, no warmth. Only silence.
But as his breathing slowed, the black began to bend. Shapes emerged — faint outlines, shifting gradients, glimmers of texture in the sea of nothing.
He could see.
Stunned, Izumi froze. "Is this… how people survive here?" he muttered to himself, voice swallowed by the dark.
It was the only logical explanation his fractured mind could grasp.
Perhaps everyone who entered the Abyss gained this sight — or perhaps it was something else entirely.
Something wrong.
The silence pressed deeper, but it wasn't empty anymore. Now he could hear it — the subtle hum of air moving through unseen caverns, the faint crackle of static in the distance, the whisper of dust shifting across stone.
A cold breeze slid across his skin, carrying a scent unlike anything he knew — metallic, ancient, and faintly sweet, as if the air itself remembered death.
He looked down and noticed his shadow — faint, but present — shifting slightly even though there was no source of light. The realization sent a chill crawling up his spine.
Within minutes, the world sharpened. His vision grew unnaturally clear — the black no longer hindered him. He could make out the ridges of stone, the smooth surface of what looked like glassy soil, and the faint shimmer of air that rippled like heat despite the cold.
Far off, jagged spires jutted from the ground like the bones of some colossal creature. The land wasn't flat — it breathed in quiet undulations, as though the Void itself was asleep beneath his feet.
He felt… different.
Lighter.
Stronger.
"I can see… in the dark," he whispered, disbelief dripping from his tone. "This shouldn't be possible."
He looked around more carefully now, analyzing every detail — yet there was nothing worth mentioning. Just a vast, open expanse that stretched endlessly into the horizon, flat and barren.
But then — something shifted.
At the edge of his vision, the ground moved. Not like a creature, not like wind — more like the darkness itself folding inward.
A ripple. A pulse.
And then, from the heart of that ripple, a faint violet glow began to breathe in the distance — steady, rhythmic, almost alive.
Izumi narrowed his eyes.
The light wasn't bright, but it called to him.
Each pulse seemed to echo in his chest, as though his own heartbeat answered it.
And for the first time since awakening in this cursed world…
he felt the unmistakable sensation of being watched.