Aura's eyes widened, sweat pouring down her trembling face. She could not believe what she had just seen. The moment her hand touched the wooden beam, the massive block, heavy enough to crush anything beneath it, was suddenly flung aside as if something had thrown it with immense force.
The crowd around them gasped in shock, voices overlapping.
"What happened?"
"Why did the beam move on its own?"
"It was completely still a moment ago!"
At that moment, Aura collapsed onto the sidewalk, unable to stand. Tears streamed down her cheeks as her gaze fell upon the blood seeping from beneath the broken beam, the blood of Kenzy, whose body was no longer recognizable.
Frustration, disbelief, and guilt tore through her all at once. If she had known this would happen, she would never have carried out her plan. None of this had been part of what she had prepared for.
Truthfully, Aura had never stopped loving Kenzy. But she had her own reasons, reasons she believed were necessary, that drove her to betray him. She thought it was the better path. Yet humans can only plan; they cannot outrun the flow of fate that has already been laid before them.
As Aura drowned in her grief, Hyura tried to comfort her. Hyura herself struggled to accept what had happened to the man she had so recently hurt. Guilt twisted inside her, and she desperately wanted to apologize.
She approached Kenzy's remains, but then she froze. Something faint and white, like glowing smoke yet not quite smoke, rose from the body.
"Do you see that?" Hyura whispered.
Aura snapped her head toward the body. She saw it too. And instantly, without hesitation, she stood and ran. Hyura did not chase her; she merely watched as Aura sprinted away, stunned and speechless.
Aura ran with a single thought burning in her mind: there is still hope.
She believed with absolute certainty that the light she saw was the beginning of reincarnation. Kenzy had to be reincarnating into another world, because this world, a world without any supernatural power, could not possibly produce such a cycle.
Using every ounce of her strength, Aura traced the flow of Kenzy's departing soul. When she pinpointed its destination, she vanished. It was teleportation, something impossible in this world, but not for someone like Aura.
She tore open the system of the world Kenzy was drifting toward. Countless barriers resisted her intrusion, yet Aura forced her way through. And finally, she entered that world.
* * *
In a place dark, silent, and endlessly empty, there existed a single entity, a single soul, floating in the void.
It was Kenzy.
He could not tell whether he was floating, standing, lying down, or whether such concepts even existed anymore. There was no up or down, left or right, front or back. Only a blackness so absolute that even black no longer felt like a color.
Perhaps this was what people called the Dimension of Emptiness.
He could feel nothing. He merely drifted, desperately clinging to the fragments of his identity, his name, his origins, his memories, repeating them over and over, because if he did not, he knew he would dissolve into a lost soul.
Kenzy understood he was dead. Yet he felt no regret. Or maybe he did, but his heart was hollow, empty of anything. He gazed into the void and saw nothing. No color. No shape. Not even darkness. Only absolute nothingness.
And so he continued to think, because thinking was the only way to keep himself from disappearing.
A hundred years passed. Kenzy remained in the void without losing himself.
Why?
Because he felt something there with him. Something or someone. He did not know what, but the presence kept him anchored.
Another hundred years passed.
"Who are you?" Kenzy finally asked.
The being did not show a clear form. It simply shimmered like a tiny star, a small radiant point of light.
"I do not know," it replied.
"Then why are you here?"
"I am not sure. But in my mind, there is only you. It feels like I am meant to be here, to keep you company."
For the first time in two centuries, Kenzy laughed. The creature's innocent and honest words felt strangely comforting. At first he was wary, even uneasy. But gradually he grew used to the presence. He felt less alone.
They talked. They shared memories. They existed together in the timeless void.
Years passed. Centuries slipped away. Millennia dissolved.
And after three billion years, Kenzy realized that the emptiness he once feared no longer frightened him.
His once hollow heart now held a tiny light, small but brilliantly bright.
He was no longer alone.
And he gave the creature a name:
Eliris.