Kai stood before the blue-gold doors.
The symbols carved into the ancient metal pulsed with an ethereal light, like the heartbeat of something sleeping behind the gate. Their glow was neither warm nor cold—it possessed the temperature of old truths, the type that forgot mortals even existed.
Again his gaze drifted across the runes.
[THE ABYSSAL OF THE ENDLESS BEINGS]
The words throbbed faintly, as though recognizing him.
Kai's jaw flexed.
"Again with this… Endless Beings thing."
He exhaled slowly. "I really need Cataline for this. Why did I never pay attention?"
His eyes slipped down to his hand band—chains wrapped around his wrist like restrained night. Ancient runes coiled along the metal, some sharp, some soft, all incomprehensible. He traced the inscription with his fingers.
[This is the Blood Legacy Relic of the Endless Being of—]
And then the final part blurred.
Something twisted.
His mind tried to read it—
—and simply couldn't.
The missing portion warped into incomprehensible symbols, like letters rearranging themselves the moment he thought about them.
Kai blinked.
Stared.
Tried again.
*[This is the Blood Legacy Relic of the Endless Being of ##]
He frowned.
"Really? Hash symbols? My brain is censoring runes now? Great. Fantastic."
He sighed—long, tired, irritated.
Then he turned back toward the massive doors and activated his crimson eyes.
The world strained.
His head throbbed instantly, violently, like his skull had become a drum the universe was beating with a hammer. His vision swam. His breath caught. The symbols bent and twisted, crawling like living things across the blue-gold metal.
The eyes were trying.
Trying to force comprehension into him.
Trying to unravel meaning he wasn't meant to survive.
Trying to answer questions he wasn't prepared to ask.
And then—
His hand band ignited.
Not with light, but with the opposite of light.
Blackness.
Pure, absolute, devouring blackness.
The chains rattled against his skin, then rose, snaking up his arms like living shadows. In the next instant, the darkness swallowed him whole.
A breath.
A blink.
A collapse of space.
Kai found himself elsewhere.
A world made of nothing but water.
Limitless.
Bottomless.
A realm where the horizon was a ring of shifting currents and the sky was a void of drowned reflections.
He stood—or rather floated—in this sea of infinitude and realized:
He was transparent.
Not invisible.
Not fading.
Transparent.
A spirit without substance.
His fingers passed through the water without touching it.
His feet made no ripples.
His presence left no mark.
He was an observer.
A forced witness.
And then—
The sea trembled.
A figure rose from the water.
Kai tried to focus, his crimson vision sharpening—
But the chains on his wrist snapped upward, lunging like protective serpents. They coiled around his eyes, blotting out his perception in a flood of shadow.
Darkness wrapped him like a shroud.
And Kai didn't even resist.
Something instinctive and ancient inside him whispered:
If you see that being… you die.
His body obeyed before his mind could argue.
Through the veil of shadow, he sensed—not saw—the scene unfold.
Two presences spoke.
Not with words.
Not with language.
But with pressure, weight, and divine intent—forces so huge that the mind tried, desperately, pathetically, to convert them into sounds it could comprehend.
The sea beneath them stretched endlessly, a mirror of black glass reflecting no sky. Its surface tensed, as though afraid.
On that ocean of silence stood a figure draped in constellations.
Starlight wept from its form, bending the horizon around it.
The Star-Wielder.
The one who governed the far lights above creation.
Across from him, rising in spiraling luminescence, emerged another.
Her presence was soft as a sigh.
Heavy as the abyss.
She moved like memory, sorrow, and drowning truth.
The Water-Bearer.
The one whose domain was depth, remembrance, and forgotten wounds.
The waters hushed.
The horizon bowed.
Then—
Her voice drifted across the sea, tidal and mournful, carrying the weight of worlds drowned in their sleep.
THE WATER-BEARER:
"Why have you entered my sea, wanderer of the infinite lights?"
The star-clad being did not disturb the water.
His presence cracked reflections simply by existing.
THE STAR-WIELDER:
"Why hide truth beneath borrowed memories?"
A wave rose—
froze—
hung motionless in the air.
Light dimmed.
THE WATER-BEARER:
"Some truths are not meant to be borne."
Her voice layered itself—thousands of currents speaking as one.
"Some wounds must be drowned… lest they break what remains."
Starlight twisted, sharpening into a narrow spear.
THE STAR-WIELDER:
"Even the Wind-Sovereign could not alter the outcome."
His tone was cold, unwavering.
"Yet you entered their minds… and buried what was never yours to bury."
The waters laughed.
Soft.
Cold.
Ancient.
THE WATER-BEARER:
"It was through me that they first glimpsed truth."
"And through me… they survived it."
A sigh beneath the sea.
"I merely reclaimed what my waters granted."
Starlight dimmed further, collapsing like a dying sun.
THE STAR-WIELDER:
"It was not yours to take."
The sea darkened.
Its glow sinking into a blue so deep it seemed to swallow consciousness.
THE WATER-BEARER:
"It was mine to give."
Her words sharpened—
then roared beneath them.
"And mine to take back."
The waters surged upward, swallowing the horizon
and the memory shattered.
The realm broke apart like a mirror struck by truth.
Kai was hurled out of it.
His vision snapped back into the hall of mirrors.
His feet planted before the blue-gold door.
His head aching.
His breath sharp.
Everything he had heard—everything he had felt—made no sense.
Endless Beings?
Gods?
Memories buried in the minds of… someone?
He didn't know.
He had no idea.
And somehow, that made the silence of the mirror palace even heavier.