~ Part I: The Hollow Dimension
The world went white.
Not bright. Not blinding. White like the absence of everything. Like someone had taken reality and scraped it clean, leaving behind nothing but the canvas beneath. No sound. No smell. No sensation. Just white.
Then darkness.
The white collapsed inward, folding into itself like paper being crumpled by an invisible hand. The darkness that replaced it was not the darkness of night or shadow. It was the darkness of void. Of nothingness. Of a space that existed between spaces, where the rules of the living world did not apply.
Viktor stood.
His body, naked and glowing with a faint amethyst luminescence, was the only source of light. The glow, which pulsed from his skin like a heartbeat, cast long shadows into the void. The shadows, which should have stretched infinitely, stopped. As if the darkness itself had edges. Walls. A floor that he could not see but could feel beneath his bare feet.
