Beyond the cabin walls, where no human eye could peer through.
Beneath the floors made of living lightning that carried every living being on the very bullet train.
And underneath the tiny silhouette of Grondier.
There was nothing.
Not in the metaphorical sense, which one would usually put it that way if there was a need to, nor was it in a physical sense, where one would look inside an empty room.
A complete lack of anything was what I could come up with as my body hung above the eternity.
It hung there in an unbroken silence.
All alone.
- Plip!
A drop fell down my nose, breaking into countless little pellets before disappearing into the deep below without a trace of its existence left behind.
I didn't notice dry sweat falling down my chin as I stared at the emptiness beneath the cabin's floor.
No.
I couldn't notice it.
The void that was empty of all things below my very feet stayed hidden under my gaze.
Everyone around me looked at it, watched it with awe and maybe boredom, as their feet could be heard going past my very being. Yet my eyes stayed glued to the darkness as if it was inviting me in, pulling on a tiny string that kept tugging at my very core.
It looked oddly...
"Alluring."
The word left my mouth sour, like it didn't quite match what I was feeling right now. It felt like it was underwhelming to simply call it that way.
Perhaps in another millennium, people would find a way to describe the magnificence of that very void.
"Isn't it?"
He said from above as if he had been waiting here all along. I didn't even see him standing behind the line of people that I gathered with my lack of flux.
I could feel a smirk in his tone, Marco was it?
'So he was the reason I didn't fall.'
Something was holding onto the back of my shirt tightly, reminding me of the way Cesar kept taking a hold of my clothes every time he wanted to transport me in a matter of seconds.
Now that he spoke to me, I could feel the space around us.
The floor beneath my feet was solid, but for some reason, there was nothing to see.
Almost like there was nothing to hold us.
"It's a cabin made entirely of flux."
Marco said, as if he had read my thoughts, pulling me down on the imperceptible floor.
I tensed, but slowly accepted the hard barrier beneath my chest.
'Of course it is.'
Flux wasn't something to be taken lightly. It was, after all, a power granted by the rift.
No one knew what it was or where it came from, but one thing was clear after some people couldn't awaken. It was that they could never know what power others were granted since their very birth, be it old or young, you could never perceive flux if you hadn't been born with it.
I smiled unintentionally as I felt my way up a nearby seat and shakily stood up. There was nothing around us.
No walls to lean onto, no roof to hide us, and no floor to stand on. But I felt that it was here, like just knowing about its existence made my racing heart steady slightly.
'Ngh.'
Sharp pain came from my cheek, making me touch it and feel cold blood smeared on my fingers.
It was another curse of the scar placed on me, making it bleed whenever I felt... off. Be it pain from another injury or shock from being surprised, it always started to reopen whenever I felt or expressed my emotions.
The loudly beating heart that felt like it would burst out of my chest kept pounding loudly as I looked around at other passengers who stood in the cabin without much of a problem. They didn't seem to notice me, as well as Marco, who kept walking around and striking up conversations with whoever crossed his path.
'I should close it.'
Quietly swallowing my saliva, I reached for my pocket before carefully pulling out a small wooden case.
It wasn't as big as one would expect, being of a size just enough to perfectly fit inside my palm. With a thin, round shape and violet color, it was a compact pill carrier that was made by Jayce himself over a year ago.
Opening it with a click, two pills emerged sitting on a neat cotton cloth next to each other, one as blue as a sapphire and one as red as a ruby.
Without much hesitation, I pulled out the red pill.
Marco stood next to me, speaking to some old lady with a strange smile plastered on his face. I sighed and walked up to him unwillingly.
It looked more like a crawl, though.
"Hey, Marco."
He cocked his head and then turned back to the old lady before whispering something and waving her goodbye.
"What's up?"
I looked around hesitantly and then leaned down, trying to keep my voice a whisper.
"Do you know where the nearest bathroom is?"
"Not really."
He shrugged before looking down into the emptiness and leaning to the side.
"It's not like you're going to need to hold it in for that long."
He gestured with his chin forward, making me turn around and finally look up from my feet.
Behind the train spanned a wall of murky grey fog, so thick that you could not see a speck of sunlight from the other side. It rose as high as the skies allowed it and fell as low as the emptiness could withhold it, ending with its edges swallowed and flailing relentlessly under the wind.
It didn't look like it had an end, acting like a wall which I always watched from the citadel's upper floors but could never cross.
Now I was on the other side, sitting in a flying bullet train that surged with lightning flux.
The more my neck turned, the longer it seemed, going as far as my vision allowed it and ending with a straight line of complete darkness cutting it in half.
In front of the train, however, above the edge where the darkness ended, and right where the fog was at its thinnest.
Was a bright structure illuminated by four crystals decorating it from beneath.
Red, Yellow, Blue, and Grey.
They looked as if they were the ones holding up the giant castle of reinforced steel above the void below, pulsating with bright glow that dissipated the fog around it each time.
"The Last Checkpoint."
Marco said triumphantly from the side, puffing up his chest.
I looked back at the tall castle built in the middle of the void. Behind it was a wall similar to the one we had just left behind.
'Frigora huh?'
The place of eternal snow where winter never ends was something I always wanted to visit, no matter how many times I begged my parents in the past, they never bothered to visit it alongside me.
Yet now.
That word didn't seem like much of a stretch anymore.
The corners of my lips curled up accidentally, drawing a drop of blood that traced the bottom of my chin.