Ethan pushed open Raine’s bedroom door—only to stop dead in the doorway. The floor was awash in crimson. For a heartbeat, he thought it was blood. But as his eyes adjusted, he realized it wasn’t a bedroom at all. It was a field of blossoms, stretching out in all directions, their vibrant petals layered so thickly it felt like he was walking on a living carpet.
He stepped inside, the sweet fragrance wrapping around him, and brushed his fingers against the velvet softness of a budding flower.
"Could it really have taken shape...?"
His gaze drifted farther. Beyond the flowers, a canyon yawned open, and at its end, a colossal waterfall thundered down. Without hesitation, Ethan moved toward it. The spray dampened his skin, cool against the lingering heat of the air. As he neared, the water peeled apart in a slow, deliberate motion, forming a narrow corridor just wide enough for him to pass through.
Everything about this place was exactly as he rembered.
He descended a winding stairway of pale, glowing stone, each step carrying him deeper until the roar of the falls faded. What awaited him below was... another world entirely. There was no sun overhead, no torches or lanterns lining the walls, yet a golden haze illuminated everything—light woven into the very air itself.
In the distance rose a gatehouse so massive it seed to spear the heavens. Five words, jagged and ancient, were carved above its archway. He had never learned this script, yet their aning burned instantly into his mind: The Gates of the Underworld.
The gates towered beyond asure, black iron doors studded with rivets the size of boulders, their sheer weight seemingly holding up the sky itself. On either side, fortress walls stretched into infinity, bisecting the world into two unreachable halves.
Ethan felt the pull of old mories as he drew closer. Just beyond that shimring black veil lay the interior of the Underworld—a place his mind recalled but could not fully touch. The last ti he’d stood here, sothing had cut the mory short. His recollection ended at this very threshold.
Yet this illusion—if that’s what it was—had already dragged fragnts of the past into clarity. Could it also reveal what had been erased?
Without thinking, he stepped through the veil. Darkness swallowed him whole.
The world on the other side was... wrong. A hazy gray fog obscured everything. Every scene the illusion had shown so far—faces of strangers, streets he’d never walked—had been detailed and flawless. But here there was nothing but blur.
Why? Could this mory truly not be rebuilt?
Then—
"Ti is running out. You must return!"
The voice was faint at first, like an echo across water. Ethan clung to it, replaying the sound in his mind until the blurred words began to sharpen. As they did, the chaos in front of him shifted. Shapes took form.
He was standing atop a high platform, wind whipping around him. Far below, titanic structures stretched into the mist. Before him stood a single figure—tall, imposing.
His skull throbbed. The surface of his inner mind rippled like boiling water. He knew—he knew—this person mattered more than anyone else in his life.
The figure spoke, lips moving, but the sound refused to reach him. Slowly, the details erged: black armor, ornate and layered, covering every inch of the body except the head. No helt. Long hair cascaded like a waterfall down her back, the ends brushing past her calves. Her face remained a sar of shadow—until it began to clear.
A woman.
Even half-ford, her beauty was arresting, the kind that seared itself into the mind. Her lips began to part—
The world convulsed.
A deafening crack split the air, as if the sky itself had torn apart. The platform shook. The air turned violent. In the sa instant, the entire world shattered like glass under a hamr.
Ethan thought he heard her make a small, startled sound before she stepped toward him, hand lifting as if to reach—
A soft sigh escaped her lips.
Then—blackness.
When awareness returned, Ethan was sowhere else entirely.
The air burned. The horizon blazed. As far as the eye could see, the ground was molten rock, rivers of lava snaking between jagged cliffs. The heat pressed in from all directions, thick enough to taste.
He stood at the lip of a volcanic vent, watching the magma churn below. He wasn’t alone—creatures of all shapes and sizes were scattered across the landscape, each one wearing the sa baffled, wary expression.
"Where... is this?" a horned man muttered.
"I don’t know. I was on the Fourth Layer, fighting a beast," a reptilian woman replied.
"I was on the Third," soone else added.
"I was on the Fifth." The voice ca from a towering figure with leathery, bat-like wings. His presence was enough to make those nearby shuffle back, but his tone was oddly casual, almost conversational.
A young human piped up, "Wait—lava everywhere, endless fire... this has to be the Eighth Layer of the Spirit Realm, right?"
Silence fell. The na hung heavy in the air. Ancient texts spoke of a realm like this—one of molten stone and unending heat. The similarities were undeniable.
"But why here? Why all at once?" another creature demanded.
The winged one tilted his head. "For , the whole world just... broke apart. Like the void itself tore open."
Murmurs rose.
Ethan kept his thoughts to himself. ’Could that... have been because of ?’ The idea was absurd—yet the timing lined up too perfectly.
"That’s exactly it," the winged creature agreed when soone echoed his experience. "An overwhelming wave of raw energy hit, and then—everything collapsed." Despite his fearso appearance, the Dreadlord carried himself with an ease that disard the tension around him.
Far away, in a place Ethan could no longer see, a different scene was unfolding.
On that high platform from before, the armored woman stood alone. Her floor-length hair had retracted into the depths of a helt, black as midnight, its visor marked by two flickering erald flas.
A voice behind her asked cautiously, "Lord of the Underworld... what just happened?"
"It’s nothing. You may go." Her tone was flat, but it carried an authority that brooked no questions.
When the other figure withdrew, she remained still, her gaze fixed on the empty air before her.
"Where did you go... and what did you encounter?" she murmured. "To project even a fragnt of the City of Life and Death... I only hope the forces guarding the Underworld didn’t destroy you in the attempt."
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