The world was nothing but a spill of light and pain.

I floated—or I fell, I no longer knew. My body felt both heavy as lead and light as smoke. Every breath was torture; my lungs burned as if I'd swallowed fire. My head throbbed like a forge gone molten. Time didn't exist here. Everything dissolved—the outlines of my body, the logic of space itself. There was no up or down anymore, just a current dragging me along, a river of incandescent mana where my consciousness slowly unraveled.

I tried to move one arm, then the other, but my limbs were only ideas of flesh, illusions warped by the light. Each time I forced a movement, the pain ran up into my neck, brutal, sharp, almost mechanical. And in that formless chaos, a memory resurfaced like a shard of glass in the fire: Oratius.

I remembered. The fight, the light, the portal. His gaze, calm and pitiless, before everything collapsed.

I had been pulled into a portal.

A cold panic cut through me.

I didn't know where this passage led, but I knew one thing: I must not arrive. If Oratius had bothered to intervene himself, if this portal had opened by his hand, then the destination could only be hell. And I wasn't ready. Not like this. My mana reserves were in tatters, my body split from the inside, my head about to explode.

I wouldn't survive what waited on the other side.

The thought of the Demon King pressed itself on me, simple and terrifying. I shivered, a steel-cold chill running up my spine to the nape of my neck. If that was where I was headed, then this portal was a corridor to the slaughterhouse.

I refused to go.

No… not like this. Not yet. Not now.

I closed my eyes, gathering the crumbs of consciousness I had left. I felt the mana of the flux vibrating all around me, an invisible, living tide drawing me forward. It was a spiraling force, gentle and monstrous at once, a torrent that had swallowed everything I was. If I wanted to escape it, I had to strike where the current was densest—at the very heart of the passage.

My fingers trembled. My mind screamed with pain. But I had no choice.

- "…Oblivion."

The word vanished as soon as it left my lips, swallowed by the roar of mana. And yet, I felt it. Power opened in me like a tear, a note too high to belong to this world. The current reacted at once. Around me, the light changed tone—it twisted, cracked, and in that shiver I heard what sounded like a cry, a howl from another plane.

The portal began to die.

Black fissures traced themselves through the light, fine at first, then wide as wounds. Each crack made the void tremble; each beat of my heart widened the breach. The current broke, the structure folded in on itself. Space split open, twisted, refused to hold.

I felt something pull me downward—or perhaps upward.

An unknown, devouring force drew me toward one of those fissures. I had no time to resist. My body folded, my breath cut off, and the light went black.

Everything collapsed.

I only had time to think I might have destroyed my only chance at survival—then nothing.

No sound. No breath.Only one last word, hanging somewhere between my lips and the void:

- "…Not now."

I hit hard, hands first, my fingers sinking into warm, soft earth. The impact knocked the air from my lungs. The breath I dragged in burned my chest, tasting metallic and bitter, as if I were breathing dust and blood at once. When I lifted my head, the world stretched around me—a desert, but not like any I knew. The sand wasn't yellow, or red, or even brown. It was green. A deep, almost translucent green, shot through with shifting highlights, as if a sea of emerald had frozen mid-motion.

Waves of blue heat rippled along the surface, slow and hypnotic, making the horizon tremble like a mirage. With every pulse, the sky twisted, warped by sourceless gleams. Everything vibrated with a strange, muffled life, malevolent, maybe. I felt like I'd fallen into a sick dream—or worse, into a thought that wasn't mine.

I stayed on all fours for a long while, unable to understand where I was. My head hummed. The world spun. Even gravity felt skewed, unstable, as if each particle of air hesitated between falling and floating. I tried to speak, to mumble something, a curse at least, but my voice broke in my throat.

- "Where… the hell am I…"

The words sounded foreign. My tongue was dry, my lips split. I tried to push myself up, but my arms shook, unable to hold my own weight. So I collapsed again, my forehead striking the hot dust.

And that's when everything came back.

First, the pain.

It rose like a black tide, slowly climbing from my fingers to my shoulders, then flooding the rest of my body. Every nerve began to scream. My already battered muscles felt as if they were tearing from the inside. My back burned, my ribs clenched with every breath, and my heart hammered out of rhythm, as if it couldn't decide between living and exploding.

Then the memory.

Images tumbled without order: Garrum, his warped laugh, his arm spearing through Kairen, the fights, the mountain, the portal… Oratius. I remembered the word I'd spoken. Oblivion. I'd hurled it into the current, and the current had given way.

And now I was here.

The backlash from the battle and the spells crashed over me like a fist. Everything I'd held together, everything I'd forced to keep working in the fight, slammed back into me all at once. My veins still hummed with burnt mana, my lungs bled, my hands shook. I felt acid rise in my throat before I even understood what was happening.

I threw up. Violently, uncontrollably. The dark liquid splattered onto the green earth, drawing black circles that evaporated at once, as if absorbed. I wiped my mouth with a shaky hand, and the motion only worsened the pain in my shoulder. My breathing was ragged, uneven. My heart pounded too hard.

I tried to push myself up one last time, half blind, my knees planted in that strange sand, and I saw the sky above me. It wasn't blue or red—it was gray-blue, laced with veins of shifting light, as if an ocean hung suspended over my head.

I understood I was no longer in the world I knew.

A shiver ran through me, long, icy, almost gentle in its slowness. Then everything blurred. My sight clouded, my vision warped. The waves of heat began to dance faster, the ground seemed to tilt beneath me.

I felt my arms give, and the whole world folded in on itself.

I fell onto my side, unable to fight any longer. My breath slipped out in a short rattle, and the last thing I tasted was the blood in my mouth—bitter, warm, real.

Then nothing.

The green desert swallowed me in its silence.

Waking hit like a blow.

A strange smell struck me before consciousness fully returned. Something sour, dry, almost metallic. I opened my eyes, slowly, my vision still drowned in shifting shadows. The sun beat down from high in a gray-blue sky, and its glare danced across a green desert—the same place I'd fallen. The heat there throbbed, but not like fire: a clammy heat, like a living breath.

Shapes moved around me. Three, maybe four. Their voices, guttural, rolled through the air like bubbles of water under pressure. I tried to speak, to move, but my muscles refused to obey. My arms felt filled with lead. My breath scraped my throat like sand.

Someone crouched beside me. A pink shadow, its edges blurred. At first I thought my sight was lying—that the sun had warped the colors. But no. Their skin was truly pink, almost translucent, as if clear blood flowed just beneath the surface. The being wore a short tunic woven from plant fibers that faintly glowed. The face, though, was nothing human. Two thin antennae rose from the brow, trembling with the wind. The eyes, pale yellow, were oversized.

They held out a flask. The liquid inside rippled with an opalescent color.

- "Drink, traveler."

The voice had an unexpected gentleness, almost musical. Instinctively, I grabbed the flask. My fingers trembled; my lips trembled more. I drank.

The mistake was immediate.

It wasn't water.

The taste hit me like a slap—bitter, acidic, viscous. A burn climbed my throat, half strangling me. I tried to spit it out, but my exhausted muscles wouldn't respond. I choked, my lungs on fire, my vision blurring again. I felt the liquid come back in shudders, running down my chin, my chest. It felt like my throat was melting.

I let the flask drop. The ground drank what remained, and a bluish vapor rose at once. The air took on a acrid tang.

I coughed, for a long time, until I spat blood. My eyes watered, my fingers clawed at the earth. When I finally managed to lift my head, the pink being was still watching me. They were smiling. A peaceful smile, almost compassionate.

- "Not used to our air, huh?"

I tried to answer, but my voice snagged on a rasp. I reached a hand toward them, searching for a word, an explanation, anything. They leaned closer, their shadow covering mine. And just before I could make out their gaze, something flashed.

A gleam.

The hilt of a blade, or maybe the grip of a sword.

Then—crack.

The shock tore through my skull.

Pain exploded—white, dry, stunning. The world flipped, sounds warped, and everything went black.

~~

When I came to, the pain was everywhere.

A slow, awful pulse beat in my back. I felt something scraping my skin, rough, dry. My arms were being pulled, my legs weighed a ton, my whole body felt dragged. The ground thudded beneath me in a steady rhythm—the footfalls of a beast.

I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids were stuck, heavy. I forced them, and the light blinded me at once. The sky above had that same gray-blue hue, but it turned, it turned without end. A rope bit into my wrists. Another cinched my waist. My mouth was gagged—a coarse cloth, soaked with that sweet, chemical smell from the drink.

Then I understood.

I was being dragged.

A creature in the distance—a monstrous camel with two twisted necks—plodded across the green sand. Its hide seemed made of bark and flesh at once, veined with luminescence. A dozen pink figures walked around it, weapons in hand, laughing to one another in their sibilant tongue. The rope that tied me to the pack-saddle tightened with each step, tearing the skin of my back against the ground.

I tried to scream, but the gag smothered it. Only dull moans leaked from my throat. My body swayed, hauled like a useless burden over the dust. Blood pulsed in my head, beating to the beast's pace.

I turned my head, with difficulty.

The sky. Always that twisted gray sky, with blue veins pulsing slowly, as if even the light had a heart.

I closed my eyes. A nervous, muffled laugh shook my chest.

"…So this is hell?"

I sighed. Yes, it fit pretty well: the heat, the pain, the chains. It all tracked.

And then my gaze lifted a little higher.

At the front of the caravan walked a figure taller than the others. A woman—or at least, I think she was. Let's say that if it was a male at this point, I was ready to revise my entire biology.

Her skin was a glossy, pearly pale pink, and her outfit… gods, that outfit. A thin, tight fabric that seemed designed to test a man's faith. It hugged her chest so tightly it looked ready to give, her breasts pressing against the cloth, huge and bouncing with every step. Her barely covered backside swayed with each stride, shaped as if carved to snare the gaze of any being in this world.

And the worst part was, there was something regal about her. It wasn't just crude—she was a pink-skinned goddess.

I froze, my brain short-circuited.

Part of me—the logical, reasonable part—shouted that I was wounded, bound, being dragged by a monstrous animal in an unknown world. The other—the more primitive part, the stubbornly alive part—nodded slowly in silence, perfectly convinced that this was starting to look like a posthumous reward.

"Okay, think, Kaito. Scalding sand, pain, ropes, pink creatures… hell. But… her…"

I raised my eyes to the figure, her steady gait, the way her back rolled with the march, that thin cloth tracing the rest.

"…Well. Maybe it's paradise after all."

A silent laugh shook my throat, the kind you let out when you've officially lost your grip on survival.

Then the rope jerked hard, tearing me from my metaphysical theories. My back slammed into the ground, and a wave of pain knocked the breath from me.

No. Definitely not paradise.

But… not far off either.

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