Darkness took him.
One blink, he was on the ruined street, tasting blood and ash, hearing Porpo's voice distort like it was coming from the bottom of a well. The world had been noise and fire and pain, the crack of collapsing concrete, the wet hiss of something burning nearby. Then the next instant, everything cut out so cleanly it felt like reality itself had simply shut its eyes.
Silence swallowed him whole.
He was back, in the void.
Endless black stretched in every direction, absolute and suffocating. There was no horizon, no sky, no ground, just an infinite absence that pressed against his senses until even the idea of distance lost meaning. His body floated curled inward, weightless and numb, as though gravity itself had forgotten him. He did not know whether he was up or down, forward or backward. There was no reference point, no anchor, only the quiet hum of nothingness pressing against his thoughts.
For a moment, he wondered if this was death.
Then sensation returned.
Cold seeped into him first, biting and invasive. His body jolted as it settled against something solid, a frigid surface that sent a shock through his spine. His breath hitched as his back met the floor, the impact dull but unmistakably authentic. Opening his eyes, he found himself still surrounded by darkness, thicker now, heavier. The air felt stale, unmoving, as if it had never known breath.
He pressed a trembling hand against the ground and pushed himself up, leaning heavily on one arm as pain flared through his body. His vision swam. He looked around for any sign of life, any flicker of motion or sound, but saw only endless black swallowing everything beyond a few indistinct feet.
A sharp pain erupted from the left side of his ribs.
"Agh!" he grunted, falling to one knee as his hand clutched his side. The sensation was wrong, deep and grinding, like broken shards shifting beneath his skin. Each movement sent jagged agony lancing through him, making his stomach twist. He tried to take a deep breath, but the pain cut it short, leaving him gasping, his chest burning as air refused to fill his lungs.
"Where am I?" His voice echoed faintly, warped and thin, as if the void itself were absorbing the sound before letting it go.
Nothing responded.
The silence stretched, oppressive and mocking.
"HELLO! ANYONE HERE?!" he shouted, forcing the words out with what little air he could muster. The effort made him wince as the pain intensified, fire racing along his ribs. His voice vanished into the darkness, swallowed without a trace.
Frustration and fear clawed at him. His thoughts spiraled, fragments of the street flashing through his mind. The fight. The impact. The moment everything went wrong. If this was not death, then what was it? He could not stay here. The idea of remaining trapped in this nothingness gnawed at him, worse than the pain in his body.
So he did the only thing that came to him.
He pushed himself back to his feet, grunting as his injured side protested viciously, and began to walk.
Each step was a small act of defiance. His boots scraped faintly against the unseen floor, the sound sharp and lonely in the oppressive stillness. His balance wavered, his body trembling as torn muscle and shattered bone ground together with every movement. He did not know where he was going. There was no direction, no path, only forward because standing still felt like surrender.
That was when he saw it.
A bright light flickered in the distance.
He froze.
For a heartbeat, he thought it was a hallucination, a cruel trick of the void conjured by his failing mind. He blinked hard. The light remained, a stable point of white cutting through the endless black. It did not flicker or pulse. It simply existed.
Hope stirred, fragile and dangerous.
He started toward it, each step an exercise in agony. Sweat beaded along his brow despite the cold, his breath shallow and ragged. The distance refused to shrink at first, the light seeming impossibly far, but he kept moving, teeth clenched, body screaming with every shift of weight. He was moving with the agonizing slowness of the truly wounded, driven by instinct rather than strength.
"HELLO?!" he called again, his voice cracking.
"Look at that," a familiar voice purred.
Jagger stiffened.
It was Ophilia's.
The sound came from everywhere and nowhere at once, smooth and intimate, echoing through the void like silk dragged across stone. It brushed against his thoughts, not heard so much as felt. "On the verge of death again. How disappointing."
He turned in a slow, panicked circle, eyes searching the darkness. There was nothing. No shape. No movement. "Show yourself," he gasped, his gaze snapping back toward the distant light.
The light grew brighter.
Suddenly, the world lurched.
The void twisted violently as if reality itself had grabbed hold of him. His stomach dropped as the ground vanished beneath his feet. The darkness stretched and blurred, and he felt himself being hurled forward, air roaring past his ears though there was no wind. The light rushed toward him, swelling until it filled his vision, forcing his eyes shut just before the impact.
When he opened them again, he was no longer alone in emptiness.
He stood before massive bars of light.
They rose endlessly upward and downward, vertical pillars of pure, silent energy that vanished into the darkness above and below. The space around them hummed faintly, not with sound but with presence. It was like a prison cell forged from something beyond matter, impossibly precise and utterly inescapable.
Pain slammed back into him without mercy.
"ARGH! FUCK!" he cried out, dropping to his knees as his body finally gave in. His hand shot out instinctively, slamming against the bars of light to keep himself from collapsing entirely. He expected heat, or vibration, or some violent reaction.
There was nothing.
The surface felt like cold metal, smooth and absolute. No warmth. No resistance beyond the simple fact that it was there. He stared at it in disbelief. It did not glow brighter at his touch. It did not react at all.
It simply was.
A boundary.
An end.
And past that end, he saw them.
Two crimson eyes stared back at him from the darkness beyond the cage.
Fear pierced through him, sharp and immediate, cutting through the haze of pain like a blade. His breath caught as his instincts screamed at him to flee. He scrambled backward, dragging himself across the cold floor until he was several meters away, his back hunched defensively.
The eyes shifted.
Then the figure they belonged to slowly faded into view.
A woman stepped forward from the darkness behind the radiant bars, her form resolving piece by piece. With each measured step, black smoke bled from between the bars, curling outward in slow, silent waves before dissolving into nothing. It clung briefly to her ankles and calves before dispersing like ash.
Her skin was pale as moonlight, unnaturally so, stark against the void. Extremely long white hair fell straight down her back and pooled at her feet, smooth and lifeless, drinking in what little light the bars allowed. It framed her face without softening it, emphasizing the sharp lines of her features and lending her an austere, sculpted severity.
She was slender, her form precise and controlled rather than delicate. There was no hesitation in her posture, no wasted movement. Nothing about her presence suggested fragility.
Two black horns rose from her forehead, polished and dark, curving upward with predatory elegance. Between them, etched into her skin, rested a small black four-pointed star, perfectly centered and unmistakably deliberate, like a mark of ownership rather than decoration.
Her eyes glowed a deep crimson, steady and unblinking as they fixed on him. When she smiled, sharp fangs slipped into view, subtle but unmistakably predatory.
Her body was wrapped in a black, scale-like pattern that clung to her like living armor. It traced her form in fractured segments, leaving pale skin exposed beneath, as if darkness itself had cracked and fused to her flesh. The surface caught faint highlights, glossy and smooth, hinting at something hard and unyielding beneath the sheen.
She did not test the bars. She did not press against them.
She simply stood there, composed and still, as though the barrier existed for his sake, not hers.
"Look at you," her voice purred again, softer now, resonating through the void and directly into the fractured corners of his mind. She placed a hand against her side of the cage, fingers splayed with deliberate elegance. "So close to death. And yet, you cling so desperately to that broken little body."
Jagger stared at her, his breath hitching in a ragged gasp. The pain in his side dulled, pushed aside by the ice-cold clarity of her presence. He knew that face. Not from memory, not from anything he could consciously recall, but from something more profound. Something instinctive. Something buried in his bones.
It was her.
"Ophilia?" he whispered.
She tilted her head slightly. Her crimson eyes brightened, the glow intensifying as her smile widened just enough to reveal another flash of fang.
"Yes," she seemed to say without the word ever leaving her lips.
"Help me…"