Sakolomi took a deep breath, his breath heavy. Then he opened his eyes again.
Mana… impossible to summon.
But he still had something else — his essence resonance.
A vibration older than magic, a beat buried in the very fabric of his existence.
He clenched his fists, searched deep within for that forgotten pulse, and forced it to surge forth.
A tremor shook the air.
A red glow radiated from his skin, fluid and burning like living blood.
The creatures charged again, monstrous, relentless.
Their screams made the shadows tremble.
Sakolomi remained still — eyelids closed.
The aura around him vibrated like an inverted heartbeat.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"Magic has never been my strong suit…
So be it. If it abandons me, I will fight with my fists — but not like before. In a way none of them can imagine."
The first creature leapt.
Sakolomi barely moved.
A fluid, almost instinctive movement, and the strike passed through empty air.
He counterattacked — a sharp, precise, brutal punch — but to no effect.
No crack, no mark. Nothing.
Another attacked. Same result.
The assaults came one after another like a rain of claws and screams, and Sakolomi dodged again and again, eyes still closed.
Each time, his fist struck, never wounding.
But he continued, without relent, without anger — as if he was learning.
And suddenly, he stopped.
Silence.
A thin smile stretched across his lips.
" I think I understand now."
The next creature sprang, howling.
Sakolomi pivoted, raised his arm, and struck.
This time, the impact resonated — a pure red wave split the air.
The monster's head exploded in a shower of shadow fragments.
Its body dissolved in a silent flash, erased from all existence.
More beasts approached, furious.
Sakolomi finally opened his eyes.
His gaze was no longer red — it lacked any direction, like an abyss without horizon.
He struck into the void, without a target.
Once. Twice.
And then… everything stopped.
The world became motionless.
The creatures remained suspended, frozen in a "non-place."
There was no longer up, down, front, or back.
Directions themselves had collapsed.
Sakolomi whispered:
I have just removed some notions.
The monsters tried to move but could no longer.
They no longer even knew in which direction to exist.
They were as if erased from any possible trajectory, trapped in a paradox.
Even the Deviants, able to evolve in the absence of laws and notions, capable even of destroying all notion
could do nothing against this.
Because Sakolomi had not merely suppressed notions —
he now struck beyond non-notions.
His essence imposed a form of existence that even nothingness had to recognize,
and in this realm, no Deviant could move.
The creatures were trapped.
Suspended in a paradox of pure instant — a space without direction, without non-direction, without possibility of movement or thought.
Their existence oscillated between being and non-being, as if the world itself had forgotten where to place them.
Sakolomi clenched his fist, ready to bring down his judgment on them.
But suddenly, a roar pierced the silence.
The Nameless Queen screamed, and her voice alone made the structure of the paradox tremble.
A wave of horror spread —
the laws Sakolomi had erased reformed, broken, inverted.
The creatures lit up with sickly light, their distorted bodies swelling with renewed power.
They began removing notions themselves, imitating Sakolomi, hunting him through contradictory spaces.
Even their fists mimicked his.
But nothing worked.
Sakolomi stood at the center of chaos, his red aura vibrating like a flame without origin.
Their attacks slid off him without contact, as if his essence resonance had detached him from all possible harm.
He had become a point of absolute immunity in a decaying universe.
He lifted his head toward the Nameless Queen.
Her cracked face seemed to weep living soot, yet she laughed — a soundless laugh, made of shivers and silence.
— You are the first I must strike down…
Sakolomi leapt.
The ground tore beneath his impulse.
The Nameless Queen grew, again, and again… until she obscured the entire dome of the domain.
Her shadowy body swarmed with black anchors, each dripping existential poison.
Where they fell, reality rotted:
gods, spirits, even Deviants would perish at their mere touch; it was absolute poison, even for immortality.
Sakolomi knew.
If he was touched, all would be over.
The Queen spat forth a still larger anchor —
a tide of living ink poured over the entire Pit of Whispers, spreading like a voracious ocean.
Gravity itself seemed to twist.
Sakolomi wanted to rise but realized the notion of flight had been removed by the Queen.
He fell, powerless, toward the black sea.
— Not on my watch!
He struck the void.
His fists created propulsion waves, reversing the fall with each impact.
With every blow, the void gave him altitude back.
Again, again, again —
until he managed to stay airborne, defying the very law of movement.
He charged toward the Queen.
— It's just you and me!!!
The scream she unleashed tore the skies.
A howl so piercing it shattered concepts themselves.
Space vibrated, notions exploded, and Sakolomi felt his mind falter.
His ears bled, the pain resonated through his being.
He fell again toward the ink tide.
— No! No!
Tearing his hands from his ears, he struck again —
and the propulsion brought him back to her, in a last leap.
He struck with all his strength.
Nothing.
Not even a scratch.
He smiled — a calm, almost resigned smile.
His second blow struck, purer, deeper — and this time,
the Nameless Queen exploded.
Her body disintegrated in a shadow flash,
and from her essence burst a tide of black ink, larger, more furious.
It spread, engulfing all that remained of the domain.
Sakolomi watched the devouring wave approach.
He knew.
The Nameless Queen tolerated no inequality.
If she died, her adversary must die as well.
He closed his eyes.
One last sigh.
— …So this is balance.
The sea of ink engulfed him.
Then swallowed the rest.
The Pit of Whispers disappeared — devoured in total silence,
as if it had never existed.
Sakolomi drifted in the liquid void.
His body slowly sank into the black sea but did not dissolve.
No pain, no suffocation — just infinite weight, a silence that seemed to watch.
His eyes opened.
Red bubbles escaped his lips, rising toward a sky he could not see.
— I'm not dead…?
His voice was lost in the water.
A moment of perplexity, then a shadow stirred beneath him.
Something immense was awakening in the depths.
The Nameless Queen.
Her cracked face slowly emerged from the abyss, her thousands of arms forming a network of shifting darkness.
She did not move, but her gaze — if she had one — fixed him with an almost human intensity.
Sakolomi wanted to struggle, but his body refused to obey.
He felt his own autonomy freeze, his will chained.
The void itself seemed to hold him back.
And suddenly, the Queen spoke.
Her voice echoed in the water like a reversed echo, each word splitting into several contradictory sounds:
— Why… are you so lost in your own existence?
Sakolomi's heart tightened.
It was not a question, but a soft condemnation, a truth pronounced with pity.
Before he could answer, the Nameless Queen disintegrated, melting into the sea —
and vanished, as if she had never existed.
Sakolomi remained alone.
The black sea rippled slowly around him, then clouded.
Something was approaching.
A silhouette, human this time.
Floating above him.
Descending without ripple, without sound.
Sakolomi recognized it immediately:
— You… you again…
It was the same creature he had glimpsed in his shower, long before everything began.
A nameless presence, with blurry features, half-real half-liquid, whose dark hair undulated in the fluid like strands of night.
Her face expressed an abyssal sadness.
She leaned gently toward him, their gazes met —
and Sakolomi felt something.
No fear, no hatred.
A familiarity.
As if this entity had known him forever.
— Why… are you so sad? he murmured. Who are you really?
No answer.
Their gaze froze — two mirrors, one above, the other below.
And suddenly, the sadness in the creature's eyes turned to hostility.
She slowly raised a hand.
Her arm lengthened, deformed, became a liquid blade.
Before Sakolomi could move, the hand pierced his belly.
A brutal shock.
Blood mingled with the black sea.
He wanted to scream, but the water swallowed everything.
The creature looked at him once more, without hatred, almost with regret… then vanished, as if swallowed by the light.
The black sea evaporated suddenly, like a dissipating dream.
Sakolomi fell.
When he opened his eyes, he lay on a ground covered with shimmering grass.
Around him, colossal trees stood, their leaves shining like glass, their roots forming immense arches.
The flowers, gigantic, breathed softly, exhaling a golden mist.
An unreal beauty, but too vast, too silent to be natural.
Sakolomi got up, still gasping.
— What is… this place?
The wind passed through the trees, carrying an almost familiar whisper.
An ancient breath, like the end of a dream… or the beginning of another.