I let my senses be overwhelmed by the feeling that surrounded me. I didn't know exactly why, but there was something strangely familiar about it — like a distant echo of a forgotten memory. Whatever place this was, I was almost sure I had been here before.
With that thought lingering in my mind, I slowly opened my eyes. The blurry vision turned the world into indistinct smudges, as if I were underwater. Still, little by little, shapes began to take form, and clarity gradually returned, revealing the environment around me.
What I saw, however, didn't seem to belong to any known world. It floated in the midst of an immense void — but not the kind of void you notice when you close your eyes or dive into absolute darkness. It was a dense space, saturated with something invisible, yet tangible.
There was a presence there, maybe multiple. Energy pulsed silently around me, and memories — which I wasn't sure were mine or imposed — surfaced like distant echoes. I felt suspended in infinity, with the strange certainty that wherever I looked, there would always be more. More space. More time.
Before me stretched the most terrifying and hypnotic spectacle my eyes had ever beheld: a supermassive black hole. Facing it was like staring into the primordial abyss — no defined shape, only the oppressive feeling of absolute emptiness, where light, sound, time, and even the very meaning of existence vanished.
It was an absent presence, a wound in the fabric of the universe. Around it, an accretion disk spun frantically, glowing in violent shades of red, orange, and white. The colors pulsed like colossal flames, in chaotic spirals, sucked in by an invisible and relentless force. The glow was beautiful and threatening, like a final scream before eternal silence.
Nearby stars flickered like shards of glass scattered over a dark and ashamed cloak, shimmering with fragile and menacing beauty. Some followed chaotic paths, dragged by the crushing gravity of unseen forces.
Others remained strangely still, as if time around them had been suspended, frozen in an eternal moment. It was a silent dance of destruction and wonder — a cosmic ballet ruled by ancient rhythms, so vast and deep that they escaped all human understanding.
I felt as if I were floating above a sacred altar, suspended in a space where time dared not enter. The void around me neither pulled nor pushed me — it just embraced me. There was something in it that recognized my existence, as if this place knew exactly who I was.
As if it had been waiting for me forever. My hands hovered before me, trembling — not from cold, for there was no temperature here — but from something deeper. They were tremors of the soul, a silent echo of recognition born from within, as if a forgotten part of me was finally awakening.
Then the feeling came back stronger — intense, almost tangible. Like a forgotten memory hidden in the deepest folds of the mind, an invisible breeze swept through my thoughts, awakening something asleep. I had been here before. I knew it with a conviction that defied explanation but insisted itself.
This place wasn't just a physical space — it was an echo, a distorted reflection of something unfinished, interrupted before its end. And, as if the world itself wanted to confirm my suspicion, a voice whispered inside my mind, clear as the sound of a bell amid silence.
It wasn't made of sound. It was more intimate than any noise could be. A subtle presence that insinuated itself through my thoughts, shaping them into silent words. It wasn't my voice — and yet, somehow, it was. As if something inside me had spoken before I could realize: (We meet again)
I thought. The word spun in my mind like a comet trapped in orbit, always tracing the same path, never finding rest. I returned... but from where? Why did I return? I tried to remember. Fragmented images came, shrouded in mist: a hand stretched out in the void, the warmth of a last touch, the shiver of a farewell, a sky tearing like old fabric... and then, the fall. An endless fall, without ground, without comfort.
My throat tightened, and a knot formed inside me — not from fear, but recognition. Something in me knew, like someone who rediscovers a forgotten scar. I had left this place once before. Escaped... or maybe been taken. But now — now I was back. And the world seemed to whisper, silently, that it had forgotten nothing.
I slowly turned around, alert to every muffled sound as my eyes scanned the surrounding environment. The space obeyed no known logic — it was neither linear nor continuous. There were subtle distortions, like folds in the fabric of reality, and shimmering cracks in the air that pulsed softly, as if breathing.
In certain spots, I saw echoes of myself — blurred reflections, distorted like old memories projected by a mind that wasn't entirely mine. Further ahead, a silhouette watched me silently. It was motionless, shrouded in thick fog that seemed to rise from the very ground.
That figure wasn't unfamiliar. There was something about it — the way it stood tall, the almost imperceptible way it dissolved at the edges of my vision — that awakened an unsettling feeling of familiarity, as if I knew it from some forgotten dream.
I took a step forward. The space around me offered no resistance — on the contrary, it seemed to mold itself to my presence, as if inviting me to proceed. There was something alive in that place, something silently breathing, attentive to every move I made.
Then the voice returned, clearer this time, almost by my ear: (Do you remember? What we did... what you did?)
Remember? I wanted to ask what that meant, but I knew words would be useless here — everything was felt: will, memory, intention intertwined in a single instant. The black hole, silent and colossal, seemed to capture that question, as if also waiting for an answer. Its presence pulsed with an ancient, deep vibration, like the slow and vast heart of a sleeping titan, whose ancestral power echoed in the surrounding void.
I stood there, motionless, staring at the dark vortex pulsating before me. The light around it slithered like flaming snakes, undulating in a hypnotic movement, only to vanish shortly after, one by one, swallowed by oblivion. There was a strange beauty in that chaos, a mix of fascination and despair that held me captive.
I closed my eyes again, feeling the weight of absolute silence — though there was no air to breathe, my chest expanded in an almost instinctive effort: (I... feel like I remember)
When I opened my eyes, the figure in the fog was much closer. Now I could make out its face — it was mine. But not exactly as I remembered it. It was a version of me I had seen in the last times I interacted with Nekra and Althea in the past. Still, it remained shrouded in thick fog and its contours blended with the moist air around.
It was hard to describe precisely; something about it escaped my understanding. As much as it was me, there was something strangely different — a familiar presence yet completely distinct, like a distant reflection, an echo of myself from another reality.
In the next moment, a subtle sensation washed over me — an almost imperceptible presence, faint and delicate, yet filling the space with an almost tangible intensity. My eyes, as if drawn by a silent magnetism, automatically turned downward to what lay beneath me: the swirling vastness of the black hole.
At the heart of that pulsing void, the supermassive black hole spun with a hypnotic slowness, its blazing accretion disk radiating violent colors — shades of glowing red, fiery orange, and blinding white — flickering flames intertwined like serpents of fire in an eternal ballet.
It was the dark heart of the abyss, an infinite well where time bent and the laws of reason dissolved like smoke in the wind, leaving only the absolute mystery of a universe slipping beyond control. But from the core of that absolute darkness, something began to emerge.
A faint, opalescent light, like an ethereal breath of life made of shimmering mist and pure, pulsing energy, gently slipped out from the event horizon, defying the relentless gravity that devoured everything around it. The darkness, once impenetrable, slowly began to give way, revealing a delicate outline — a fluid, almost liquid shape unfolding with silent grace, as if awakening from a long ancestral sleep.
At first, it was just a vague silhouette, wrapped in shadows, hard to define or understand. Gradually, that shape began to take on sharp contours — long, wavy hair that seemed to float with a supernatural lightness, as if gravity simply ignored it.
The strands danced softly in the air, their colors shifting in subtle, hypnotic waves, oscillating between a soft dawn pink, a deep mysterious blue, an opalescent white glowing with an inner light, and ethereal tones beyond any common description, as if made of pure energy in motion.
Her skin, pale like fine porcelain, became translucent at the edges, revealing delicate patterns of light slowly moving beneath the surface, as if alive.
Her eyes, large and golden, spiraled with vertical pupils, hypnotic and shrouded in a silent mystery that seemed to draw and hold the gaze.
She had the height and slender posture of a teenager — maybe fifteen or sixteen years old — whose presence was both imposing and surprisingly fragile, like a crystal statue about to come to life.
All I could do was watch in silence. My eyes fixed on the form slowly emerging from the black hole — it was Nyara, the virtue embodying chaos in its purest and most overwhelming form.
At the same time, she represented the force created to contain the chaos of the universe itself, a living paradox, pulsing with unstable energy that seemed to tear the air around her.
As I held my gaze on that imposing presence, a shadow from my past silently appeared behind me. When it finally came close, its body passed right through mine, as if I were just an illusion. I looked at my hands and noticed a faint translucency — even for someone like me, whose body was naturally translucent, this was different.
In that moment, I realized I wasn't really there, that I was just reliving a memory, like the last times when I remembered Nekra and Althea. I clenched my hand tightly, almost feeling the echo of my own touch, before turning my gaze to my past self and following him, immersed in that strange sensation.
Moments later, we were standing before Nyara. She floated in the air, her form gliding smoothly, almost as if she were drifting in an invisible sea. I fixed my eyes on my past self, and in that instant, something intense shone in his eyes — a mixture of guilt and silent pain.
No matter what he had done, that guilt was etched deep in his being. His lips parted, trying to form words, but no sound escaped. It was as if no phrase could contain the whirlwind of feelings flooding me in that moment — a silent, heavy confusion impossible to express aloud.
But then a voice echoed through the silence — clear and soft, like a whisper filled with longing and nostalgia: "Sister?"
I froze at the sound of that voice, and so did my past self. Our eyes met, and almost simultaneously, turned toward the floating entity before us. Her eyes — so deep and intense — locked onto us with unexpected gentleness.
There was such genuine affection there, a tenderness beyond words, something so pure even I struggled to understand. It was as if, in Nyara's eyes, I was the center of her universe, her everything, the one who filled every empty space in her being.
"Nyara" my mouth moved on its own, releasing the sound of my voice that softly echoed in the silent space. The feeling, though unexpected, was not unfamiliar — it wasn't the first time this had happened to me.
In the seconds that followed, no words escaped my lips — it was as if both my present self and my past self were trapped in silence, unable to find anything to say. The air felt dense, heavy with a mute tension that only grew.
But Nyara continued, her voice dragging and sleepy, as if just awakened from a deep sleep, carrying an almost fragile softness: "It's okay... sister... do it"
Honestly, I wasn't sure what exactly was happening. All I could understand was that I had done something — something wrong, something that filled me with overwhelming guilt, a guilt so deep it made me ashamed of myself, like I was failing myself on a level I didn't know how to fix.
Nyara seemed to know exactly what I would do, and yet she allowed it. Not only allowed it, but did so with a calm smile on her lips, as if accepting my failure without judgment. That only made the weight on my conscience even heavier, tightening the knot of guilt inside my chest.
Then, without saying another word, my past self-extended his arm. Something began to spin above his hand — a dark vortex, deep and black as if carrying all the universe's darkness trapped in its whirlpool. My eyes fixed on that strange energy, confused and restless.
Though I didn't fully understand what it was, there was something familiar. The slowly spinning vortex above my past self's hand radiated the same dense and unsettling energy I had already felt flowing from the black lake, as if they were two faces of the same shadow.