The world trembled. A deep, almost inaudible sound reverberated through the white void, as if the very fabric of that dimension were breathing—on the verge of collapse. The vastness began to ripple, and for a moment, I couldn't tell whether the universe was shrinking around me or I was being hurled away from it. Gravity shifted with every heartbeat—sometimes I fell, sometimes I rose. The once serene, endless white began to fragment into translucent veils, rippling like torn curtains caught in a wind that didn't exist.
Then, on the horizon where nothing should have been a golden spark appeared. It was faint at first, but alive. It grew quickly, pulsing like the heart of a sleeping god, and its glow devoured everything. When the light finally exploded, the white was consumed by darkness, and the sensation of falling ceased. I opened my eyes—or perhaps simply awakened in another plane and realized I was somewhere else once again.
**
The weight of the world crashed down on my head as though an entire mountain had collapsed upon me. Every bone creaked, every muscle screamed. It felt as if I were being compressed by a divine press a colossal, merciless force. My skull throbbed with a sick rhythm, and dizziness consumed me. The air was dense, intoxicating, thick with the stench of burned flesh and molten iron. I tried to take a deep breath, but it felt like inhaling liquid smoke.
At first, I saw nothing only a pulsing blackness, a living darkness. I only understood why when I felt something massive shifting slowly above me.
I was being crushed.
Something gigantic pinned me against the ground. I tried to move my arm, but all I could feel was the warmth of blood trickling from the top of my head, dripping rhythmically onto the ground below. The sound that filled the air was deafening—the metallic clash of millions of swords striking in unison, like a war so vast its echoes shook the world itself. And between the thunderous roars, an animalistic, guttural scream so fierce it made the earth quake beneath me.
"What the hell is this…" The words escaped, broken, choked by pain. But in that same instant, something hit me unexpectedly the sound of my own voice.
"This… is Elvish?"
The language flowed naturally, yet it sounded ancient, primal like a forgotten dialect.
I pushed my body with everything I had left, trying to lift whatever was crushing me, but it was useless. Every attempt only drove me deeper into the ground. Each stolen inch brought new agony. My lungs screamed for air.
The pressure kept building… and building… until I thought my skull would split in half.
Then an explosion erupted beside me—
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
—and everything plunged into chaos.
I was thrown like a rag doll, the world spinning upside down, and the sky above was red an intense, seething red, like boiling blood.
My body twisted midair, and only then did I realize how destroyed I was.
My skin burned like live coal; the pain was constant, so overwhelming it bordered on abstract. My right hand… simply wasn't there anymore it had been scorched away up to the elbow.
When I hit the ground, the impact blurred my consciousness, and a metallic taste flooded my mouth.
The earth shook again, this time harder.
I turned my head with effort, vision hazy, and saw a gigantic shadow falling beside me. It was black, dense, and when it struck the ground, it obliterated everything within dozens of meters.
Dust and fire rose like walls and only when the storm cleared did I see what it was.
A leg. A colossal, grotesque leg, black as charcoal, pulsing with glowing veins of molten red.
"Shit…" I muttered, voice hoarse, body trembling. For a moment, I felt as though I'd just fallen into a nightmare that hadn't even begun yet.
I stirred my inner energy, searching for something familiar and found it.
That vibrant, living flow of mana. The realization hit like a blow of truth: this time, I was truly in an elven body. The feeling was unlike anything I'd ever known the mana didn't just flow, it overflowed, pulsing as if it had a will of its own, as if the world itself were breathing with me.
"Move, you dying fools! Death is a luxury you cannot afford! The only option is to fight, fight, and even after death, keep fighting!"
The voice thundered across the chaos.
An indomitable authority, overflowing with power and despair. Then came the sound of the world collapsing—cries in unison, fiery explosions, steel clashing against steel.
A living war, chaotic and endless.
I turned my focus inward, trying to understand the body I now inhabited—and what I saw stunned me. The core wasn't spherical, not the condensed jewel of energy I'd always envisioned.
It was a waterfall. It had no borders, no defined shape, yet it remained anchored where a core should be.
A continuous, untamed flow, pouring torrents of mana through my energy channels.
"Holy shit…" The curse escaped before I could stop it.
It was raw, physical power.
Then I noticed something else.
The density of mana around me was absurd—almost tangible.
I felt that if I reached out far enough, I could grab it, mold it—or even drink it like a thick, burning liquid. Within seconds, my channels flooded, overflowing with more mana than my body should ever contain.
My body erupted in pure energy, and a wave of power surged outward from me like a silent roar, displacing dust and fragments of metal from the ground.
Coughing blood, but seized by a savage clarity, I rose to my feet. The weight of burns, wounds, and exhaustion pulsed under the constant vibration of mana. Still, I stood firm, doing everything I could to ignore the pain.
And when I finally looked around… what I saw made me let out an incredulous laugh.
"You've got to be kidding me..." I muttered, staring at the hell stretching before my eyes.
In the distance, an ancient tree rose toward the heavens—so colossal that its branches pierced the clouds, vanishing far beyond sight. Its trunk was so wide it could have housed entire cities at its base, and its greenish glow pulsed like the heart of that entire land.
From its branches, countless black dots swarmed outward, streaking through the air like insects toward the battlefield. But when my eyes finally adjusted to the distance, I realized what they were—elves, wielding spears and wearing armor that reflected the flickering light of explosions below.
The entire sky had become a swarm of warriors.
On the opposite horizon, where a vast, vibrant forest should have stood—only death remained. The titanic canopies had been reduced to dust. The ancient roots were charred. What was once an ocean of life had become a gray desert, a barren wasteland covered in ash and smoke. The cracked ground trembled beneath the roar of something colossal. No birds, no whispers—only the echo of destruction.
And then I saw it.
The air vanished from my lungs. Time stopped. A shiver ran down my spine, freezing me to the core.
"No... no... no... this can't be real..."
In the sky, a dimensional rift had opened, devouring the firmament. A gaping wound—not the size of a city, but of an entire capital. Not just any capital, but one that could rival Chaos, the heart of the Demon Empire. It was a dungeon on a continental scale, a dimensional scar spanning more than ten thousand square kilometers.
The problem was—nothing was coming out of it.
No creatures. No hordes.
The surface of the rift lay in utter silence.
But that silence, I soon realized, was only the prelude.
From within, something far worse began to emerge.
An entire mountain, inverted, descended slowly through the breach. Its surface was purple and festering, covered in pulsating veins and open sores that oozed black miasma, poisoning the land for kilometers around. At its center—embedded like a precious gem—was a vast golden area, glowing, alive, throbbing as if it were breathing.
It was beyond comprehension.
A living mountain.
A colossal heart trying to cross the boundary between worlds.
And for the first time since awakening in this body, I felt genuine fear.
I focused on the golden core set within that monstrous inverted heart—and the moment I did, a brutal premonition slammed into me. That wasn't just a luminous spot... it was a door. A seal. A threshold to something that shouldn't exist.
Ancient symbols—pulsing like living flesh—covered the golden surface. Each rune seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting in rhythm with a heartbeat. When my eyes fixed upon them, something inside me reacted violently.
My body collapsed.
A metallic taste flooded my mouth as I vomited blood with force. Crimson rivers streamed from my eyes, ears, and nose, dripping onto the ground amidst the dust and ashes. The pain was instant, tearing—I felt as though my brain were being ripped apart piece by piece.
Before I could recover, something hit me.
A devastating impact.
I was thrown like a rag doll, crashing through debris and molten rock. The sharp crack of bone echoed within me—and I knew, with bitter instinct, that they were my ribs.
I staggered to my feet, the world spinning, my vision blurred and red-stained. And then I realized—the danger was right beside me. I was nothing but an intruder, lost in the middle of a war-torn inferno. I was standing at the very center of a battlefield.
And the strangest part of all—
Elves and orcs were fighting side by side.
The sight was absurd. Impossible.
Both races hurled themselves against a common enemy—an enemy so terrifying it made legends seem fragile.
And those enemies...
Were giants. In the literal sense of the word.
Each one stood over thirty meters tall. Their skin was the gray of scorched iron, and their muscles looked like carved minerals, hard and gleaming.
They wielded weapons so immense that entire houses would look like toys beside them.
But it wasn't their size that made me tremble—
It was the horror.
Instead of eyes, two slits of pure darkness marked their faces. Some had arms replaced by scorpion-like claws, jointed and encrusted with crystalline spikes. From gaping wounds across their torsos, black, corrosive fluid poured like a living waterfall—burning the ground, dissolving metal and flesh and yet they pressed forward, oblivious to their own decay.
The elves chanted arcane hymns, cataclysmic spells that made the air quiver and split with light.
The orcs, on the other hand, roared with raw power, swinging titanic axes and swords that made the very air explode into shockwaves.
And amid that chaos, surrounded by light, blood, and destruction, I realized a truth that cut deeper than any blade:
I was standing at the heart of a cataclysmic war.