He stepped forward and came into a place drenched in light, so bright it looked hollow, as if the radiance itself had no source. When he opened his eyes, he saw the figure again: himself, but inverted. Now he was the black silhouette, and the one before him was pure white. From beneath both of them, black ripples pulsed outward, spreading in slow, hypnotic circles like the heartbeat of an unseen void.
The white version of him tilted its head slightly and spoke with a soft, coaxing gentleness. "Indeed, I cannot give you anything material. But I can help you reach what you desire. Come to me. I will provide the path, if nothing else."
The black figure exhaled and muttered by himself, "Something is off. When I stood in your place earlier, when I was the white one, I didn't feel this… distortion. But now I do. These feelings… are they my memories? Or something deeper? Something is stirring them. Something in your voice."
He walked forward again, straight through the white silhouette. The white body dispersed like mist, forming again behind him. "I don't want to see you anymore…" he said, though his voice faltered halfway, shifting tone as if forced through the mouth of a stranger.
He stiffened. Why is my voice changing? Even when I don't want to say it… something bends it. Like a hand on my throat.
He didn't question further. He kept walking. The black ripples beneath him remained steady—identical to the white figure's ripples. Nothing seemed disturbed. That should have comforted him, yet it only deepened his unease.
Suddenly the white copy laughed—a sharp, echoing laugh that cracked through the empty plane. "Checking the ripples? They are the will of our mind. But a will without balance is powerless. Ripples gain strength only when the opposite weakens. And right now… you are the one losing."
Black glanced once but kept walking.
The white voice floated behind him, light as silk. "As you move forward, shouldn't you know what lies beyond? Shouldn't you prepare yourself, even a little?"
He ignored it and pressed forward. His ripples surged, cracked the light surface, and broke through the white plane, again.
Time passed. How long, he could not say. But eventually he found himself back where he started. The white figure was there, laughing again. He ignored it. Walked again. Broke the plane again.
But the next time he returned, he saw it. His will, those dark ripples had halved.
A tremor ran through his chest. Still, he forced his feet to move and walked again. The white version said nothing this time. No mockery. No questions. It simply waited, as if indulging him in an eternal loop, until the inevitable moment when his will finally emptied.
Then it happened.
Pain.
A slow, dragging pain, like hands gripping his ankles from below the ripples and pulling him downward. His breath tightened. The black plane in front of him, which he had split countless times, now resisted him completely. Only a thin fracture appeared, barely a scratch. When he pushed harder, the crack trembled and refused to widen.
Behind him, the white figure burst into laughter, joyful, triumphant, cruel."So. You finally feel it. Stubbornness has its limits, doesn't it? When the will collapses, pride collapses with it. Now… since you have no strength left to run, let us talk."
The black figure breathed harshly. "What is it you want to ask? If I choose not to answer, nothing will change."
But the white silhouette stepped forward until they were face-to-face—eye level, breath level, existence level. And in that closeness, the white voice became disturbingly gentle.
"Tell me," it whispered. "What is your name?"
He blinked slowly. The question struck deeper than any insult.
The white figure leaned closer, its smile thin but vast. "Do you even know where your name came from? Or who gave it? Do you know the land you were born in? The warmth you lived under? Do you remember your mother's face? How she looked at you? How tightly she held you the first time you cried? Do you remember how much she loved you… truly?"
The black figure's fingers trembled.
The white continued, voice now soft as a knife sliding between ribs. "And your father… do you remember how he knelt before your grandfather, begging forgiveness for your sake? Do you remember the shame he swallowed because he believed your life was worth more than his pride?"
Black swallowed hard, but his throat felt tight.
"And your elder sister… did you forget how she shielded you? How she smiled even when she was exhausted? How she gave you the bigger share of food when she was starving?"
The black figure's heart throbbed painfully.
The white stepped around him, circling like a serpent of light. "And the villagers… how they trusted you, how they protected you, fed you, laughed with you. How much they believed in your future."
Then it stopped in front of him again—its smile gone, its eyes hollow.
"How," it asked softly, "can you be so heartless… to walk a path alone after abandoning all their hope, all their love, all their faith in you?"
He rose to his feet without realizing he had moved. His body reacted before his mind did, swaying as if struck by a wind that did not exist in the empty white world. He managed only one sentence, spoken with a strange blend of fatigue and clarity.
"I don't need to answer those questions."
He walked again toward the door, the one he had broken through many times before, yet his pace slowed. The black ripple beneath him, once steady and wide, had thinned, shrinking with every step. His eyes drifted downward. His thoughts began to twist and churn, like a storm gathering at the back of his skull.
And the questions, those same questions, echoed again from within him, not from the white figure.
What is your name? Where do you come from? Who loved you? Who abandoned you? Who do you belong to?
He stopped. Even the ripples froze.
He tried to lift his foot, but it stayed planted, heavy as if chains had grown beneath the surface. A cold sensation wrapped his ankle, black hands rising from the dark ripple, fingers of shadow gripping him, pulling gently but firmly.
Then he realized there was no plane beneath him at all. No door. No ground. He wasn't standing anymore; he was suspended over a depthless abyss. And the more he fought, the further he sank.
Still, he smiled.
He looked at the white silhouette and said, "Thank you… for letting me realize that it is my own fear that keeps me from moving forward."
A tear rolled down his black cheek. It shimmered like a small moon, then fell—and when it struck the darkness below, it sent rings of black ripples outward, stronger than before. But his smile wasn't joy. It was the brittle, trembling smile of someone who remembered every wound at once.
He felt he could only turn his head—nothing more. So he turned slowly, painfully, and saw the white figure wearing a triumphant grin. The kind of grin that expected victory.
But he laughed. Laughed through tears.
The sound was not a sad laugh, nor a hysterical one. It was a knowing laugh, a sound that made the white figure's smile twitch.
The white version of him laughed back, louder. "I told you! I told you I would make you believe only I am real. You are just a shadow of me, a mistake. Now you understand that, don't you?"
The black figure, still sinking, still crying, still smiling, tilted his head. "And what did you gain," he asked softly, "by forcing me to remember every painful memory?"
The white expression twisted, losing elegance, gaining rawness. "What are you implying? You are not me. You were never me. I'll prove it. I'll prove you're nothing but a discarded leftover."
Black laughed again, the sound echoing through the entire realm, echoing in layers, as if countless versions of him laughed together.
He was nearly waist-deep in the abyss now.
The white figure shouted down at him, voice cracking: "You are nothing but a nameless brat! No name of your own. Even your mother abandoned you! Your father and elder sister hated you! Your mother stole your destiny just to give it to your younger brother!"
The black figure kept sinking. The abyss swallowed him slowly, like warm ink.
"You are nothing but an outsider!" the white screamed. "A stranger born in your own home! No identity, no talent, no fate! Even your mother resented you for being unable to cultivate! She despised you for your weakness! What a wonderful family you have—ah, you pitiful thing!"
The black figure's sinking stopped for a moment. He looked up—not angry, not broken, but strangely serene.
The white figure's face shifted, losing its arrogance. Still, it forced a smirk and added with forced calmness:
"Thank you… for giving me this beautiful opportunity."
He sank completely into that silent white pond, the surface trembling with a single ripple—as if the realm itself held its breath. Then, from somewhere deeper than the water, deeper than the soul, a voice thundered out, raw and burning with fury:
"Either I will destroy them inside me completely… or I will bury myself with them."
The declaration did not echo, it stabbed through the whiteness like a blade. And with that, another journey began, one shaped not by fate or destiny, but by wounds carved into the heart. Pain… the kind that comes only when expectations are shattered by the very people you entrusted them to. The kind that devours the inside slowly, like rust on bone.
And the white surface, so still moments ago, shivered and then laughed. A warped, distorted cackle, like cracked porcelain grinding.
"Yeeaahhh… go bury yourself with that face of yours. What? Opportunity? Hah! You fool—you're going to die countless times. I already won at the end. You've already turned into an illusion made from my leftover life. From now on, I am you."The voice twisted, mocking."Wait—no… you were never me to begin with. Hahaha… I won. I won… I WON."
Outside the realm, the air trembled. A woman's calm voice broke the heavy silence, though even she seemed unsettled.
"It has started. Prepare yourselves. This time… we might be able to control it."
The other two nodded, solemn and wordless. A faint hum of formation lines spread beneath their feet as the white realm pulsed like a living organ.
Inside, the boy, no, the soul, felt hands, pitch-black and cold as obsidian, gripping him from every angle. They didn't drag him down; they absorbed him, pulling his identity apart thread by thread, replacing reality with memories he had buried for 7 years—or maybe 2. Time meant nothing here. Pain did.
The illusion began gently, almost kindly.He saw himself sitting on a carved wooden chair, wearing clean clothes someone once gifted him. A bowl of bright fruit rested beside him. The sunlight was warm, and for a moment, he looked like any other child.
Then, blink, the scene shifted.
Same day, next year.He stood before the Momentum Stone, placing his hand upon it with a naïve smile. The glow he hoped for never appeared. Instead, laughter, sharp, needling, cruel.
"Useless.""Branch children have more talent than him.""He should hide his face."
The illusion shattered into another.
Months later.A locked room.Five months of house arrest. His meals slid through a small opening without a word exchanged. On the final day, they did not release him—they threw him out. Him, and a few belongings… though some were not thrown so kindly.
But what pierced him deepest was not the humiliation.It was the moment he saw his beloved brush and paper, his last treasures, fall to the ground. Someone tossed them like garbage. Someone else set them on fire.
He didn't scream.Shock froze his throat, silencing it into nothingness. Yet tears poured from his eyes like rivers, as if something inside him cracked beyond repair.
Then he saw her, his elder sister.
She walked toward the burning place, expression unreadable. For a moment, a foolish, hopeful moment, he believed she was there to stand on his side. His voice trembled.
"Sister… they're burning everything. Did you not like them? If not… can't you at least keep them with you?"
He stepped toward her, childlike, reaching for the last thread he had left. She took the brush from one of the guards… and for one suspended second, he thought she would save it.
But she smiled, cold and empty.
She let the brush fall from her palm and crushed it beneath her heel.
His face, still carrying the remains of a hopeful smile, collapsed instantly. His knees gave out. He grabbed at the shattered pieces with shaking hands, as if trying to gather a life that was slipping through the cracks of his fingers.
The wind blew.Even the broken pieces flew away.
A divine cruelty, nothing left for him to hold.
He knelt there like a ghost, eyes hollow, frozen in silence. The illusion paused, letting him drown in that moment.
His sister stepped toward him again, not with love, not even with pity, but with something sharper, heavier. She pressed a fire staff into his hands.
Her voice was steady:
"Young master… from this day forward, you will be a commoner. You burnt your belongings in anger for failing to cultivate. This is my decree."
Her hand guided his, forcing the staff forward. Flames erupted and devoured the rest of his paintings.
Her words continued, merciless.
"Be grateful for your life. You were spared only because you were born directly from the clan. Even the branch family children are more valuable than you."
Something inside him trembled.
And the demon-voice, the white realm's voice, whispered:
"Do you see? Memories… they grow like weeds when watered by betrayal."
New memories surfaced, ones he didn't expect.
Moments of warmth.
His mother holding him on her lap, teaching him calligraphy.His father placing a gentle hand on his head, telling him, "Do not rush. Roots grow unseen."His elder sister once giving him a candy when he cried as a small child.
Good and bad braided together like two serpents fighting in his chest.
But the realm did not allow the good to stay.
Every warm memory twisted.Smiles faded into sneers.Gentle hands morphed into shadows.
"Human hearts," the demon murmured, "are mirrors. When cracked, even reflections become monsters."
To be Continued...