I woke with a start, gasping as if I'd just fallen from an endless height. My breath hit my throat, raw, too real to belong to a dream. I opened my eyes—and for a moment, I thought I had gone insane.
All around me, there was nothing. Nothing but an infinite white—no horizon, no ground, no sky. A suspended space where light seemed to exist without a source. Even my shadow was gone. I was standing on something I couldn't see, a surface that felt solid yet had no shape, no texture. And the silence… the silence had no end. No sound, no breath—just that perfect void where my heartbeat thundered too loud.
I raised my hands before me. They glowed faintly, crossed by golden reflections as if mana itself had seeped into them. My fingers looked translucent, almost unreal. It felt like the smallest movement might dissolve me.
A shiver ran through me.
—Where… where am I?
My voice died the moment it left my lips. No echo. No answer. The sound was swallowed whole by the light.
