Boom.
Suddenly, Ashen found himself on the ninth step, dripping endlessly into the void like a waterfall that fed existence—not with the water of life and goodness, but with rivers of blood filled with trials and suffering.
Without warning, that voice echoed again in his mind—the only voice that had judged him and ruled his life for eight centuries of pain and torment.
A cold, neutral, absolute voice, yet it seemed to exhale contempt for all creation.
The voice of the Heavenly Dao thundered in Ashen's awareness:
> "You who faced calamity and drowned in the darkness of regret."
"Prepare to experience nothingness."
And then, without any warning, everything vanished. Ashen fell.
It wasn't a fall… it was disappearance.
As if every thread of his existence had been torn apart and pulled into a bottomless abyss.
No wind. No sound. No light. Nothing.
Only a thick darkness, like a living substance breathing slowly, wrapping around him, slipping into every particle of his being, choking even the idea of existence itself.
At first, Ashen tried to move. But there was no body to move.
He commanded his muscles to contract, but they didn't exist.
He screamed, but the echo of his scream stabbed back into his mind—no air came out, no sound returned.
That was his first lesson in nothingness — the realization that even pain needs a body to be felt, and he had lost both.
Moments passed… or centuries? He couldn't tell.
Time had turned into a fluid creature, impossible to touch or measure.
All that remained was his bare consciousness, drifting in a sea of total silence.
But that silence wasn't peace… it was a sleeping beast.
Each pulse within him felt like a hammer striking deep in his skull.
One beat… another… another…
With every beat, something was torn away from inside him: a memory, a feeling, a voice, a face.
Even his past began to decay.
He forgot his mother's face. He forgot the scream of his clan. He forgot the taste of blood and the smell of war.
Even his name started to fade from his mind, as if being erased from existence.
Then the darkness began to speak.
At first, it was a whisper. Soft, strange, impossible to locate.
"You're the reason."
"You killed them."
"You could have chosen differently."
"The blood that was spilled was yours."
He opened his eyes—or thought he did—and saw faces forming from the darkness.
His own faces.
Each one of them carried a different expression: one exhausted, one bleeding, another furious, another laughing madly.
They all spoke at once, like a chorus of shared insanity.
He tried to shout at them, to silence them, but the voices didn't stop.
They grew louder.
They crawled into his mind, speaking in tongues he didn't know—languages of blood and agony, as if born from the most ancient ages.
Each one of these versions of himself represented something he had lost: compassion, anger, pride, fear.
Each one wanted to rule, to dominate, to become "him."
And so the battle began.
Time here could not be measured.
Each second stretched into a lifetime.
He saw himself torn apart again and again.
He killed one version of himself, only to see three more born from its blood.
Each one whispered something different:
"Fight me, and I'll grant you freedom."
"Surrender, and you'll find peace."
"End yourself, and this circle will stop."
But there was no death.
No end.
Even death itself couldn't reach him.
Ashen began to realize something else: this darkness wasn't his prison… it was him.
He felt it breathe when he breathed, pulse when he feared, and laugh when he broke.
It was the reflection of his own soul—his buried, savage intent.
And at some point—after countless years—he saw it.
The darkness took form before him, as a massive, faceless, formless being, a living ocean of shadow.
Thousands of dark arms emerged from it, grabbing him, splitting his consciousness in two, planting in him a new feeling: eternal suffocation.
It wasn't physical suffocation, but mental.
Every thought he tried to form was cut before completion.
Every memory he tried to recall dissolved before surfacing.
Even dreams became impossible.
As decades passed, Ashen began to change.
He stopped fighting the voices. He learned to hear them without believing them.
To watch them tear him apart without screaming.
Slowly, he began to notice a new tone among the madness—
a quiet voice, coming from deep within, calm yet older than time itself.
That voice wasn't unfamiliar.
It was his own.
But not his human voice—something deeper, like the core of his being was speaking.
> "Didn't you say you wanted strength?"
"Then embrace it. Stop resisting."
"This darkness isn't your enemy. It's you when you stop being afraid."
He didn't answer. He didn't even think.
The words pierced his skull like a slow blade—but they were true.
For the first time in a century of silence, he felt something like understanding.
Maybe the darkness wasn't trying to kill him.
Maybe it was purifying him.
But understanding didn't mean survival.
When Ashen tried to accept the darkness, he sank even deeper.
His consciousness began to rot like decaying flesh.
He could no longer tell himself apart from his other versions.
He saw himself killing himself thousands of times per minute, and every death gave birth to a new, more bloodthirsty beast.
The visions were beyond human comprehension:
Eyes growing from his chest, staring back at him from within.
Fingers stretching from the void, peeling layers of his awareness like an onion.
And voices laughing, whispering, singing songs of extinction.
> "When all senses die, only will remains."
"And when will shatters, savagery begins."
He didn't know if the voices mocked him or taught him.
But something broke inside him then.
The part that resisted, that clung to reason and sanity—shattered completely.
And after that… silence ruled.
In that final silence, Ashen heard nothing.
Saw nothing.
Felt nothing.
Yet, paradoxically, that nothingness wasn't empty—it was peace.
As if he had finally become part of something larger than comprehension.
At the center of that silence, he felt one pulse—not his own, but the pulse of the darkness itself.
A pulse that felt like eternity.
The savage intent spread through him like new blood, replacing everything destroyed.
It planted in him a new concept of power—one not based on senses or awareness, but on the absolute silence born after annihilation.
He smiled.
No one saw that smile, not even him, but it happened.
That was the moment of his first rebirth from the heart of nothingness.
The night was not punishment, but a test of will.
And when all senses shattered, when madness became law, something new was born.
Ashen no longer saw darkness as an enemy, but as a tool—
a second body, a second heart beating within him.
He began to learn silence amid chaos.
And he understood that the darkness he once thought was his prison was only an extension of his savage will.