"To fall into chaos is not death—it is the beginning of truth."
Cold.
That was the first thing Crystal felt—an impossible, biting cold that crept beneath her skin even though she no longer seemed to have a body.
When she opened her eyes, there was no sky, no land, no horizon. Only darkness stretching endlessly in every direction.
And above that darkness hung a single moon—red as a wound, unmoving, bleeding light across an ocean that wasn't an ocean.
Crystal blinked slowly. The ground beneath her feet rippled, yet it wasn't solid. It looked like blood, or maybe water pretending to be blood, shimmering faintly under the moon's glow. When she shifted her weight, the surface trembled but did not sink.
She looked down, stunned. Her reflection stared back—yet it wasn't truly her. A faint, transparent figure of greenish light looked up from the surface, eyes uncertain, face blurred but unmistakably hers.
"Am I… dead?" she whispered. Her voice echoed softly, fading into the void.
No one answered.
The silence was heavy enough to crush thought.
Crystal turned slowly, searching the endless horizon. There was nothing. No land, no sound, no stars. Only that crimson moon above and the vast plain of blood-red water below.
She exhaled shakily. "So this is hell."
It made sense, didn't it? After everything she'd done—families she'd torn apart, soldiers she'd ordered to die, cities she'd burned for the sake of a crown and a man she loved. Maybe this was her punishment. An eternity in the silence she had created.
She looked down again. The reflection still watched her, its green eyes shimmering faintly, almost alive.
For the first time since the battlefield, Crystal felt something break inside her.
"…Noah."
The name came out as a whisper, then as a sob.
She dropped to her knees. The red water rippled outward, staining the reflections of the moon. Tears slid down her face, though they vanished before reaching the surface.
He had killed her.After everything.
She had fought wars for him. Conquered kingdoms. Worn scars in his name. She had loved him.
And in return, he had given her a blade through the heart and silence in the dark.
Crystal's shoulders shook. The General of Death—the woman who commanded legions and silenced fear itself—was crying like a child in the middle of a dead world.
"So this is it," she whispered. "The Queen of Asterion ends up crying in the dark."
Her voice cracked again. "Pathetic."
The word echoed around her until it faded back into nothingness.
After a while, she pushed herself to her feet. The red water rippled, her reflection distorting into scattered fragments of green light.
She tried walking.
Left. Right. Forward. Back.
Every direction looked the same—endless red beneath, endless darkness above.
She couldn't tell if she was moving or if the world was mocking her with repetition.
She tried to count her steps but lost track after a few hundred. Her reflection followed faithfully beneath each one, step for step, like a shadow made of light.
Eventually, exhaustion—not of the body but of the soul—forced her to stop.
"This is pointless."
Her voice felt smaller now, weaker. The endless void didn't care.
She tilted her head upward. The red moon still hung there, cold and silent, watching her like an unblinking eye.
Crystal stared at it for a long time. "…You're not even going to speak, are you?"
Still nothing.
Her throat tightened. "Figures."
Time—or whatever passed for it here—dripped by without measure. Maybe hours, maybe years. She couldn't tell anymore.
At some point, the tears stopped. The anger burned itself out. Only emptiness remained.
When she could no longer bear standing, she slowly sat down. The red water rippled again but did not swallow her.
Her legs folded beneath her automatically, out of habit, the way she used to sit before training or meditation.
She almost laughed at that. "Old instincts die hard…"
Her reflection sat with her, green eyes flickering faintly as if in agreement.
For a long while, she simply breathed—if breathing even meant anything here. Her thoughts wandered, circling endlessly around the same memories: the warmth of Noah's arms, the faces of her soldiers, the laughter of her younger sister.
Each memory hurt. But strangely, that pain grounded her—it reminded her that she had once been alive.
She looked down again. The red surface had grown still, perfectly still, mirroring her face and the crimson moon above.
Crystal whispered, "If this is hell… then maybe I deserve it."
Her reflection stared back silently.
She reached toward it, fingers trembling, and for a brief moment she thought she felt warmth—like the surface wasn't cold anymore but pulsing faintly with life.
She blinked. "…What—"
And then—
The red water rippled outward as if the entire sea had taken a single breath.
Crystal froze. Her hand hovered over the surface, fingers still touching the faint glow that had answered her.
Then the light began to spread.It ran in lines beneath the blood-colored waves, sketching silent patterns that pulsed to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Each pulse sent shivers through the void, and the reflection of the crimson moon shattered into countless shards.
The air grew heavy. Something—distant, enormous—stirred beneath the surface.
Crystal's first thought was fear. Her second was that she had nothing left to lose.She didn't move. She only watched, waiting for whatever this place had decided to show her.
The sea of red bulged upward, breaking its own stillness. The light beneath it gathered in twisting spirals until the entire world seemed to fold around her. The cold vanished; the darkness turned liquid.
Her mind filled with sound—low, ancient, like the roar of a thousand storms spoken through one voice.
It didn't speak words. It remembered them.
And in that memory, she saw fragments—A sword falling through light.A hand reaching out to grasp it.A world collapsing inward, then blooming again.
She didn't understand any of it. But something inside her did. Something older than her name, older than her kingdom.
Her chest tightened. The breath she didn't need still forced its way out.
"This isn't hell," she whispered. "It's something else."
The red moon flickered as if it had heard.
The surface below her feet began to rise, forming slow waves that lifted her higher and higher until she stood above the shifting sea. The glow beneath the water gathered into a spiral beneath her, spinning faster, brighter, until it swallowed everything else.
Crystal covered her eyes, but the light still poured through her fingers. It wasn't warm. It wasn't cold. It simply was.
When she opened her eyes again, the horizon was gone. The void was gone.
There was only the red moon above and the green light wrapping around her body like a second skin, lines of chaos energy that refused to fade.
She stared at her hands; they were translucent, weightless, yet real. The color of her soul.
Her lips parted slightly. "What are you trying to show me?"
No one answered.
The silence returned—but it felt different now, alive rather than empty.
Crystal slowly exhaled. Her mind, scattered since her death, began to still. The fury, the grief, the guilt—all of it settled beneath the surface of her thoughts like sediment sinking in water.
She closed her eyes. For the first time since the blade pierced her heart, she stopped running from the memory.
Noah's face. His words. The betrayal. The pain.They were no longer knives; they were echoes.
A faint smile touched her lips—tired, bitter, but real. "If this is my punishment… then I'll endure it."
The glow around her flared once, responding like a heartbeat.
The red water beneath her rippled again, but now the motion was gentle, rhythmic. It was as if the entire void had started breathing with her.
Somewhere deep below, a sound—soft, melodic—rose from the depths. It wasn't a voice exactly, but something that pulled at her soul.
Crystal opened her eyes just as the surface beneath her began to shift again. Symbols she couldn't read formed in the water, glowing brighter, encircling her in rings of light.
She didn't resist. She couldn't.
The air vibrated, and the light climbed her body in spirals, winding around her arms, her neck, her heart. Her reflection mirrored the motion perfectly. For a moment, she and the reflection moved together—as if they were finally one.
Then everything stopped.
Stillness. Silence.
And in that silence—
Something happened.
"Even in the void, chaos waits for those who dare to breathe again."