Silence.
Not the peaceful kind—the kind that forms when reality itself forgets how to breathe.
Fragments of broken space drifted around Null like floating ash. His Second Awakening, now fully released, had carved a wound into the world. Light bent around him. Shadows lingered too long. Time skipped in uneven beats.
His heartbeat no longer matched a human rhythm.
It sounded like a pulse deeper than existence.
A whisper born from the center of the Door.
Aizeno watched him with eyes that carried no triumph—only a weight he had been running from for years.
The Entity—now fully named OR'VYLLA, The First Hunger—loomed behind the Door's veil, its shape shifting each second, never settling on one form. It did not approach. It waited.
Because Null was changing.
Because Null was finally becoming what it needed.
Aizeno swallowed once, the truth of Chapter 53 burning in the air between them.
"Null… you were never meant to be a weapon," he murmured."You were meant to be the key. But the key was always supposed to live."
Null didn't answer.
His eyes were unfocused—like he was staring at worlds only he could see. The spirals in his left eye had multiplied, branching inward like roots digging into the whites of his eye.
Each new strand crawled deeper into his nerve pathways.
Identity cracking.
Self slipping.
Memory blurring.
But then—
A sound broke the suffocating quiet.
A heartbeat.
Weak.
Stuttering.
But real.
Hyung's head snapped toward the shattered wall.
A faint blue glow shimmered behind a collapsed archway. Dust shook off falling stones as a figure slowly rose from beneath them.
A small cough.
Then a dry voice:
"…You idiots. You really move too fast."
Hyung's eyes widened.
Null didn't turn yet—but something in his aura twitched.
She stepped into the light.
Dust-covered.
One arm shaking.
But alive.
D U.
Not the cheerful version.
Not the joking intruder.
The real one.
Her expression held no smile.
Her voice carried no playfulness.
But her presence…
It felt like the missing color returning to a black-and-white world.
Hyung exhaled sharply.
"You… your heart— it stopped."
D U wiped blood from her mouth with a tired smirk.
"Yeah. It does that sometimes."
Hyung blinked.
"…What?"
D U raised two fingers lazily.
"Little backstory time, since the world is ending and all…"
She pointed to the jagged scar over her chest.
"This isn't my first death. Or my first stop. Or my first return."
Hyung's brows knotted.
"Then what are you?"
D U shrugged.
"Something Aizeno didn't build. Something Adrax couldn't read. And something that Door"—she flicked her chin at OR'VYLLA—"really doesn't like."
Aizeno stiffened.
"Her existence wasn't supposed to intersect with ours," he muttered."She belonged to a different cycle. A failed one."
D U nodded.
"Exactly. I was born in a world that OR'VYLLA devoured long before this place existed. I carried a piece of that world with me when I escaped the collapse."
Hyung's eyes hardened.
"You escaped a world-ending entity?"
D U smirked, though her voice trembled.
"Not escaped. Rejected.It tried to absorb me, and my core wouldn't let it. My heartbeat stops when it tries to rewrite me. I die. I reboot. I come back."
Her gaze slid toward Null, softening.
"And I came here because someone in this world… feels the same as I did."
Hyung swallowed.
"You mean—"
D U nodded.
"Null. He has the same fragment signature my world used. Not identical—but close enough that I could trace him. Close enough that I knew he'd need someone who understood what it felt like to be a mistake that refuses to die."
The floor under Null's feet cracked as his aura flared.
D U didn't flinch.
She stepped toward him—even as space distorted around his body.
"Null," he called softly."If you can hear me… don't disappear."
For the first time since the Awakening fully released, Null's head turned slightly, eyes half-aware.
"…D… U…?"
His voice was fractured, layered with echoes like three voices fighting for control.
She stepped closer.
"You're holding something too big for your mind. I know what that feels like."
The spirals in his eye pulsed violently.
The ground rippled.
OR'VYLLA whispered from behind the Door, its voice scraping through the air like broken language:
"Child of the shard…You cannot save the key.He was chosen to open me."
D U's expression hardened.
"Shut up. I watched you erase my entire world. I won't let you take this one too."
She looked straight into Null's spiraling eye.
"I came back… because someone needs to stand between you and the thing trying to rewrite your soul."
Aizeno stepped forward.
"You shouldn't interfere—"
D U shot him a glare sharp enough to slice steel.
"If you try stopping me, I'll make you regret existing."
Aizeno stopped.
A whisper of fear crossed his face.
Hyung met her eyes.
"Can you help him?"
D U nodded slowly.
"I can try. But if I do this—Null will see every memory he's missing. Every truth he wasn't built to handle. And every lie Aizeno forced into his mind."
Hyung's jaw tightened.
"Do it."
D U took another step.
Null's spirals widened in response, glowing like a second dawn.
She exhaled once.
"Alright, Null. If we're doing this… I need you to hold onto at least one thing."
Null's shaking breath barely formed a sound.
"…what…?"
D U placed her hand lightly on his cheek, ignoring the distortion warping around his skin.
"Hold onto the version of you… that chose to care."
The world buckled.
Null's mind cracked open.
And the Door behind them…began to open wider.
Chapter 54 ends here.