The Sovereign's voice was not a mere call; it was a cosmic command that brooked no refusal. Before Mushi could even blink, the grassy earth beneath his feet split open. Four towering guardians emerged, their bodies sculpted from solid coral stone pulsating with dormant volcanic veins. Their grip was not human; it was a magical shackle that froze the very movement in Mushi's and Raima's veins before they were even touched. Mushi was dragged violently, his feet never touching the ground, pulled through the air like a feather in a gale.
Suddenly, Mushi found himself in the heart of the "Great Hall of Aether." The hall was a staggering natural cathedral, its ceiling the open cosmos where nearby planets drifted, and its pillars were frozen waterfalls of liquid light. At the end of this hall, upon a throne woven from the cosmic roots of the "Tree of Existence," sat Solarius, the Sovereign of the Spirit Kingdom. He had no defined human face; he was an entity of glowing white energy, his features shifting with every pulse of magic in the air. His presence was so heavy that Mushi felt as if mountains had been placed upon his chest; every breath was a battle, every exhale a surrender.
The hall teemed with spirit leaders and fae—beings with translucent wings and eyes that glowed with cold blue light, looking at Mushi as if he were a parasite infecting a pure body. Solarius spoke, the sound not coming from a mouth but vibrating directly within the bones of Mushi's skull:
"You have committed a crime for which we have no written punishment in our laws, Raima. You have opened a rift for the 'Void' to enter the Land of Light."
Raima threw herself onto her knees, the sound of her weeping echoing through the majestic hall: "Your Majesty, he is just a lost human! His misery in his world broke my heart; I only wanted to give him a chance to live!"
Solarius stood up, and the pillars of light shook as the sky above the hall turned a deep, blood-red:
"Life? You have brought no life; you have brought absolute death! Do you think the laws that forbid strangers from entering the Spirit Kingdom are mere walls? They are physical and magical laws... and this being bypassed them without effort. He did not bypass them because of his strength, but because the laws do not see him! He possesses no Life Force for the laws to grasp. He is a walking vacuum among us, and he who possesses the void possesses the power to swallow all of existence."
Cries erupted from the leaders across the hall. One pointed a sword of light at Mushi's throat, shouting: "If we leave him, he will consume our light! The Void is not to be debated; the Void is to be annihilated!" The hall roared with angry chants demanding Mushi's blood.
Solarius raised his hand, and a sudden, deathly silence fell. He then pronounced his judgments with the coldness of fate:
"This 'Void' shall be taken to the Dusk Prison, under the guard of the Stone Knights, until the sun of purification rises. As for the spirit Raima, she has betrayed the trust of her kin... and is sentenced to eternal exile in the 'Wastelands' beyond the borders of the kingdoms."
Raima collapsed into unconsciousness from the weight of the sentence. Exile meant becoming a nameless pariah, a target for spirit hunters and demons who tear spirits apart to sell their essence as fuel for dark magic. It was a sentence of slow death in a world that shows no mercy to the weak.
As the guards dragged Mushi away, bound in "breath-stifling" chains, Sovereign Solarius stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the Spirit Forest, where thousands of inhabitants waited in fear. The Sovereign began to recount the legend that froze the blood in their veins:
"Inhabitants of the Aether... remember what the torn books have forgotten. Thousands of ages ago, our world witnessed a destruction caused neither by an army nor a volcano. It was caused by one individual titled 'Zolars... the Lord of Void.' He was the first being in history to be born without a single spark of Life Force, exactly like this one who now lies in our shackles. Zolars did not kill with a sword; he killed with his presence, absorbing the energy of cities and leaving them as ash. He destroyed 90% of our world before vanishing out of boredom. Today, the laws tell us that Zolars has returned in the body of this miserable man. We will not wait for the beast within him to awaken... we will annihilate the void before it swallows us."
Mushi was moved to a subterranean cell, its walls made of stone that absorbed both sound and heat. He shivered in the corner, not out of fear of death, but out of grief for Raima. He felt the bitterness of despair fill his throat; even in this beautiful world, his ill luck and misery had followed him to make him a "demon" in the eyes of all.
At dawn, the prison door creaked open with a sharp screech that shattered the silence of the vault. The four guards entered with their stony, frozen features. One of them grabbed Mushi by the neck and lifted him with effortless ease, saying in a raspy voice:
"Bring the condemned... the day of his execution has arrived."