He felt as though he was lying on his back, but there was no anchor beneath him.
His limbs were stretched apart, flayed on all sides.
But when he opened his eyes—revealing fractured irises with weaving purple existence constantly unraveling within them—something became obvious even to him.
He felt control return, and he turned himself upright, managing to remain on his feet.
The world around him was dark, but the concept of things was so twisted, he didn’t know how dark it was at all.
And in this darkness, where he was seemingly alone—
He took a step forward.
There was no sound.
A crippling silence filled the air, and Ryuk didn’t know whether to fear it or be cautious of it.
His gaze roamed the darkness as he advanced, stepping on the empty space. Yet, it was somehow solid enough to move him forward.
He had not moved very far when he watched motes of blinking white and purple begin to slip out of the void of darkness.
He watched them as he moved. One of them materialized before him, and a finger of his stretched out, popping it open like a bubble.
But when it burst—
It sent a minor explosion of light that drowned his senses for a time he couldn’t keep count.
When he opened his eyes again—
The darkness of the void had half-vanished, now lit with dancing motes of white and purple.
But then, he looked in front of him, and there stood an entity with him in this space.
It was cloaked in white—the cloak itself seemingly in tatters at its edges—yet they glistened with an aura he couldn’t quite phantom.
Its back was turned to him, and in its right hand was a black staff as tall as itself, with an egg-like gem implanted at the top.
For a second, Ryuk paused in his steps, finding the gem more than familiar.
Words and thoughts crossed his mind—concepts he couldn’t quite understand.
Still, there was nothing to point to the source of the gem or a reason why it seemed so familiar.
Before he could think more of it, the voice rang out—clear—through the void of darkness.
"Eras..." it began.
The staff was raised up into the air and swerved to the side.
Fluorescent purple gusts surged from the gem embedded in the staff, infiltrating the void, and soon enough, it began unraveling, giving space to images and footage.
"A fixed point in time, where people asked different questions..."
Ryuk stepped closer, watching the footage around him begin to materialize in light.
He saw a group of children running toward him—yet when they came close and dipped into him, they weaved through like he didn’t exist, their tingling, infectious laughter ringing through the air.
But that was so quick to change, to the image of a spear stabbing forth straight through his heart.
Once more, it passed through him as if he didn’t exist, piercing into another being who was raised into the air by the attacker with the spear.
A brutish roar of victory.
The cries of war.
Sounds that would send any man’s heart rippling with newfound courage.
It changed again to another scene—as he walked into a crowd, where a man holding a large grimoire and wand stood, and down before him, cross-legged, were men and women of various ages, grimoires in their hands, seemingly glowing as they followed his words.
A learning infectious class that drew his curiosity to what was being taught.
"I was born in an era that sought to know more..." the cloaked being said, swerving the staff once more as reality around Ryuk abruptly changed.
A new set of people.
A new set of aesthetics.
A new set of scenes.
A new set of worlds.
"An era where the people explored such concepts which would seem to most eras as abstract and of little meaning..."
"What is destiny?"
"What is fate?"
"What is order?"
"Hope?"
"Memory?"
"Desire?"
"Love?"
"Faith?"
"Power?"
"And, seemingly most illustrious of all... Eternity?"
"I was born in an era that sought to know more of the multiverse—and verily, our curiosity took us farther than most eras will ever know." It said to him, as once more, it swerved the staff.
The distance between it and Ryuk lengthened by several thousands of meters, new dimensions and realities slipping in between.
Each one distracted him, yet each at the same time absorbed into him like water into a sponge.
"But while it took us far enough, it couldn’t help us solve the biggest question of all eras and timelines..."
"The Unraveling of Eras."
"With the aid of curiosity, I have traveled far through timelines and their destructions."
"I have seen the mightiest of worlds come to ruin and fade away into obscurity, and the grandest kingdoms eventually become long-lost history."
"Worlds, timelines... eras... unravel into nothing."
"And I know, verily, that new eras get birthed with the child era having lost something from the parent era..."
"Something that made both eras—no matter how similar—never truly alike," the being said, its tone distant and slow.
As Ryuk drew close enough, it raised its staff and slammed it onto the ground.
For a second, the entire void of white and purple rippled like glass. The entire realm shifted into a new plateau of co-existing realms of various colors.
From within each color, Ryuk felt a word coming into his heart.
"Energy."
The word echoed through the entire realm.
"It is something ever-constant through each era. Energy."
"It changes—like a stain left from each era onto the next."
"New energies are created—all lesser versions of energy from the parent eras. But I have come to recognize, among all these energies..."
"One energy above all gets passed down, era to era."
"An ever-constant energy, that might just be the key to unraveling the secret of the cosmos."
"An energy which I spent millennia studying... yet could never truly grasp, before my era came to an end."
It said—its voice ringing through the world, loud and clear—as Ryuk floated backward.
Slowly, he turned, but halted in his step when he found the cloaked presence just an inch before him.
He raised his gaze, and finally, he came eye to eye to the entity that hid beneath the white cloak.