The being stared at Rey.
It didn't blink. Didn't move. Didn't breathe.
Its silhouette shifted and pulsed like it wasn't made for observation. His eyes tried to form shapes—horns, whiskers, tails, claws, rings of shifting runes that spiraled around where its neck might be—but none of it stayed constant. It was all wrapped in shadow deeper than anything he'd seen before. Like a shape carved from absence.
Its grin didn't change.
"I should be the one asking," it said, voice like rippling silk drawn over glass. "Who are you? Where is my fallen fragment?"
Rey's thoughts slowed. Fallen fragment?
"I don't know what you mean by that," he answered cautiously. "But… I got here through detachment. After defeating someone named Adrien, I absorbed the remnants of his domain. Then I severed myself from existence. Everything collapsed. I thought I died."
The grin remained.
"But you didn't."
"No. I woke up here. In this place. This… sea." Rey paused, eyes narrowing. "And then I awakened a new Class. [He Who Remains]. That's what brought me here, I think."
The creature let out a low hum—an amused, curious sound that echoed in the blackness.
"And how did you know to do these things? Your actions feel too connected and organized to have been random. No, it couldn't have been random… since no one has ever come here on purpose since eternity."
"Here?"
"Hell… the underworld… the end of everything… call it whatever you will, but this place is the very bottom of everything that ever existed and will ever exist." The creature said. "So answer me… how were you guided here?"
"My Familiar… called Ater."
"A Beast Summon?"
"Yes." Rey replied. "He is connected to the high realm and knows Ancient MajiK. He said this is the only way to save H'Trae."
"I see," it murmured. "So that's what Ater did. Clever little piece…"
The way the creature spoke made Rey tense.
"Ater? You know him?"
The shadow twisted once, overlapping itself like fabric in motion. "He is mine."
"…What?"
"One of my fragments," the thing said, now drifting lazily through the void like a predator circling prey. "I sent them—fragments of myself—across the stars. Droplets of essence, each carrying a seed of my will. This Ater one was one such seed. The best of them, perhaps… since it was able to produce you, at the very least."
He struggled to process the words. "You're saying… Ater is you?"
"No," it replied, grinning even wider, "he was. Once. But it seems time and purpose changed him. I thought the Angels had found him and erased his identity for tampering with the System… but it appears he simply changed the plan. You. He found you, and passed on the Key."
Rey remained silent, trying to piece everything together. Ater had always called him 'Master' after a certain point—but he thought that was just his oath, or maybe something metaphorical. Not this.
Not some grand design beyond the veil of reality.
"I don't understand," Rey admitted. "What exactly is this place? Where are we precisely?"
The feline silhouette stopped circling and faced him fully.
"This," it said, "is The Last Frontier."
The words echoed as though the sea itself whispered them.
"This is the bottom of all things. The space beneath existence. Where the threads end. Where no world bleeds, no memory leaks, and no rules bind. Here, the illusions collapse."
Rey looked up at the infinite stars above—the same ones he had seen after rising. They were still there, glimmering like a million billion possibilities waiting to be read.
"All those stars," the being continued, "are universes. Some vast, some simple. Some beautiful, some grotesque. Born, shaped, lived, and died. Over and over again. As the System intends."
"The System… you know what it is?" Rey asked with clenched fists.
It didn't hesitate to respond.
"It is the eternal propagation engine," the cat-like being answered. "A structure woven by those far above. Not gods. Not myths. But a civilization—ancient and unreachable. It is they who encoded the cycles. Wrote the Laws. Formed the engine and let it run by their design."
Rey swallowed.
'They must be the Ancients who wield Ancient MajiK. Was Ater one of them? No, if this thing is telling the truth, then it was a part of it… then does that mean all Ancients are like this?'
"You seem curious about something?" The cat-like thing asked.
"Why?"
"Why what?" The being tilted its head.
"Why do the Ancients create worlds? Why did they make the System?"
To Rey, there was no greater unfairness done by these beings. They intentionally created worlds and sowed chaos. They brought the Dragons to H'Trae and weaved a story where champions from another world would come and defeat them.
They were the true orchestrators of all the tragedy that Rey had experienced.
And yet… they were the reason Rey and the rest of those who survived were even alive, to begin with.
He wanted to know the reason behind it all.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
Its grin flickered—only for a moment.
"No. Even I don't know. I was… curious. I wanted to know more. That's why I broke the rules and was punished as a result. I would have also been lost, but at the last moment I scattered myself, seeking something—someone—to reach the truth."
Rey's heart pounded.
"If even you don't know the reason behind it, then what exactly could be the cause?"
Its eyes—not eyes, but something like them—glimmered.
"Nature," it whispered. "That is the name given to the source. The beginning of all stories. The unshaped will. It lies deeper still, somewhere beyond even the place above the land of Ether."
Nature…
The origin of everything?
The name made his skin crawl in a way he couldn't explain.
'The Land of Ether… must be where the Ancients stay. If it exists above existence, and existence exists above this place… then what kind of thing is this Nature?'
After thinking about it for a moment, Rey decided to abandon that train of thought and simply focus on his most urgent task.
"Now what?" Rey asked. "I'm here. At the bottom of all things. But I'm still connected to my world—H'Trae. And it's dying. The longer I stay, the more I feel my powers fizzling out. My connection to H'Trae is fading. If I don't act soon, I won't be able to return, and it will perish."
Just as the many stars fizzling out of existence, H'Trae would also perish.
He couldn't allow that.
The creature stared at him for a long while. Then, slowly, it drifted closer. Its tentacles, tails, and tendrils writhed with quiet excitement.
"You want to go back?"
"Yes."
"You want to save that world?"
Rey met its gaze without flinching. "Yes."
The being's grin broadened—far wider than what should have been possible.
"Why should I help you?"
And just like that, the light around him dimmed, and the pressure of the abyss pressed in.
The sea of darkness stilled.
The stars above froze.
Its smile widened like a crescent moon carved from malice.
Everything around him waited for his answer.
Rey was genuinely taken aback by the question, but after thinking about everything for a moment—taking his time to connect the dots—he realized the answer.
"Because you need me."