"W...ke-u..."
A distorted voice rippled through the darkness, broken, faint, and fleeting, like an echo that had forgotten its origin.
But within this boundless void, sound itself was meaningless. The silence swallowed it, erased as though it had never existed.
"...e...p..."
Again, the voice trembled into being, but this time sharper, desperate, like a dying ember refusing to surrender to the wind. Yet, what could a sound hope to reach in a realm where even light seemed to fear to exist?
However, all of a sudden, something flickered. At first, it was nothing but a grain of light, a spark so frail it vanished before even the darkness acknowledged it.
But before it could fade entirely...Thump!
A faint sound, like a heartbeat, rang through the nothingness, and the next moment, the spark flickered again. Briefly illuminating the endless dark, only to vanish once more.
Thump... thump!
However, the heartbeat returned, this time heavier, stronger, as if each pulse defied the very law that had silenced everything before it.
It was no longer a whisper, but a defiance. A drum of existence hammering against the emptiness itself, and thereafter light!
Sparks burst like distant stars being born from oblivion. One became two, two became hundreds, until the void was speckled with pale embers that shimmered with strange rhythm.
Together, they began to weave, their trails forming an outline, slowly, intricately, until a single symbol emerged amid the abyss.
’∞’
It was the symbol of Infinity!
It pulsed, slow and steady, alive, like a heart beating at the center of all that was and wasn’t. Each pulse sent out waves of blinding luminescence, bending the void around it like ripples across a black sea.
As that light deepened, something else appeared, but faint and ephemeral. They shimmered for a mere instant, ghostly and incomprehensible, their form too delicate for perception itself.
But the strangest part was they danced around the Infinity symbol, then faded, leaving only the faintest afterimage, like a memory of divinity brushing across mortal thought.
It was impossible to tell what they were or why they appeared, yet their presence left the void trembling, as though even Infinity acknowledged their existence.
Thereafter, out of that trembling silence, another voice emerged, but it wasn’t distorted nor broken, but vast, resonating through the nothingness like a hymn of contradiction.
"The world named it misfortune, but the abyss called it balance; and I, caught between, learned that nature smiles with both faces..."
Almost instantly, the voice faded, yet its echo lingered, shaping the darkness itself into rhythm.
But just then, as that mystical voice had created a bridge...
"WAKE UP, BASTARD!"
The distorted voice returned, now thunderous, enraged, anxious, and impossibly close!
Jacob’s hollow eyes snapped open, flaring with incandescent light.
A wave of soul force erupted from him, shattering the lingering darkness like glass struck by wrath. The fractured remnants of the void recoiled, torn apart by the resurgence of his existence.
"You wake up!"
That voice rang again, and it was extremely close, and when Jacob regained some of his focus, he was a breathtaking face so close to his skull that she was about to touch his bone with her tender skin.
Her starry eyes, which carried impossibly complex structures of constellations, were directly gazing into his hollow sockets, and there was nothing but anxiety, worry, and slight relief.
"Nyx?" Jacob called out in his eerie voice, a hint of confusion in it.
"Oh, good, you remembered me!" Nyx’s eyes were filled with joy when she heard her name being called by Jacob, and it was like all her worries had vanished.
If there were another being, they would’ve been moved by her; however, the person was none other than Jacob, and once he regained more of his focus, everything started to return to him like a nightmare.
However, Jacob could only remember that he had heard Immortika’s cryptic words, and he was searching for that enemy when suddenly something seemed to have been pierced, and then everything went dark.
But what made Jacob confused was that he remembered drowning in that nothingness, when something seemed to have pulled him out, and he clearly remembered hearing something and preserving it as well.
However, now that he tried to remember those words, they eluded him as if they were there, but the moment he wanted to recognize them, they hid themselves.
Nonetheless, Jacob didn’t have the luxury to solve this strange mystery because what happened was entirely out of his wildest expectations, and when he saw Nyx, his heart grew colder.
At that moment, his voice turned cold, "Get out of my face!"
Nyx didn’t seem to be angry; if anything, she seemed relieved when she heard Jacob’s familiar tone.
’I guess he’s alright, and it seemed he didn’t remember I called him ’bastard’ as well.’ Nyx was secretly glad before she snorted and scooted away.
Only now did Jacob realize that he was lying in Nyx’s lap, and his surroundings were of constantly shifting stars, which were both extremely beautiful and mystical at the same time.
However, Jacob wasn’t fascinated by that sealing because he knew where this place was, and the gravity of the situation started to sink in...
Jacob instantly rose from his lying position, and he saw that he was also in his skeletal form.
At that moment, he looked at Nyx sitting beside him, with a hint of disappointment on her face. But Jacob didn’t care about what Nyx was thinking and coldly questioned, "How did I appear in the Nightmare Realm? And why am I in this form since I didn’t change into it?"
At that moment, Jacob’s voice cracked a little with a hint of anxiety as he questioned in a stern tone, "A-and, why can’t I feel my body? What exactly happened to me!"
"I...um..." Nyx averted Jacob’s flaring eyes as if hesitating whether she should tell him the truth, or it would be too much for him.
Jacob seemed to sense Nyx’s emotions, and he was on the verge of going berserk as he controlled himself and solemnly said, "Just tell me everything. Do you think I can’t handle the truth?!"