Chapter 1 - 0: Introduction
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Drip! Drip! Drip!
Water fell from a cracked stone ceiling and struck the floor with the patience of a torturer who had all the time in the world. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound lived in the dark. It echoed, crawled, and refused to die, as if the room itself enjoyed hearing it.
The chamber had no light at all. Not a candle. Not a spark. Not even the faint mercy of moonlight, because there was no window to invite it in. Midnight had long passed by human standards, but inside this place, time did not matter. A man could guess it was night only because his thoughts felt like night.
Rattle! Rattle! Rattle!
A slow chain sound answered the dripping water. It was thin and metallic, the kind of noise that made the mind imagine rust and cold teeth. It reminded him of a cricket humming outside on a peaceful evening, except this humming was not peaceful and there was no outside.
The room had one door.
It looked like stone at first, until the eye adjusted and noticed the dull shine, the lines of hammered metal, and the way the surface drank the darkness instead of reflecting it. Stone or iron, it did not matter. It was massive. Big enough to admit a ten foot giant without asking it to bow.
In that room, a man hung from chains.
His wrists were raised high above his head, his forearms pinned by heavy links that bit into his skin. The chains anchored into the walls with hooks that looked older than reason. His ankles were bound too, not to hold him down, but to keep him from kicking, as if even his anger was considered dangerous. He dangled a full foot above the ground, the toes of his boots searching for a floor that refused to help him.
His face was hidden in shadow. The dark was so thick it felt like cloth draped over him, pressing against his eyes and mouth. When he shifted his weight, even slightly, the links answered with a lazy rattle, like they were laughing at the idea that movement mattered.
Ba - dum, Ba - dum,
His heartbeat was slow. Too slow for fear. Too slow for panic. It was the heartbeat of someone who had already screamed himself empty and learned that screaming did nothing.
The chamber was silent enough that he could hear every beat. Silent enough that he could hear the wet sound of his own breath. Silent enough that the dripping water felt personal, as if it was dripping only to annoy him.
The water was torture in a simple disguise. It did not cut him. It did not burn him. It did not demand anything from him.
It simply kept happening.
He wanted to cover his ears. He wanted to press his palms against his skull and block the sound until it faded. But his hands were busy being chained to the wall like a decoration.
The man did not know how long he had been here.
Inside the dark room there was no way to track time. No sunlight to measure the day. No wind. No voices beyond the door. No change, no relief, no proof that the world still moved outside these walls. He did not even know if it was day or night anymore. He only knew that he had stopped expecting mornings.
For many days, he had existed in the dark. He had not seen a single ray of light. At first he had counted the drips. Then he had tried to count his breaths. Then he had counted nothing at all, because the mind eventually grows tired of pretending it has control.
Hope had thinned. Not vanished completely, because hope was stubborn, but thinned enough to feel like a cheap thread that could snap any moment.
The chains were not normal metal.
They were sturdy, thick, and cold, and they carried a pressure that made his bones feel heavy. Chaos energy clung to them like a second skin. Not the wild kind that flickered and changed, but a disciplined chaos, woven into the links with intent. It hummed softly against his flesh, rejecting his strength the way the sea rejects a spark.
He could feel his own chaos energy inside his body. He could sense it the way a warrior senses his muscles. But the moment he tried to push it outward, the chains swallowed it. The chains did not resist him like a wall. They absorbed him like a mouth.
That was the cruelest part.
It did not even feel like a fight.
Chaos energy was the foundation of everything in this world.
The realm was called Null.
Null was not a universe, not a planet, not even a single dimension. It was a realm that existed above all universes, like a ceiling over an endless house. In Null, power that would be called godlike in other worlds was ordinary. Here, everyone used chaos energy. They breathed it. They shaped it. They fought with it. They built with it. They lied with it too.
The purer the chaos energy, the stronger the being.
Purity mattered. Control mattered. Intent mattered. Even attitude mattered, which was unfair, because sometimes the strongest thing a man had was his ability to stay annoyed without collapsing.
The man in chains had not come to purgatory to be captured.
He had come to train.
Purgatory was also known as the Lower Realms, but the name did not fully explain the place. It was a vast region of Null, divided into three domains: the lower domain, the middle domain, and the upper domain. Each one was layered with different rules, different predators, different kinds of cruelty.
The lower domain was the place where dark gods and monster gods gathered. It was full of beings who preferred the comfort of shadow and violence. It was full of things that smiled when they hurt someone. It was full of predators who believed kindness was a disease.
The middle domain was worse in a quieter way. Deals were made there. Chains were placed there, not always metal, not always visible. Some of the cruelest creatures did not need claws.
The upper domain was closer to the so called upper world, where human gods and other species lived. Species found across the multiverse ended up there, because Null pulled them all in eventually.
Once someone reached godhood, their original universe expelled them.
It was not a metaphor. It was a rule.
A universe could only tolerate a god for so long before it pushed them out like a splinter. The newborn god would be thrown into Null, into a realm beyond time, beyond the familiar laws of reality. Some arrived in glory. Some arrived in confusion. Some arrived screaming. Most arrived thinking they were special, and Null corrected them very quickly.
In Null, time flowed differently.
Or maybe it did not flow at all.
It was a realm beyond the reach of time, or perhaps time existed here under principles no god understood. It was a mystery. The gods argued about it sometimes, but nobody truly cared, because life here could stretch forever. A careful being could live for trillions of years. And in a realm that offered endless years, most people stopped asking what a year even meant.
Some beings had existed in Null since the birth of time itself.
They were called Walkers.
They had walked the Null realm since the multiverse was created. Nobody knew how they were born. Nobody knew who made them. Nobody even knew if the word made was correct. But one fact was certain. They had been here since the beginning.
They fought each other endlessly. Some died. Some were reborn. Some returned weaker than before, like a flame relit from wet ashes. Some died and did not return for a long, long while. When Walkers died, they became part of the Null realm itself. They could feel everything. The cold stone. The flowing chaos. The suffering of trapped souls. The drip of water in a room like this.
But this was not the time to speak of Walkers.
Their mystery would unfold with the story.
For now, there was only the chained man.
He waited.
He waited for footsteps. He waited for the scrape of that massive door. He waited for someone to come and explain why he was here, if only so he could insult them properly.
His chaos energy was weaker than the chains. That was why he could not break free. That was why he hung here like a trophy. Whoever made these restraints had expected him to struggle, and they had planned for every struggle.
His captors had not returned since the day they locked him in.
That absence was almost worse than cruelty. A beating would at least prove he mattered. Silence suggested he was forgotten, and being forgotten in Null was dangerous.
Drip! Drip! Drip!
The water kept falling.
The man flexed his fingers. Pain flared up his wrists. He hissed softly and tried again anyway, because stubbornness was sometimes the only weapon left.
The chains rattled, slow and lazy.
He swallowed.
His throat was dry. His lips cracked. He could taste blood, old blood, his own, and it made him angry because he was not even allowed a fresh injury. He was being forced to live on leftovers, like a stray dog.
He tilted his head slightly, listening.
Nothing.
Only drips.
Only his heartbeat.
Only the metal whisper of the chains as they settled back into their comfortable position, like a snake curling up after a meal.
Drip! Drip! Drip!
These water drips were a pain in the ass.
He could not stop himself. The words slipped out in a hoarse murmur, and the sound of his own voice startled him. He had not spoken in a while. Speech felt strange in the dark, like throwing a stone into a bottomless well.
"These water drips are a pain in the ass," he muttered again, as if repetition might convince the universe to be polite.
The room did not respond.
He licked his lips, grimaced, and stared into darkness that stared back.
"When will they come," he said quietly. "Those stupid ugly green things."
His voice gained a little heat. Anger was easier than fear. Anger warmed the blood.
"They captured me for no reason. No warning. No challenge. Just an ambush. Like cowards hiding behind a door."
His memory flashed. A shadow beast. The way it had moved, half real, half hungry. The fight had not been easy, but he had been handling it. He had been focused. He had been alive.
Then the green things had arrived.
Ugly. Fast. Coordinated.
They had not fought him fairly. They had waited until his attention was split, until his chaos energy was committed, until his body was already taxed from battle. They had struck like parasites.
He clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.
"Damn those ugly bastards," he whispered.
The word bastards tasted good. It felt like a small victory.
"Why did you catch me," he demanded into the dark.
Drip! Drip! Drip!
The water answered him, endlessly patient.
For a moment, the man almost laughed. The idea was bitter, but it was there. Captured in a room outside time, chained by chaos energy, reduced to arguing with water.
If anyone had told him this would be his training, he would have punched them.
If anyone had told him he would miss the sound of wind, he would have called them weak.
Now he would have paid anything to hear even one mosquito whining near his ear, just to have a sound that was not drip, drip, drip.
He breathed in slowly and let it out slower.
He was not dead.
That meant something.
In Null, survival itself was a kind of power.
He waited.
And somewhere beyond the massive door, beyond the dark, beyond the drip, something in Null was already moving toward him.
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