– Frey Starlight's Pov –
A crimson gate pulsed with astonishing aura fluctuations, tickling our senses and releasing an overwhelming pressure that made sweat slide slowly down my forehead .. I wiped it away with my elbow.
We had been circling this gate for an hour now, hesitating.
"Should we go in?" Snow asked, his face serious.
I knew we couldn't linger here forever. The real mission would begin the moment we stepped through that gate.
We didn't know where it would lead us .. or if returning would even be an option.
But I had no choice but to move forward. That much, I understood more than anything else.
"We move," I said, resolute in ending this.
"We should stay close. We have no idea where we'll end up," Ghost suggested. We all agreed .. it was the best way to proceed.
"Let's do it!"
Without warning, the three of us rushed forward and were swallowed by the crimson gate.
In less than a second, we vanished from the Shadow Sect, as if we had never been there at all. Silence returned to that ancient place.
A silence soon broken by the sound of heavy footsteps .. those of a massive statue dragging a long sword behind it, its face hidden behind a smiling mask.
The statue raised its blade and slashed violently at the gate.
With a single strike, the structure was completely destroyed. Its supports collapsed, the aura dissipated, and nothing was left.
The journey had become one of no return. As for the statue, it turned and left, its task complete.
…
…
…
This time, the teleportation process took longer than usual.
What had once happened in a blink now took several minutes…
Minutes spent drifting through a stream of aura .. until we finally reached the end.
The gate opened and spat us out onto soft ground. Our bodies slammed into it roughly.
Lying there on the sand, the three of us immediately got back up, dizzy from the strange journey. But what we saw next was even stranger.
Red sand. An endless land stretching out to a distant horizon.
But our eyes quickly turned to the sky.
A crimson sky. And a suffocating atmosphere, thick with a gloomy aura that made our skin crawl.
Above us, three massive moons loomed .. so large they looked ready to crash into the ground at any moment.
We stared at the scene, mouths agape, trying to process what we were seeing.
"Is this… an illusion?" Ghost was the first to voice what we were all thinking.
But it wasn't an illusion.
"This is real… We're far from home," I said, brushing my fingers through the soft red sand.
Snow Lionheart closed his eyes, trying to absorb the surrounding aura ..only to frown as soon as that sinister energy entered his body.
"This aura…"
I nodded.
"We're no longer on Earth."
It was an obvious conclusion... but still hard to believe.
The three of us wandered around the gate, slowly taking in the fact that we had left our planet behind.
We were far… far from Earth, and far from the seal created by the First Emperor, Kazis Valerion.
We had entered the unknown literally this time.
"But what's wrong with this cursed place? Everything… feels dead," Snow said, nauseated just from touching the surrounding aura. There was air, yes ..but the place felt utterly deserted, like a graveyard.
Observing the scattered signs and the land's eerie features, I narrowed my eyes, realizing what we were seeing.
"What you're looking at… is the final result of what could happen to our planet if we lose to the Ultras and let the demons return."
Ghost and Snow listened intently ... these were truths they were hearing for the first time.
"This place is just one of their countless victims. A planet that fell to that wicked race."
And it likely happened a long time ago.
Demons are creatures that live off life power ... draining it endlessly. That's how they were created.
Their home world, or what some call the Demon Realm, died a long time ago. That was when their kind began moving .... searching for new places to inhabit.
And so it began… They invade planets, strip them of all signs of life, and slaughter everything that breathes. They remain there until the planet dies ... then move on to the next.
And the cycle repeats… a never-ending loop that has continued for ages—ages far too long to count.
Perhaps even Earth, still underdeveloped, was one of their last victims.
"Judging by the signs around us... the race that once lived on this planet was wiped out a long time ago."
The planet we had set foot on had been dead for ages .. and the demons had already left it behind.
In other words, this place was nothing more than a graveyard.
I spoke indifferently, as if stating undeniable facts. But what I received in return were puzzled and curious expressions.
I smiled at them.
"What? Did you think demons and humans were the only races to ever exist in this world?"
We were nothing but a single dot in a vast universe.
Snow shook his head.
"No... but Frey, how do you know all of this?"
Until now, humanity had lived inside a black box ... shielded from everything beyond, trapped in an illusion.
Snow's question was valid. It even made me laugh bitterly.
"There's much I know… and even more I don't. But it's knowledge I never asked to have."
It was more like a curse that had been placed upon me .. one I was forced to live with.
I decided to drop the subject and walk ahead.
"I didn't expect us to end up in a place like this. If you two want to turn back now, I wouldn't blame you. In fact, I'd rather you did."
Facing the Eastern Nightmare Lands was one thing—but wandering a planet that had fallen to the demons was something else entirely.
I was certain that whatever awaited here… would be catastrophic beyond reason. That's why I preferred to continue alone.
But Snow and Ghost were already at my sides.
"What are you saying now, after we've come this far?" Snow said, and Ghost agreed.
"We didn't come all this way just to tuck our tails and run at the first real challenge. Besides… retreat isn't an option anymore."
Ghost raised his thumb, gesturing to the gate behind us.
"That thing stopped working the moment we set foot on this planet."
He said it casually ..but the weight behind his words was written all over our faces—mine and Snow's both.
"Wait, what? Are you serious?"
I rushed back to the gate to find that he was right.
It wasn't working anymore.
"He's right."
Disaster.
An utter disaster. Was this his way of telling me that escape was off the table?
We were stranded ...on a planet whose position we didn't even know in this vast universe. An unfamiliar tension began crawling through me as my mind flooded with possible scenarios.