Chapter 1 — The Fall

  He was already falling when he realized it.

  There was no push.

  No scream.

  No farewell.

  Only the fall.

  The sky above was not a sky.

  Below him, there was no ground.

  Only absolute absence devouring everything.

  The void had no wind to steal his final breath.

  No cold to freeze his fear.

  No direction to guide his hope.

  He fell like a forgotten tear.

  Fragments of his life appeared first.

  A blurred face his heart recognized, but his mind could not.

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  It dissolved before he could grasp the memory.

  Then a voice crossed the abyss.

  Distant.

  Familiar.

  Like an echo from childhood.

  As if it were being erased together with him.

  “You promise you'll come back?”

  The image struggled to form against the nothingness.

  Eyes that loved him.

  Tears falling because of him.

  Small hands gripping his with desperate strength.

  But the void did not tear his flesh.

  It did not burn his bones.

  It did not destroy his body.

  It erased his existence… layer by layer.

  First the name that defined him.

  Then the details that made him unique.

  Finally the meaning of who he was.

  He tried to remember his purpose.

  Failed.

  He tried to scream his identity.

  But sound did not exist there to carry his voice.

  The fall continued endlessly.

  There was no time to measure eternity.

  Yet every second felt like a century of loneliness.

  And then—

  A whisper cut through the impossible silence.

  It did not come from outside, where nothing existed.

  It came from within.

  From the final fragment of his soul.

  Or perhaps from everywhere at once.

  A low laugh echoed.

  Mocking.

  As if something had predicted his fall from the very beginning.

  As if his path had already been drawn on a map he had never seen.

  And in that instant—

  Even without remembering his name…

  Even without knowing why he was falling…

  Something inside him burned against extinction.

  A final spark of rebellion.

  He opened his dry mouth.

  And declared to the nothingness trying to devour him:

  “I refuse.”

  The fall continued.

  Relentless.

  But somewhere in

  the infinite depths of the abyss…

  Something opened its eyes.