Midnight.

  Arka required no glance at the ticking of the old clock in the corner to know the hour. It was Zero Hour. The transition of the year within his biological calendar.

  He felt it not as a turning of numbers, but as a tectonic shift in the depths of his soul.

  Something inside him fractured, then yawned wide open.

  It felt like standing at the precipice of a ravine, only the ravine was expanding within his own ribcage. He felt the depth growing vast, darker, deeper. He struggled to find a mental foothold, but the reality inside his skull melted. The walls of his imaginary fortress crumbled to dust. The ground beneath his feet vanished, leaving him drifting in an absolute void.

  His breath hitched. The sensation of falling without end was visceral.

  Slowly, Arka opened his eyes. He needed to confirm he still stood on earth.

  Physical reality greeted him with a fog.

  The living room of House Sagara was now thick, as if the morning dew had been trapped between four wooden walls. Yet this was not water vapor; it was smoke.

  Hundreds of incense sticks planted in every corner of the room had burned halfway down, sending up thick, choking columns of white miasma. The scent of sandalwood and frankincense stabbed his nose sharply—a primal smell summoning alien memories. The smoke was so dense it stung, hot against his newly opened eyelids.

  In the midst of that sacred fog, there was only one point of orientation.

  The Hearth.

  The fire in the stone furnace now burned steadily, licking the wood with calm deliberation. Its orange glow pulsed dimly, fighting to penetrate the thickness of the smoke, casting long, dancing shadows across the wooden floor.

  And there, between him and the fire, sat Grandfather Rajendra.

  The old man sat cross-legged with a spine of steel, his back to the flames. His silhouette looked immutable, as if he were the earth-nail holding this room in place, preventing it from being torn away by the storm outside.

  Arka stared at that back.

  Amidst the chill of the night and the sting of incense smoke, another warmth spread. Not the heat of the fire, but a warmth of the soul blooming in his chest. A strange security. A belief that as long as that old back was there, he would not be lost in the abyss of his own psyche.

  Arka took a deep breath, letting the incense aroma fill his lungs, unifying himself with the room’s atmosphere.

  He was ready.

  His eyelids lowered slowly, shutting off visual access to the mortal world.

  He returned to the dark.

  Letting himself fall once more into that bottomless well.

  Meditation resumed.

  BOOOOM...

  The thunder outside did not fade.

  Instead, the sound elongated, distorted, shifting from a sonic explosion into a low-frequency hum that vibrated the skull.

  That was the transition.

  Arka did not "fall asleep." He felt as if he were being dragged forcibly through a thin membrane of reality. The scent of incense and the warmth of the hearth were sucked backward, replaced by a sensation of absolute cold.

  When he opened his eyes, the world had been scrubbed clean.

  No wooden walls. No Grandfather Rajendra.

  SLAP!

  Arka struck his own cheek. Hard. Efficient.

  Not an act of panic, but a standard operating procedure to check consciousness.

  His skin felt hot. His facial nerves fired sharp pain signals to his brain.

  Arka looked down, pinching the muscle of his thigh, twisting the skin to the limit of pain tolerance.

  "Pain," he hissed flatly. "Nervous system active. Motor response nominal."

  This was no ordinary dream. In dreams, pain is a blunt concept. Here, pain was precise. High definition.

  "If this is real... these coordinates exist on no map."

  Arka rose to his feet. His breathing was regulated, his eyes scanning the perimeter with the alertness of a predator.

  He stood upon nothingness.

  The floor beneath him felt solid, yet it was invisible.

  As far as the eye could see, this world consisted of only one element: The Fog.

  Not ordinary water vapor. This was a milky fog—dense, heavy, seeming to possess a specific gravity that pressed against the skin. This fog devoured the horizon, erased the sky, isolating Arka’s existence until he felt like the only solid matter in the universe.

  Arka tried to move.

  He ran. His footsteps made no sound, dampened by the thick atmosphere.

  One minute. Ten minutes. An hour?

  Time was relative. There was no sun to cast a shadow. No wind to determine direction.

  "Damn it," Arka swore, low and restrained.

  He stopped, dropped into a stance, and threw a straight punch forward.

  Whoosh!

  His fist sheared the fog before him.

  But the white vapor did not disperse. It merely swirled lazily around his fist, liquid and slow, then closed tight again as if mocking his physical exertion.

  "Is anyone there?!" Arka shouted.

  His voice died the instant it left his throat. No echo. No acoustic reflection. His voice was absorbed entirely by the emptiness, as if he were screaming into a colossal pillow.

  Cold sweat began to bead on his temples.

  Arka did not fear an enemy he could see. He feared the absence of stimulus. Sensory isolation of this magnitude could break the mind of even the strongest soldier.

  Just as his spatial logic began to fracture, his retina caught an anomaly.

  In the distance, amidst that painful white canvas, there was a single point of contrast.

  A small glow.

  Warm orange.

  Arka’s heart hammered. His brain instantly recognized the color spectrum. It was identical to the flame in the stone hearth. The fire his grandfather had lit.

  "A waypoint?" he thought.

  Without wasting breath on another shout, Arka moved.

  He stepped quickly, his eyes locked on that orange dot like a wolf locking onto prey.

  But the physics of this place played him for a fool.

  Every time Arka advanced one meter, the light retreated one meter.

  The distance between them was absolute. Constant.

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  "You want me to chase?" Arka growled. "Fine."

  He engaged his leg muscles. He ran. Full sprint.

  His body, forged by a lifetime of training, responded. He rocketed through the fog, his lungs working like pumping engines.

  But the orange light—like a carrot dangling before a racehorse—remained exactly there. Neither closer nor further. Pulsing calmly, as if laughing at Arka’s sweat and exertion.

  Arka kept running until his legs burned with lactic acid. He refused to stop. Instinct told him if he lost that light, he would be trapped here forever.

  Zip.

  Suddenly, the light died.

  Extinguished.

  Arka’s momentum shattered. His hope was severed.

  His exhausted legs finally gave out. He stumbled, then collapsed. His knees slammed hard into the invisible floor.

  "Hhh... hhh..."

  Arka clutched his chest, struggling to dredge oxygen from the thin air. His lungs felt filled with ground glass. A dry cough tore at his throat.

  He looked down, staring at the emptiness beneath his hands, tasting the bitter tang of defeat.

  But as he caught his breath down there, the sky above him began to roar.

  WUUUUOOOSSHHH...

  Not the sound of wind. It was the sound of air mass being displaced by force.

  Arka looked up with his remaining strength. His eyes widened, pupils constricting drastically as he witnessed the phenomenon on the ceiling of the void.

  The fog... was alive.

  The mass of white vapor that had imprisoned him was now moving wildly. It spun, twisted, and rolled over itself in a gigantic spiral pattern. Arka was reminded of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, but this was a harrowing monochrome version. The sky was being stirred by an invisible, furious hand.

  The vortex pulled the fog upward, lifting the white curtain that blocked his view.

  And there the thing stood.

  Before Arka, looming vast, was an object that made his human existence feel like a speck of dust.

  A Colossal Frame.

  The structure was pitch black, crafted from a primordial material that absorbed light. It stood hundreds of meters high, arrogant and dominant in the midst of nothingness.

  As the last of the fog was swept away by the sky-vortex, Arka saw what lay in the center of the frame.

  It was not a painting.

  It was not a mirror.

  The surface rippled...

  Arka craned his neck. The back of his neck tightened, his trapezius cramping from the extreme angle.

  Nil. The top of the gate was invisible.

  The black structure towered endlessly, swallowed by the gray fog swirling violently in the ceiling of the void, as if hiding a Tower of Babel piercing the heavens.

  He tried to measure the width of the gate. Arka had to turn his head to the left, then sweep his gaze slowly to the right until his neck vertebrae clicked.

  His eyes did not possess a Field of View wide enough. This terrifying grandeur did not fit into a single frame of human vision. He was forced to record it piece by piece, assembling the puzzle of terror in his brain.

  Before him stood a Titanic Gate.

  Two doors closed tight. The material was Vantablack—the kind of black that does not reflect light, but drinks it.

  And that was when the sensation hit him.

  Cold.

  Not the cold of wind or weather. This was deadly thermal radiation. The chill radiated from the surface of the black gate, stinging the skin of Arka’s face like thousands of microscopic ice needles. The vapor of his breath instantly froze into white crystals in the air. Arka shivered, the cold penetrating his pores, freezing the marrow of his bones.

  "This isn't stone," Arka thought, teeth chattering. "Stone doesn't radiate death this cold."

  He forced his eyes to focus. The surface of the gate... was alive.

  Arka stared at the Left Door.

  The surface was a dizzying ocean of reliefs. There were millions, perhaps billions, of carvings of living things.

  At the bottom, biological logic still applied: Lions roaring with neck veins bulging, elephants with tusks jutting out, wolves baring fangs.

  But the higher it went, evolution went mad.

  Mythical beasts took over. Dragons with scales carved in such detail Arka could see the scars on every plate. Griffins spreading wings, seven-headed serpents coiling and biting the necks of their own kin.

  And in the gaps... Abominations.

  Nameless things. Lumps of furred meat with dozens of eyes staring wildly in all directions. Geometric insects with legs as sharp as needles. Beasts made of bones arranged in anatomical impossibilities.

  They looked to be in agony.

  Their black muscles tensed in eternal spasms. their gazes sharp, savage, and desperate. It was as if they were not carvings, but millions of real creatures cursed into stone while thrashing to escape the surface of the door.

  Arka took a step back. His ears rang. He could feel a silent roar—a soundless scream that deafened the soul radiating from the left side.

  Then, his eyes shifted to the Right Door.

  A beautiful contrast, yet equally horrifying.

  It was a compacted jungle.

  Roots of giant banyan trees twisted together like pythons. Ancient ferns. Roses with thorns as sharp as obsidian razors.

  There was also the flora of hell: Lotuses with petals that looked like frozen fire, pitcher plants with jagged teeth, and trees bearing fruit shaped like the grinning skulls of infants.

  Abstract plants filled the voids: Stems in endless fractal spirals, crystal flowers with geometrically impossible angles, and moss that pulsed slowly like human brain tissue.

  This right side was also alive.

  The tendrils looked as if they were creeping, nanometer by nanometer, seeking a crack to grow through. Some of the carved flowers... glowed. A dim bioluminescence emanated from the black petals, pulsing in time with a slow heartbeat.

  Arka felt his legs turn to jelly. The cold from the gate pierced deeper, stiffening his joints.

  "Who carved this?" Arka whispered, his voice shattering into white vapor. "Or... were they carved at all?"

  His reason had no time to answer before the spiral fog in the ceiling parted wider. A bleak light fell, illuminating the center where the two giant doors met.

  There, splitting the dense reliefs of beast and plant, was a void space. On the surface of the black stone, slick and cold as ice, two sentences were carved.

  The characters were alien.

  Unlike alphabets, Kanji, or Sanskrit.

  The script was sharp. Aggressive. Spiked.

  Every stroke was deep and crude, as if the writing had not been chiseled with iron tools, but gouged directly by the claws of a furious titan. The strokes radiated an aura of primordial violence.

  Arka narrowed his eyes. "What language is this? Alien? Demonic?"

  But then, the anomaly occurred.

  As his eyes traced the jagged shapes, his brain did not process them as foreign images.

  Zzzzt!

  The synapses in his head stung with pain.

  No dictionary, no analysis, no translation process... Arka understood it.

  The meaning of the sentence was injected forcibly into his consciousness, invading his frontal lobe as clearly as if he were reading his own name.

  Arka stepped back, breath hitched. The cold from the gate now crept up his neck.

  "How..."

  His trembling hand rose slowly. His index finger pointed toward the Left Door, where millions of animals thrashed in eternal suffering.

  His mouth moved on its own, mumbling the translation echoing in his head. His voice sounded heavy, laden with the burden of the millions of lives trapped there.

  "Where... does eternity lie...?"

  Then, Arka’s hand shifted.

  His finger now pointed to the Right Door, where the creeping vines and flowers of death pulsed.

  There, the answer was carved. Cold, absolute, and merciless.

  Arka read it in a whisper, a tone of horrifying resignation.

  "...Eternity arrives... in the wake of death."

  In the darkness of Arka’s mind, the giant black gate was not silent.

  DOOM... DOOM...

  The inanimate object pulsed. A slow, heavy rhythm, exactly like a giant heart just roused from a long slumber.

  Every beat sent out a shockwave. Not wind, but a wave of absolute cold.

  The wave slammed into Arka’s chest, punched through his ribs, and froze his lungs.

  Arka gasped.

  His eyes snapped open. Physical reality returned with crushing violence.

  "HURK..."

  His body convulsed violently, doubling over beyond his control. Unbearable nausea surged from his stomach, forcing something alien up his throat.

  SPLAT.

  Thick, dark red fluid spilled from his mouth, spreading across the old wooden temple floor.

  But the blood did not pool like liquid.

  The instant it touched the air, it hissed.

  Crack... crack...

  The blood froze. Crystallized in seconds.

  At that exact moment, a bright flash of lightning pierced the window gap, illuminating the frozen vomit on the floor dramatically.

  Arka stared at it with watery eyes, gasping for air.

  It was beautiful and terrible.

  The frozen blood was clear, glistening sharply, reflecting the lightning like scattered shards of ruby. From its ice-cold surface, white steam curled up, twisting in the air, immediately greeted by and mixing with the thick incense fog in the room.

  "Hhh... hhh..."

  Arka’s body shivered violently. His teeth chattered uncontrollably.

  Cold.

  The cold was not on his skin. The cold was inside his bloodstream, in his bone marrow. It was as if he had brought back a shard of eternal winter from behind that black gate.

  He turned his head to the side with jerky movements.

  The stone hearth was still lit. Even now, the fire roared far more intensely, tongues of flame licking high and wild, devouring the wood greedily.

  But Arka felt nothing.

  He brought his trembling hand close to the fire. Only centimeters away. His skin should have blistered. His fine hairs should have singed.

  Nil.

  The fire carried no heat. To Arka, the fire was merely an orange visual without temperature. His body had become an anomaly.

  Amidst the heavy roar of his breath and the sound of the storm outside, the voice was heard.

  "Welcome, Void Sentinel of House Sagara."

  Grandfather Rajendra’s voice sounded hoarse, heavy, and full of emotion difficult to decipher—pride, yet also grief.

  Arka looked up weakly, staring at his grandfather who still sat cross-legged, unmoving even though Arka had just vomited frozen blood.

  Those old eyes stared at Arka intently.

  "The Aksesa has been born," Grandfather whispered, his voice locking a new destiny onto the young man’s shoulders.

  "Sagara the Silencer."