The silence was absolute.
No rustle of leaves, no ticking of a clock, not even the subtle hum of magical residue that once accompanied my every breath. For a moment, I simply sat—still in the remnants of meditation, though my mind had already broken free from its serenity. My thoughts churned like ancient gears in a long-abandoned machine, slow but unrelenting.
"I didn't go back in time," I finally whispered to myself, the words hollow and tasteless in my mouth. "I was placed back."
But by whom?
Certainly not the Eye—no, that thing desired annihilation, not restoration. Its gaze had no warmth, no curiosity… only judgment. Yet here I was, breathing once more, this time not as the undying construct of bone and will, but as a man of flesh and fragile mortality. I could feel the weight of lungs expanding, the dull ache of a mortal spine from prolonged stillness. None of this made sense—unless, of course, someone else had intervened.
Someone powerful enough to tear me from the brink of erasure and stitch me into the skin of my own distant past.
I stood up slowly, my feet finding the familiar cold of the wooden floor. The reflection in the glass pane beside me shimmered faintly—not with arcane energy, but with something far more unsettling. I stared at the figure that looked back, a man stripped of power, cloaked in memory but starved of might. The image was... pathetic. Not in appearance, but in presence. There was no aura, no oppressive weight of a soul that had once broken planets with a mere sigh.
I lifted my hand slowly, almost ritualistically, fingers extended as if I could grasp the air and tear open a portal like I had done so many times before. But there was nothing. Not a tremor, not a ripple.
Just... stillness.
A hollow chuckle escaped my lips—not out of amusement, but as a reflex born of thousands of years of observation. "So," I murmured, "not even a sliver of mana… how thoroughly amusing."
I pressed deeper, calling not upon the arcane, but upon the instinct—the urge. The killing intent that once echoed through dimensions, the pressure that could crush armies without lifting a blade. I channeled it toward the air around me. The result was a whisper, a flicker, a laughable trace of what once was.
Unacceptable.
And yet… expected.
My thoughts swirled like a dying storm, desperate for a center. With a sudden decision, I dropped into a seated position once more—legs crossed, back straight, fingers clasped in a meditative weave I hadn't used in centuries. My consciousness, now sharpened by necessity, dove inward.
There, I found the Void again. Not the external one between realms, but the internal—the absence that now filled the space where my mana, my aura, my very soul should have been. I studied the sensation. There was no resistance, no anchoring tether of necrotic law. My soul, once tied to death itself, now floated with an almost unbearable purity.
No decay. No corruption. Just light. But beneath that light… was darkness. Faint, buried, but undeniably there.
The contrast fascinated me.
Had something purified me? Had the Eye burned away the rot that defined my undeath? Or had I simply been returned to a state before all of it began—before rituals, before mastery, before even intent?
I opened my eyes slowly and stood. The world remained quiet, but now I observed it with a different lens. I needed answers. Not theories—proof.
I walked to the kitchen with deliberate slowness, opened a drawer, and retrieved a kitchen knife. It felt absurdly mundane in my hand, a far cry from the soul-reaping blades I had once wielded. Without hesitation, I turned the blade and drove it into my palm.
Pain.
Not the ghost of it—true, raw pain. I breathed through it, almost smiling. "So this is what it means to feel again."
I focused. Not on mana, but on life itself. The raw essence that kept mortals tethered to the world. Slowly, I gathered that essence—my essence—and funneled it to the wound.
It closed.
Not instantly, not flawlessly—but it closed.
Fascinating.
My smile deepened. I turned, placed my hand on a small potted plant resting by the window. With care, I extended my awareness—not to dominate, but to touch. I felt the flicker of life inside it, the faint push and pull of photosynthetic rhythm. And I took.
The plant withered.
My wound felt lighter. The recovery, accelerated.
So… I could heal myself with life essence, yes—but the cost of another's life provided a shortcut. A truth I already knew, but had never needed in such crude terms.
With renewed purpose, I returned to the center of the room and sat again.
"This world has no mana," I thought aloud, "and perhaps no aura either. But there is energy. Life energy. A primitive, untapped current. It will have to suffice."
I closed my eyes and searched for something—anything—familiar within this framework. A breath technique? A fragment of an ancient cultivation path? Perhaps something that could be rebuilt from the ashes of all I had once known.
But before that thought could fully form, I heard it.
A sound.
The door.
It creaked open.
In one fluid motion, I retrieved the knife again and turned. My body still lacked its former speed and strength, but muscle memory was a powerful thing. I raised the blade defensively, then froze.
She stood there. A woman.
Familiar. Terribly familiar.
She was a fragment of my first life—an echo of a time I had buried long before my transformation. Her presence dragged memories to the surface, memories I had neither wanted nor welcomed. She had been a predator disguised in kindness, a corrupted soul wrapped in human skin.
I looked at her.
She looked back.
And I saw it. Not with my eyes—but with the life I had learned to sense.
Her soul. Rotten. Diseased.
Without hesitation, I stepped forward.
The blade found her throat.
My hand found her face.
And I took.
Her essence drained with terrifying efficiency, her body collapsing like an empty husk. She fell with a whimper. Not a scream. Not a cry for mercy. Just... silence.
I stood over her body, rolled my neck until the vertebrae popped like snapping twigs, and resumed my position.
The silence welcomed me back.
But as I closed my eyes once more to continue meditation, the world shifted.
Suddenly, I was standing.
No—projected.
The library.
It had returned.
Or perhaps I had returned to it.
Thousands of doors, endless and eternal, stood before me in a place that defied dimension. Each door unique, yet equally closed. Each one pulsing with the weight of unseen knowledge, unimaginable power.
I stepped toward the closest.
Black wood. Brass handle. A door like an office in some bureaucratic underworld.
And then I saw him.
Standing behind that door... was Sebastian.
He held a blade.
Not a threat—an invitation.
But why?
I remained still.
This was no memory. No illusion.
It was something far more dangerous.
Something... familiar.