In the deepest point of the Western region of the Sanctuary, reality seemed to freeze.
Azril, who was once just a boy with one arm, had now transformed into a living statue that could barely be distinguished from the ruins in the Sanctuary.
The crystal dust falling from the ceiling of that dimension slowly accumulated, enveloping his body until Azril resembled an ancient monument forgotten by time.
For Azril, time was no longer a river flowing forward; time had become a vast ocean, calm yet drowning.
One of his breaths now took ten years. One beat of his heart echoed once every five years. And every time Azril blinked, a decade had passed in the outside world without Azril realizing it.
Three hundred years passed in a silence that paralyzed the soul.
During those centuries, Azril did not just sit still. Within his soul, which was nearly destroyed by solitude, a process of evolution occurred that defied human logic.
Azril was performing a forced unification with the essence of the Sanctuary.
Because what Azril did not know was that the inner western part of the Sanctuary was the central remains of the karma of the Sanctuary's Creator.
The Creator of the Sanctuary was an entity who had reached the step of Transcendence.
Azril's body slowly began to lose its humanity. His organ cells no longer required sustenance; they now fed on the remnants of ancient energy scattered in the air.
[First Century: Step 2 - Stardust Strata]
In the first hundred years, Azril's suffering reached its peak. The pain no longer came from physical wounds, but from the deconstruction of his existence.
Starting from the pores of his skin, Azril's body truly began to dissolve. Azril witnessed with his own inner eye how his hands, his feet, and all parts of his body shattered into billions of ultra-fine bluish-purple light particles.
Azril lost his physical form. Azril was now "Stardust." Azril became a vapor flowing freely between the stone ruins of the Sanctuary.
In this form, his consciousness was spread across the entire Western region. Azril could feel the slightest vibrations of the earth; Azril could hear the whispered memories of the monsters that had died there thousands of years ago.
Azril felt their anger, their despair, and the remnants of karma they left behind.
Azril no longer inhabited the Sanctuary; Azril had become part of the essence of the place itself. Every speck of dust floating in the air was his eye, and every flow of energy was his vein.
[Second & Third Century: Step 3 - Void Stillness]
Entering the second and third centuries, Azril's consciousness reached its most terrifying nadir. The loneliness Azril felt for two hundred years had turned his soul into a bottomless void.
Azril no longer longed for a human voice. Azril had become the voice itself. Azril no longer searched for light; Azril had become the darkness that swallowed it.
Suddenly, that balance broke.
BOOOOM!
An explosion of nebula energy—a mixture of dark purple and silver blue—towered high from Azril's point of meditation.
The energy was so massive that it pierced through the Sanctuary's atmospheric layers, creating a giant pillar that could be seen from every corner of the dimension.
Azril roared, a scream that did not come from a mouth, but directly from his soul. The pain was so intense as if all of his "Stardust" particles were being forced to condense back into a single narrow focal point.
His body exploded and shattered into pieces in the midst of that energy vortex.
The atmosphere in the Sanctuary, which had been thundering violently due to the explosion, suddenly returned to silence. A silence deeper than death.
However, in the midst of that silence, the energy waves in the Sanctuary began to swirl wildly. Millions of those light particles began to be pulled back by an invisible magnet, reassembling every molecule of Azril's body with a structure far more perfect and sturdy.
At that moment, Azril opened his eyes. However, what Azril saw was no longer the gloomy Inner West Sanctuary.
Through the synchronization of his energy with the Sanctuary, Azril gained access to an ancient memory stored within the energy particles there.
His vision shifted. Azril now saw a world that was so warm and beautiful.
The sky was a bright nebula with planets above it that looked whole and majestic on the horizon. Green forests and rivers of energy flowed peacefully.
In the middle of that heavenly scenery stood a majestic man. His face was young, clean, and radiated an authority that could make the entire universe kneel.
However, behind his majesty, the man seemed to harbor an unspoken sadness. His gaze contained grief, yet strangely, his face looked very sincere.
"Cause and effect, huh? Hahaha..." The man's laughter sounded very soft, echoing in Azril's inner ear.
"It turns out the most dangerous enemy is not someone with absolute power, but those closest to us.
Those I considered comrades-in-arms... brothers of the same fate... were even willing to turn themselves into karma just to erase my existence from history. How ironic."
The man whispered softly, as if speaking to himself. His gaze then flickered toward a giant chain at the furthest end of the dimension a chain that extended into unreachable depths.
The majestic man then laughed softly once more, a laugh containing both forgiveness and heartache, before his figure slowly faded and disappeared into grains of eternal light.
Azril snapped back to reality. Azril took a long breath, and every molecule of air Azril inhaled now felt obedient to his will.
Azril stood up slowly, and Azril realized a drastic change in his physique.
Azril was no longer a boy. His body had now transformed into a sturdy young adult man of ideal height.
His jet-black hair had grown very long, trailing beautifully down to his ankles.
Azril wore an elegant black robe with gold-colored accessories on both shoulders, as if woven from the eternal darkness of the Sanctuary.
However, what shook his heart the most was his left arm. On the shoulder that was once empty, a perfect new arm had now grown. However, it was no ordinary flesh hand.
The arm was enveloped by a cosmic aura pulsing slowly, emitting a faint bluish-purple light—a manifestation of Step 3, Void Stillness.
"How long have I been in this darkness?"
Azril asked in his heart. Azril tried to let out a sound that sounded like a growl.
"Aaa..."
His voice now sounded deep and full of authority, very different from the boy's voice Azril remembered before. He did not know—during his time in the Sanctuary, hundreds of years had passed, but in the outside world, time had not moved too far.
Azril tried to fly. The moment Azril willed it, his body shot off at a speed surpassing imagination, leaving a trail of dimensional cracks behind him.
Azril stopped in mid-air, staring at the spatial rift he had just created. Azril then took out a red-colored crystal that Azril had kept for a long time—the only object remaining from his past.
Wush!
Azril threw the crystal toward the rift, and the crystal disappeared instantly.
"Is this gap the way out I have been searching for?" he thought.
Azril clenched his cosmic fist tightly. All the Step 3 energy Azril had gathered for hundreds of years, Azril focused into a single point.
BUM! ....
A violent impact shattered the wall of reality, creating a large hole that radiated energy from the outside world.
Azril felt extremely happy. In his heart, Azril wanted to sob because he could finally see the way home. However, a bitter reality struck him.
Azril had forgotten how to express himself. Hundreds of years of solitude had erased his ability to smile or cry. His face remained as cold as stone, even though his soul screamed with emotion.
Even the strongest person in his world might never be able to touch or tear the walls of the Sanctuary. This place was a hidden spatial realm far outside normal reality, a dimensional prison created by the power of Transcendence.
Yet Azril could do it not just because Azril was strong, but because Azril had "merged." Azril had consumed the energy of this place, letting his body shatter and be reborn from it. Technically, Azril was half of the Sanctuary itself.
Just before stepping into the rift, Azril remembered the gaze of the majestic man earlier. The man's view was fixed on the giant chain in a much deeper area.
Azril hesitated for a moment; could there be something more important there? However, the longing for his parents overcame everything. Azril ignored that mystery for now. Azril wanted to go home quickly.
Azril stepped forward, letting his body be swallowed by the vortex of dimensional light.
Wosshhh!
Azril did not know that the chain Azril saw in that vision was the Karma Guardian Chain. And one day, fate would force him back to this place to uncover the secret of the greatest betrayal in the history of the universe.
But for now, the ruler of silence had returned to the real world. A world that would soon tremble at his presence.