Dex was utterly stunned by the horror of the situation. His human mind almost broke under the weight of these conflicting and lethal revelations. Lumia's sudden disappearance, the total neural paralysis that gripped his body as if he had turned into a stone statue, the infinite space that swallowed the forest's landmarks, and above all... this strange entity standing behind him, possessing the terrifying ability to dig into his past lives and uncover his deepest, most painful secrets.
In a desperate, instinctive attempt at self-defense, Dex tried to ignite a spark of his usual rage; he tried to summon the mythical entity within his chest to incinerate these shadows. But he collided with an even more terrifying truth: even the "Phoenix Core," the source of his almighty power, was unresponsive. He felt neither its heat nor its pulse. The core was completely silent, as if it had fallen into a deep slumber, or rather, as if it had been "extinguished" by a force that transcended the concepts of mana and elements in this world.
Faced with the shock of the situation that nearly drove him to the edge of madness, Dex's breath caught for a moment. He realized that panic was exactly what this presence fed upon. "I am not merely a victim," Dex screamed within his mind, the only voice left to him in this void. "Ultimately, I am not an ordinary person born in this empire to die in its forests. I am a person who read this novel. I know the deepest secrets of this world, even those its own characters have yet to discover!"
He shut his eyes tightly, isolating his vision from the infinite darkness before him. He took a long, slow breath, forcing his racing heartbeat to steady. With a colossal mental effort, he cleared all the tension flooding his muscles, and deliberately ignored the icy hand resting on his head and the dead breath on his neck. He closed the doors of his external senses and opened the archives of his internal mind.
Dex reviewed every word, every line, and every chapter he had read in the original novel about the anomalies and bizarre phenomena in the "Falus" forest. For a time, he navigated the folds of his memory, turning the pages of an imaginary book inside his head, bypassing the monsters, the traps, and the poisonous plants.
Until a marginal "legend" stopped him. A legend that was not mentioned as a major event initially, but as a terrifying warning circulated by senior mages, speaking primarily about the third and deepest zone of the falus forest; the area known as the "Death Zone" or the "Heart of the Falus Forest."
Among all the legends that spoke of the Death Zone, there was one specific legend, dark and mysterious, speaking of an unknown patch spanning hundreds of meters. This patch was primarily centered near the borders of the Death Zone, but what was strange and deadly about it was that it was a "mobile" patch. It was not a static trap that could be drawn on maps to be avoided; rather, it was a spatial anomaly that drifted from place to place like an invisible cloud of doom. And the unfortunate soul who found themselves within its path... their death was absolute certainty.
Dex remembered clearly that in the novel, almost no one who entered this patch survived with their mind or body intact. It was not a patch that killed physically, but one that erased existence itself. Numerous rumors and theories were discussed in the halls of magic academies regarding the nature of this bizarre place.
One rumor claimed that this patch was nothing but a "territorial technique" of a mysterious and colossal entity, a mage or a demon who lived in an unknown, ancient era before the Empire and before the World Tree itself, an entity whose power exceeded the barrier of the mythical rank (SSS+). And when this entity died in the heart of the forest, its ultimate spell refused to dissipate, and its technique remained active, roaming the forest in search of souls to devour.
Another rumor, adopted by dimensional scholars, spoke of this patch as a "spatial tear," a dimension from another bizarre world that had no relation to the laws of physics and magic. And that this mobile patch was a window or a portal that swallowed anyone who touched it, throwing them into this mysterious world where neither time nor space existed.
While others, the clergy and priests, swore that this patch was neither magic nor a dimension, but simply a piece torn from the "Hell of the Underworld" itself, a place where souls are tormented and face their sins head-on, where identity is erased and voice is stolen.
"The Zone of Absolute Silence... or the Prison of Souls," Dex realized the truth. He and Lumia had fallen into the path of this mobile patch by the worst possible coincidence. And the entity behind him was not a monster, but the manifestation of the laws of this patch that reads the soul. But... if this zone killed everyone who entered it... how did Dex know about it in the novel? How was its story written if no one survived it to tell the tale?