? ─── ?? ? ?? ─── ?

  The darkness did not vanish abruptly; it simply dissolved, like a torn veil.

  At first, there was only a hollow void. No pain, no cold, no weight. His senses felt as though they had been toggled off along with his life, leaving only a spectral consciousness that hummed like a low electric current. He felt that he could "think," but he possessed neither a body nor a space to anchor those thoughts. Only an infinite emptiness that offered no answers.

  I am?.. Do I… still exist?

  He tried to imagine himself—a hand, a face, even the shadow of his own silhouette. A body appeared, but it was unstable, like a reflection in murky water: blurred, elusive, subject only to his imagination. He focused harder, and his fingers finally took shape—pale, translucent, trembling as if woven from fog. But the moment he looked away, they dissolved back into nothingness.

  The youth opened his eyes—or what he perceived as eyes—and saw a silhouette above him. A young girl, or rather, a semblance of one, leaned over him. She was as still as a stone statue, peering intensely into his face. No emotion. No sound. Only the echo of his own breath—or perhaps, its imitation. A distant rhythm throbbed in his head, like the beat of a non-existent heart.

  When he moved, she stepped back. The motion was precise, mechanical, devoid of fear or haste. Her gaze remained unchanging: no surprise, no curiosity, no pity. The silence between them was thick, almost material, and he felt it pressing against a chest he might no longer possess.

  The youth tried to stand and, to his surprise, he did. There was nothing beneath his feet, yet an invisible force held him upon a "surface" that did not exist. He looked around.

  The space stretching around him defied the laws of reality. There was no up, no down, no horizon. A vast dome, a fusion of gloom and radiance, flickered with golden specks. They flared and died like stars being born and extinguished in a silent cosmos. But this was no sky. It was something else—a place that belonged neither to time nor space. The air, if it existed at all, trembled ever so slightly, as if the entire expanse breathed in rhythm with those specks. As they drifted past, they left behind a faint whisper, like the echo of voices from vanished worlds.

  He reached out toward one of them. It hovered before his fingers, pulsing, and for a fleeting second, an image flashed through his mind: a city of glass towers crumbling under the strike of an invisible force. The vision vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of loss.

  “What the hell is this?” he managed to gasp. His voice sounded weaker than he expected, like an echo in an empty hall.

  He looked at the girl again. This time, he looked closer. She was not human. Her essence seemed woven from something beyond flesh and blood.

  At first glance, she appeared to be a young woman, but her appearance was fractured, as if two realities had been fused together by a madman's will. The left side of her face was ivory-white, elegant, and unearthly beautiful. Pale curls fell over her shoulder, her skin glowed like porcelain, and her eye—a deep, bottomless blue—seemed infinite. The right side was charred, blackened, and distorted, as if hell itself had swept across it. The skin was cracked like parched earth, and the eye was cloudy, dead. Her light dress mirrored this duality: one half was lacy and ethereal, the other tattered and scorched. Even the parasol in her hand was torn down the axis: elegant on one side, charred and twisted on the other.

  A primal fear froze in his chest—a fear he tried in vain to tame with the remnants of logic. Her appearance wasn't just macabre. It was… symbolic, reflecting something deeper, something he refused to acknowledge.

  “Who… Who are you? And where… where the hell am I?”

  His voice trembled. He had a deluge of questions, but the words snagged in his throat, and his thoughts beat against his skull like birds in a cage.

  The girl did not answer immediately. Her voice was a choir of contradictory timbres: the velvet of a cathedral prayer, the clang of steel, and a child’s purity, jagged with the hoarseness of ruined worlds. She remained silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice felt like the echo of something nameless.

  “I am that which has always been between the first breath and the last sigh. ‘Goddess’... is merely a sound your lips can utter.”

  She did not smile. Her eyes—one living, one dead—remained dark and fathomless. Only the glint of the golden specks reflected in them, like the mirror of infinity.

  “And this place is a crossroads. This is where the paths of realities converge. I govern them… when necessary.”

  The youth looked back at the specks humming around them like a swarm of fireflies. One touched his shoulder, and a new memory flashed: the laughter of a child running through a field, and a sudden scream as the sky tore in half. The boy shuddered, waving the light away, but it had already dissolved.

  “Are these worlds?” he murmured. “What kind of madness is this?”

  “Yes. These are all existing realities.” Her voice was calm, but it held a weight, as if every word fell into the void like a stone into a bottomless pit. “They are born, they live, and they vanish. A world is like a soap bubble: it appears, it glimmers, it shivers… and it pops. Some give birth to new ones when the ‘parent’ world is strong enough—or when someone creates something perfect within it. But most vanish without a trace. Look closer—fewer are being born than are being extinguished.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He watched the hypnotic dance of the specks. New flares appeared more slowly than the old ones faded. Every disappearance left a faint pulsation in the space, like a sigh.

  “Horrible…” he said softly. “But why am I here? What am I supposed to do with all this?”

  “A fleeting whim of eternity,” she said, and a faint hint of mockery touched her voice, as if he were an ant questioning the intent of a human.

  Her words hit like a leaden cloud. He felt an invisible tightening in his chest.

  “A whim? What does that even mean?”

  “I shall weave your essence into another form, into another world. There, you will begin anew.”

  He fell silent. Thoughts whirled in his head, but none could latch onto anything meaningful. The reality around him defied common sense, and her words sounded simultaneously like an offer and a sentence.

  “So… an isekai?” he huffed sarcastically, trying to mask his confusion. “Can we skip the clichés, please?”

  “Everything you call a cliché was once new,” she replied, a shadow of irritation flickering in her voice. “I do not force you. You may leave. Although… there is nowhere to go.”

  He looked around, lost. The surrounding void pressed in even tighter, while the specks continued their dance. One drifted close to his face, and he felt a new vision flare: a desert where sandstorms were reshaping the face of a planet. The youth recoiled, and the light went out.

  “But… why? Why me? What’s the point?” His voice grew more insistent, though it still wavered.

  She tilted her head as if examining him from a new angle. Her eyes—the living and the dead—glinted simultaneously, and something elusive flashed within them: not curiosity, not calculation, but something vast and incomprehensible.

  “Why does a star burn? Why does a river cut the earth?” Her voice was low but vibrated with a majesty tempered by the exhaustion of countless cycles. “You are a grain of sand in a current that sees no shores. Why ask, when you already know the answer?”

  Her words cut through him, reducing him to insignificance. He wanted to argue, to demand clarity, but her tone—detached, almost bored—made him feel like an insect questioning the sky about its plans.

  “And if I refuse?” He lifted his chin, clinging to the scraps of his dignity.

  She didn't answer right away. Her gaze drifted over the specks, and for a moment, she seemed… tired, as if the weight of uncounted cycles pressed upon her shoulders.

  “Then you shall remain here,” she said finally. “Beyond time. Beyond space. You will watch worlds be born and perish, but you will be a part of none. It is not a punishment. It is simply… the nature of this place.”

  He imagined himself in this void—an eternal observer, incorporeal, without purpose, drowning in the wreckage of other people’s lives. The fireflies hummed, and each one that touched him left shards of joy, pain, love, or death. His mind was slowly fracturing, unable to withstand the deluge.

  “That sounds like hell.” He thought of the smoke of war, of the screams that still buzzed in his mind. If this was hell, he already knew the taste of it.

  “For some—hell. For others—peace.” Her voice was almost tender, but within that tenderness lay a cold indifference. “You decide what it is for you.”

  He clenched his fists—or what he perceived as fists. His spectral body trembled, not from cold, but from the realization: there was no choice. No return to the old world. There was only her, this void, and the unknown ahead.

  “You aren’t giving me a real choice,” he said, bitterness ringing in his voice. “Fine. One last question.” He hesitated but forced himself to continue. “Why do you look… like this?”

  It was risky. But she didn't take offense. Her voice grew quieter, and for the first time, a faint inflection touched it—either irony or sorrow.

  “Because that is how you see me.”

  “Me?..”

  “I am not a fixed form. Every soul molds me in its own way. I am a mirror. If you see beauty and ruin in me, it speaks not of me.”

  He went silent. His gaze drifted over her face, where beauty and horror coexisted in a fragile harmony. He thought of his life: the losses, the war, the nightmares that haunted him. The cracks in his soul he had tried to ignore.

  “It speaks of me,” he whispered.

  “Precisely. You are all woven from light and shadow. And you know… shadow is lighter. It finds its own way. It doesn't need to be carried.”

  Her eyes moved. The dark half of her face curled into a faint smile—slow, cold. A moment later, the light half smiled, lagging behind like an echo. That smile was similar but felt different—like grief for something already lost.

  He shuddered. Her words rang true, yet something else hid within them—something he couldn't quite see. Like a puzzle missing half its pieces.

  “You’re hiding something,” he suddenly blurted out, surprised by his own boldness. “There’s something more. What aren’t you telling me?”

  She tilted her head, and this time a spark flared in her eyes—not warmth, but a faint recognition, as if he had touched the edge of something profound.

  “A speck of dust does not ask the wind of its path,” she said, her voice sounding like a hollow, booming incantation. “It flows with the current or it scatters. Live in the world I give you, and perhaps you will discern the shapes of things beyond. Or perhaps not…”

  He wanted to object, but he felt the space around them hum louder. The specks whirled faster, their drone becoming overwhelming, almost painful. His consciousness swayed like sand in a storm.

  “Wait!” he cried. “What’s there, in that world? What waits for me?”

  She did not answer. She merely raised her parasol, and the specks froze, suspended in space. One, brighter than the rest, slowly approached him. It touched his forehead, and an image flared in his mind: a snow-covered forest, a metallic capsule smoking in the earth, and a pair of icy eyes staring from the darkness.

  “You shall see… when the shadows of the new world part before you.”

  He gasped, clutching at the remnants of his will.

  “Fine…” His voice was drowned in bitterness. “No choice then. Weave my essence into a new body. The old one is… ashes.”

  “As you wish.”

  A shadow crossed her eyes—not malice, but a relentless finality. She spun the parasol, and the space spiraled like a vortex. The void around him contracted, preparing to expel him.

  The last thing he saw was her smile. The dark half of her face smiled first—slow, careless, sinister, as if savoring the trial she had prepared for him. The light half followed a moment later, but that delay carried an omen, like a bell tolling after everything has already been decided.

  And then, everything vanished…