Aether's consciousness shattered like crystalline fragments as the universe compressed him into something smaller than a grain of sand, then smaller still—his entire existence condensed into a quantum pulse swimming in the infinite void.
Yet, remarkably, his awareness remained intact. Every sensation blazed through what remained of his being: the crushing pressure that threatened to collapse him into nothingness, the searing heat that should have reduced him to ash, and the electric thrill of having his very atoms unraveled and rewoven like threads in a cosmic tapestry.
He rocketed through what felt like a tunnel of impossible mathematics, where colors that had no business existing painted reality with their alien hues. The walls pulsed with fractal patterns that made his mind scream in protest—geometries that shouldn't exist, yet somehow did. Logic itself seemed to bend and break around him, leaving only the raw experience of movement beyond comprehension.
