The darkness consumed him whole.
Sen's last breath was swallowed by the swirling vortex, his body spinning, twisting in ways that defied comprehension. He had barely registered the moment before the world around him broke apart.
Time, as he knew it, ceased to exist. It wasn't a sense of stillness, but an eerie kind of movement where moments stretched into eternity and vanished before his mind could fully grasp them.
("I can't see anything.")
His eyes strained, but the darkness was impenetrable—its depths infinitely profound, as though he was falling through nothingness itself.
He had no footing. No ground to stand on. It was as if gravity had abandoned him entirely, leaving him adrift in a space where his body floated without purpose, without direction. Every twist of his body felt wrong, unnatural, as though his own limbs were betraying him, lost in an unknown rhythm.
The silence in this place was absolute. No hum of machinery, no sound of wind or breath. Even his heartbeat felt distant, like a drumbeat echoing from some far-off land. But his thoughts—his thoughts were sharp, cutting through the thick blackness like blades. What was this place? Where was this place? He hadn't been told what would happen. All he knew was that the Gateway had been activated.
All around him, the swirling patterns in the void grew, expanding, shifting, like a kaleidoscope made of void and starlight. Yet there was no light. No warmth. No hope. The blackness seemed to ripple like liquid, or maybe like a tear in the very fabric of the universe itself, a rip he was falling through without ever reaching the bottom.
He could feel the distortion, his senses warping, losing all sense of certainty. Was he still alive? Was he still... himself?
And then—light.
It flickered at the corner of his vision, a tiny pinpoint of brilliance, weak but blinding against the endless void.
("What..What is that?")
He tried to reach for it, his limbs flailing through the empty space, but it was as though the light was always out of his grasp. It felt like an illusion, just a fragment of hope within a nightmare he couldn't escape.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, something changed.
A shift. A sudden jolt that sent shockwaves through his entire body. Time snapped back into place with a violent force. Gravity, too, returned, crashing down on him like a tidal wave of pressure. His body slammed against what felt like solid ground, harsh and unforgiving. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he gasped, inhaling air that burned his lungs and tasted of... ash?
He collapsed, his body aching from the impact. His mind swam in a haze of confusion, his thoughts disjointed and scattered. But one thing was clear—the gateway, that swirling vortex of chaos and distortion, had taken him somewhere. Somewhere far, far away from everything he knew.
And as the world around him slowly began to solidify into shape—distant sounds reaching his ears, the oppressive weight of reality settling back around him—he knew one thing for sure.
This was no longer the world he had known.
He blinked a few times, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
The pod had landed—or crashed—on solid ground, its opening slowly lifting to reveal a dusty, barren landscape stretching before him. The air was thick and foreign, the sky above an unfamiliar shade, swirling with hues that reminded him of some distant dream.
He pushed himself out of the pod, his muscles sore from the intense pressure of the journey. The world around him was silent—unnervingly silent. No buzzing machines, no electric hum, just the eerie quiet of an unfamiliar place. He stepped forward cautiously, his boots crunching on the dry earth beneath him.
Sen's mind raced, his body still heavy with the aftereffects of the void, but the overwhelming sense of disorientation was gradually fading. He inhaled deeply, the ash-tinted air filling his lungs with a dryness that scraped against his throat. This was real. No more phantoms, no more empty, endless fall. The sensation of the ground beneath him—solid, unforgiving—reminded him that whatever this place was, it was not a dream. But that only made the questions more insistent.
Where was he?
The environment around him felt wrong, foreign—like he was standing in a place where time itself had been twisted. He squinted up at the sky, its swirling colors reminiscent of the shifting patterns in the vortex, but it was too still. Too calm.
"Great," he muttered under his breath, his voice hoarse from the dryness of his mouth. "I'm in another goddamn hellhole."
His hand instinctively went to the small of his back, where he kept a blade hidden beneath his shirt. But there was nothing—just empty fabric. His weapons, his gear—gone. He gritted his teeth in frustration. The last thing he wanted was to be vulnerable in a strange place, surrounded by gods knew what dangers.
But then, that other thought crept in.
("How am I still alive?")
The thought sent a shiver down his spine. The last memory he had—before the darkness swallowed him whole—was of the lab. The Gateway. The experiment. The failure. They'd told him it was a one-way trip, a test with no guarantee of survival. And yet, here he was. Still breathing. Still standing.
"You were supposed to die," he muttered jokingly. "Guess even the system couldn't keep its end of the bargain."
There was no way to know what happened, no way to understand what had just occurred. And that made him uncomfortable. A man like him thrived on control, on knowing what was ahead of him, even if that future was laced with violence and bloodshed. But right now? He was blind. No answers, no explanation. Just an empty landscape and the nagging sense that he had stepped into something far beyond his comprehension.
He took another step, the dry earth beneath his boots crunching. His legs felt like lead, but it was the quiet that unsettled him the most. The silence was suffocating—no wind, no animals, nothing. His heart began to beat a little faster, his instincts kicking in. Silence wasn't just eerie—it was dangerous.
("What the hell kind of place is this?")
The pod behind him creaked as the hatch slowly closed, sealing him off from whatever strange machine had brought him here. His eyes flicked toward it for a moment, but he quickly tore his gaze away. There was no point in lingering on the pod. He needed to move.
He kept walking, his eyes scanning the horizon, hoping for something—anything—that could offer some answers. A sign of life. A road. A building. A clue. His fingers twitched, the urge to move faster, to find something familiar, clawing at him.
Sen's eyes narrowed as he spotted a figure in the distance—just a faint outline at first, a shape shuffling against the backdrop of the barren land.
At first, he thought it might be some kind of illusion, a trick his mind was playing on him after everything he had just endured. But as the figure grew clearer with each passing second, his heart skipped a beat.
A skeleton.
It was wandering aimlessly through the dust, its bones clattering with a slow, hollow rhythm that sent a chill through Sen's body. There was no flesh, no flesh to speak of—just the dry, brittle remnants of what once might have been a living creature.
The bones were worn and jagged, like they had been here for ages, exposed to the elements for far too long. Yet, somehow, the skeleton moved, dragging its remains through the dirt as if it were alive.
Sen couldn't tear his eyes away from it. What was this? Had he wandered into some forsaken graveyard? Was this some kind of undead creature roaming this desolate place, bound to walk the earth for eternity?
His hand clenched into a fist, the sharp sting of confusion and frustration flaring in his chest. This wasn't a world he understood.
For the first time since arriving, Sen felt a creeping, gnawing dread deep within him.
"Just what the hell have I gotten myself into?" he muttered, unable to take his eyes off the eerie figure.