Dirga didn't fall.
He was thrown—hurled through space like a comet of flesh and fractured will, spiraling deep into the pocket dimension Sasa had crafted.
And here…
Everything was different.
This wasn't just a void.
It was dense.
Soaked in energy.
Tangible pressure folded over itself, like space was suffocating under its own mass.
At the center of this collapsing realm floated Dirga.
His body — cracked, broken, burned — hovered in place like a dying god waiting for judgment.
But inside?
His soul drifted in the space of his consciousness — a dreamscape shaped like a storm-wracked cosmos.
Floating… observing…
Watching himself.
"…How?"
Dirga's soul, separated from his body, stared at the thing he once called his flesh.
He could see it clearly now — that familiar tattoo in the center of his chest, the black hole pulsing with unnatural rhythm.
And he understood the impossible truth.
"When I forged the concept… I used my soul to fuel the singularity…"
So how was he here?
How was his soul outside the black hole that was built from his soul?
A paradox.
And it was unraveling.
Outside, his body began to crack.
From the center of his chest — the singularity — jagged fractures webbed outward like burning fault lines.
CRRRK.
The fissures grew, glowing like lava veins.
Pieces of him—his fingers, his hair—were already breaking off, sucked into the void.
One by one, fragments of his body were torn apart and pulled into the gravitational center that once granted him power.
Inside his consciousness, the black hole spun faster.
The event horizon gleamed — not black, but white-hot, like a dying star consuming its own light.
Its hunger became insatiable.
Even the surrounding mind-space—the soulscape—began to collapse.
Dirga floated, watching his own soul being drawn in.
He felt it.
A gnawing sensation.
A voice without sound.
A pressure in the bones of his very existence.
Oblivion.
"No—" he whispered.
This wasn't transformation.
This was annihilation.
The thing he created—the thing that made him powerful—was now devouring him.
Every memory.
Every emotion.
Every scar.
Everything that made him Dirgantara was being pulled in.
"This has to stop," he whispered.
But there was no reply.
The black hole pulsed again—faster.
It didn't care who he was.
It only knew one law:
Collapse. Consume. Continue.
The black hole within Dirga spun endlessly in his soul — a silent titan of gravity, a wound in the fabric of his being.
He had created this thing.
And now it was about to destroy him.
Countless theories whispered through his mind as the void pulled tighter.
Some said a black hole was an eternal battery, storing energy in forms beyond comprehension.
Others believed it was the end itself — a tomb for energy, erasing it from reality, violating the law that nothing can truly be destroyed.
Then came the third theory:
A gate.
A converter.
A hole torn between universes, changing matter into pure energy and ejecting it into another realm.
Dirga floated in that space — his body cracking apart, his soul trembling in the dark.
The event horizon of his own creation loomed before him, spinning like an eye of God.
"I made this."
"Not to destroy…"
"But to survive."
"To protect her."
Naya's image flickered in the dark. Her pale face. Her fragile breath.
The only light he had ever truly known.
He clenched his soul like a fist.
And took a step.
The black hole devoured him.
Not piece by piece.
Whole.
His soul crossed the event horizon.
There was no light here.
No sound.
Only pressure.
Like being crushed beneath the weight of infinity.
Dirga fell.
And fell.
And kept falling.
His memories stripped from him in waves.
The screams of childhood.
The sting of fists.
The laughter of Jane.
The warmth of Naya's voice.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
His body no longer existed. He was pure thought now. Pure will.
But the black hole kept demanding more.
Collapse. Consume. Continue.
He drifted toward the singularity — that impossible center, that zero-point where laws ended and gods trembled.
"You are not here to destroy me," he said into the void.
"You are me."
"You are mine."
And in that moment —
he stopped falling.
He floated.
A stillness entered the center of the storm.
From that stillness came light.
A faint pulse.
Like a heartbeat.
Like the first light of a distant star.
The black hole shifted.
It did not stop spinning — but it slowed. It listened.
And Dirga spoke his law:
"This power will no longer just consume."
"It will refine."
"It will become… a forge."
The singularity cracked open.
The black hole reversed, collapsing inward — not in death, but rebirth.
From darkness came structure. Rings of energy formed around the singularity like orbiting halos. The tattoos across Dirga's body aligned — not wild, but harmonized.
The Black Hole became a Black Star.
A gravitational core of controlled devastation.
A power that devoured sin and forged strength.
A power with a purpose.
A sun made of darkness.
Dirga hovered in the eye of the storm — within the infinite pull of his own creation.
A thought echoed through his being.
Did I just reconcept myself?
No... this was always me.
I just never realized it.
The Black Star wasn't born —
It was remembered.
A star with a black hole at its heart.
An impossibility. A paradox.
Something that shouldn't exist in any natural law.
But this wasn't nature.
This was concept.
His concept.
And in this realm, his will was law.
Reality could burn.
The Black Star pulsed once — slow and sovereign.
It carried the same weight as judgment.
The pull of gravity remained, but now… something changed.
The energy it consumed could now be: Stored, like fuel in a dark sun. Annihilated, like sin erased from existence. And Converted, like death spun into power.
It had become more than destruction.
It had become alchemy.
And then…
The body returned.
…
Dirga's flesh had long since broken apart — shredded by the black hole's hunger.
Now, piece by piece, he began to reform.
But not with flesh and blood.
With pure energy.
It began at the core — a heart of crystallized gravity, glowing with a dark orange hue like the rim of an event horizon.
Then came the lungs, reforming as conduits of void-breath, each inhale compressing energy like neutron stars.
The spine coalesced next — not of bone, but of iron-threaded starlight.
Muscles twisted themselves into being — not sinew but tension coiled with force.
Skin wrapped over it all, glowing faintly with residual energy, like the dying light of a galaxy.
And finally —
Hair, dark and glossy, tipped with strands of burnt orange, like flickers from a dying sun.
The body of a man.
The weight of a star.
The power of a singularity.
He opened his eyes — slow, steady.
The iris no longer human.
No longer bound.
It swirled with gravity.
Not gold. Not red.
But the color of collapsed starlight — the edge between mass and void.
His tattoo — the one on his chest — still burned like a brand. But now it spun like a solar disk, the seal of a cosmic engine.