The sky above was a somber, bruised canvas of perpetual dusk, its grim hues of slate and faded plum offering no hint of day or true night.
It simply existed as an unchanging ceiling of despair.
Below, stretching outwards to meet this bleak horizon, was a landscape defined by an unbroken sheet of ankle-deep water.
It was utterly still, reflecting nothing, offering no ripple or tremor to betray movement.
Beneath its murky surface lay fine, lifeless sand, yielding slightly with each weary step, but otherwise offering no feature, no variation.
The very concept of sound had vanished here; a void of absolute silence hung heavy, pressing against the eardrums until they strained for the non-existent.
There was no breath of wind, no stirring of air; the atmosphere was stagnant, suffocating, and cold, a tomb-like stillness.
This was the ultimate void, a realm where all meaning had been scoured away, leaving only raw, desolate gloom and an aching, unfathomable loneliness that consumed everything in its impenetrable darkness.
And within this nothingness, Guts suddenly was.
His eyes snapped open, a harsh, involuntary reflex. He lay supine, his body submerged in the ankle-deep water, the cold stillness of it seeping into him.
For a moment, the agony of his last breath, the searing void where his heart had been, the vision of Casca fading just beyond his reach—all of it surged back with nauseating clarity.
He bolted upright, gasping for air that felt thin and lifeless, his heart hammering in a chest that should have been empty.
He scrambled to his feet, a frantic energy seizing him. There had to be an exit.
There had to be.
He began to run, tearing through the shallow water, the fine sand dragging at his feet with every desperate stride.
He ran until his lungs burned, until his legs screamed, but there was no end, no boundary, no shift in the endless, unchanging expanse.
The horizon remained a flat, unbroken line, mocking his efforts.
Finally, his strength simply evaporated. Not a physical weariness, but a profound, spiritual exhaustion that rooted him to the spot.
He dropped to his hands and knees in the water, the dull pain in his joints a distant echo of his remembered torment. It was then, as he knelt, his gaze falling to his submerged hands, that a chilling realization took hold.
He had both of them.
His prosthetic was gone, replaced by flesh and bone, whole and unmarked.
He stared at the unreflective water, then frantically touched his face.
Both eyes.
Both eyes saw with perfect clarity, no longer the single, scarred window to his rage.
He was completely bare, utterly stripped of his Berserker Armor, of his sword, of the very wounds that had defined him.
Yet, the cursed mark on his neck remained, a stark, unblemished symbol of his miserable fate, a torment he was condemned to endure even here, in this realm of absolute nothingness.
And in this perfectly healed state, in this desolate, featureless place that offered no reflection, no echo, no escape, a new kind of dread, colder than any pain, began to set in.
Time ceased to exist here.
Or perhaps it had simply folded in on itself, becoming a meaningless concept.
Guts didn't know how long he'd been there – an hour? A day? A lifetime? There was no sunrise, no sunset, no shifting shadows, no hunger, no thirst.
Just the unrelenting, somber dusk and the shallow, motionless water stretching out forever.
With every step, his thoughts were drawn back to them.
Casca.
Was she truly safe, sleeping peacefully, or was his dying vision just a cruel mirage? And the others – Farnese, Serpico, Isidro, Schierke, Puck – were they still fighting, or had they, too, succumbed to the encroaching darkness? The worry was a dull, constant throb, a counterpoint to the endless, featureless expanse.
He walked.
Or tried to.
There was no sound to his strides, no splash of water, no crunch of sand beneath his feet.
His movements were swallowed by the absolute, suffocating silence, a terrifying void that offered no auditory confirmation of his own existence. He moved, yet it felt as if he left no trace, made no impact.
He ran until his phantom muscles burned, until a deeper, spiritual weariness settled into his bones, and then he would simply stop, dropping to his knees or lying prone in the chilling water, staring at the unchanging sky. He'd rest, not truly recovering, but simply existing in the desolation, only to rise again and repeat the cycle.
Walk.
Run.
Exhaustion.
Collapse.
Get up.
Walk again.
There was nothing else to do, nowhere else to go.
This futile, maddening routine stretched on, an eternity measured only by the erosion of his spirit.
He tried to remember faces, voices, the warmth of the sun, the bite of wind, anything real.
But the void pressed in, blurring the edges of his memories, threatening to consume them entirely.
Then, after what felt like an infinite stretch of this agonizing non-existence, something new happened. Something that cut through the oppressive silence, through the fog of his despair.
A sound.
Not a clear one, not a voice or a call, but a faint, distant murmur.
A collective hum, like a thousand hushed whispers blending into one, barely perceptible, a vibration against the edges of the suffocating stillness.
Guts froze.
His ears, which had strained for so long against the nothingness, now focused with a raw, desperate intensity.
It was still there.
A ghost of sound in a world of silence.
He lifted his head, his gaze sweeping the featureless horizon, a flicker of something long forgotten igniting within him.
Hope.
A desperate, fragile hope that this sound, this impossible murmur, was not just a trick of his mind, but a guiding light, a sign that there was something beyond this inescapable void.
Hope, desperate and fragile, had lit a spark in the overwhelming gloom.
Guts ran, his phantom legs pumping through the shallow, unyielding water, chasing the impossible murmur.
Little by little, the collective hum began to clarify, to separate into distinct, horrifying notes.
Then, a voice. Small, high-pitched, undeniably familiar. "Guts!" It was Puck, his tiny companion, his usually cheerful tone now laced with a pained, desperate cry.
Then Schierke, her voice, usually so controlled and calm, echoing with a raw, disbelieving anguish.
"Guts!"
The others followed—Isidro's frightened shout, Serpico's sharp, panicked call, Farnese's desperate plea.
Guts's own voice, ragged and hoarse, tore from his throat.
"Puck! Schierke! Farnese!"
He called their names, one by one, a desperate litany, convinced he was reaching them, that this was the path out of the void.
He pushed harder, his spirit soaring on this newfound connection, this impossible beacon.
But as he ran, as his hope swelled, the voices shifted.
The familiar tones didn't grow clearer in reassurance; they twisted into screams.
The murmur that had promised guidance curdled into a collective shriek of pure, unadulterated agony.
Their calls of his name became howls of torment, ripped from throats in unimaginable misery.
Each familiar sound was now a fresh stab of despair, painting vivid pictures of suffering he couldn't see but could hear with horrifying clarity.
"GUTS!"
They cried, their voices peeling apart, each one a thread of suffering woven into a tapestry of his worst fears.
And then, one voice.
Above the cacophony of his friends' pain, a single, piercing sound cleaved through the void, silencing all others.
It was a scream that tore not just the air, but the very fabric of his being.
Casca.
Her agonizing shriek, raw and boundless, ripped through every fiber of Guts's body, a thousand blades twisting in the phantom void where his heart had been.
It was the sound of her world collapsing, of her soul being shredded, and it resonated with every ounce of his unyielding misery, shattering any lingering illusion of hope.
With a raw, desperate urgency, Guts surged forward, scrambling through the shallow, stagnant water.
"Puck! Schierke! Casca!"
He bellowed, his voice ragged, a frantic plea echoing in the crushing silence.
He screamed their names, over and over, hoping for a reply, a coherent word, any glimpse of a clue to where they were, what horrific fate had befallen them.
But there was none.
Only the deepening chorus of their torment.
Their desperate, agonizing cries for him amplified, twisting into a cacophony of tormented souls that filled the entire space, pressing in from all directions.
Each familiar voice was now a fresh wave of despair, a never-ending symphony of suffering that threatened to drown him.
"WHERE ARE YOU?! WHAT HAPPENED?!"
He screamed, his own voice cracking, desperate for an answer, a reprieve.
But the only reply was more agony, more despair, their tortured voices relentlessly calling his name.
Guts staggered, hands flying to his ears, pressing down with all his might, trying to silence the unbearable chorus. But it was futile.
The screams didn't dim; they merely intensified, burning into his mind.
In a desperate, self-destructive frenzy, he plunged his fingers into his ears, stabbing at the flesh, trying to tear open a silence, to somehow, anything to make it stop.
Yet, even as he inflicted pain upon himself, he realized the horrific truth. It wasn't just his ears.
The agonizing voices of his loved ones seeped through every pore of his being. His hair, his nose, his skin—every single cell in his body was a conduit for their torment. He could hear them with his very bones, feel their pain in his blood.
A guttural scream ripped from Guts's throat, a raw, primal roar of pure anguish.
He screamed uncontrollably, a desperate attempt to drown out their unending wails with his own, to find a single moment of quiet in the overwhelming tide of misery.
He collapsed to his knees, begging, pleading for it to stop, for the torture to end. He screamed, he cried, for what felt like an eternity, tears mingling with the stagnant water around him.
The void absorbed his sorrow, offering no solace.
And then, as his voice gave out, as his lungs burned and his throat shredded, a sound that was not a cry, not a scream, but something far more chilling, bubbled forth from Guts's lips: maddening, uncontrollable laughter.
It was the sound of a spirit shattered, of sanity irrevocably broken by a torment too vast to bear.