Lucien dragged himself across the endless white, his body aching from the clash with the colossus. Every step left faint cracks in the ground, his aura still leaking uncontrollably from his battered frame.
He should have been celebrating victory. Instead, a gnawing thought ate at him.
Why am I here?
The White had no beginning, no end. No food, no water, no sky—only endless battles. Yet somehow, he had endured. Somehow, the void had shaped itself around him, not the other way around.
And then, he saw it.
A fragment.
Half-buried in the pale ground, glinting faintly like a shard of memory—an amulet, its chain torn, its surface cracked. Lucien froze, his pale eyes widening. He knew this object. He remembered it.
"…Mother's."
He picked it up, trembling. The familiar insignia of his house was etched faintly into the metal: the crest of Dreamveil, the once-great lineage he had thought erased from the world. His chest tightened, a rare warmth piercing through the endless cold of survival.
But as he held it, the mist shifted.
A whisper. A voice that did not belong in silence.
"…Lucien…"
He spun, aura flaring instinctively. But there was no figure—only the fog curling unnaturally, taking shape. A silhouette, faint, fragile. A woman's outline, cloaked in white light.
His throat caught. Mother?
He staggered forward, but the vision dissolved with every step, fading like a dream slipping through his fingers. All that remained was the amulet glowing faintly in his palm.
Lucien clenched it tightly, blood running down from his grip.
So this was no random prison. The White wasn't just endless torment—it was tied to him. To his bloodline. To his family.
And if his family's remnants lingered here… then perhaps they had been devoured by this place long before him.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Lucien's face.
"Good," he whispered, his aura surging with fresh resolve. "Then I'll devour it back. Piece by piece. Until nothing remains of this cursed void except me."
The silence pressed close again. But now, it no longer felt empty. It felt like an enemy hiding its face.
For the first time, Lucien Dreamveil was no longer just surviving The White.
He was hunting it.