Time.
It had lost all meaning in this fractured pocket universe.
Perhaps months had passed, or perhaps years, or maybe it was just an instant.
In the eternal cage, devoid of light and sound, with a chaotic sense of space, the only thing that ebbed was the gradual extinguishing of Mark's star-like power core.
The battle never ceased.
The Silent Slaughterers, like cancer cells of the universe, emerged endlessly from twisted rocks, torn spatial rifts, and even the deep grey sky itself.
They knew no fatigue, no fear, only the cold, murderous programming to execute their creator's will.
Mark's molten gold pupils had long lost their focus, leaving only a beast-like instinct for slaughter.
His consciousness, after countless bursts and heavy blows beyond all limits, had long since fragmented, like a flickering candle in the wind, on the verge of going out.
He no longer thought about why or how, nor did he even remember who he was.
What drove this scarred body was only the instinct deeply etched into his muscle fibers and combat nerves.
Punch! Block! Dodge! Tear!
Each movement brought forth a golden mist of blood, the burning of his life essence.
The ground beneath his feet was a colossal and grotesque planet, formed from a mixture of Slaughterer corpses, shattered carapaces, and his congealed blood.
Under repeated violent energy impacts and pure force collisions, it had long since disintegrated, turning into massive debris floating in the void.
Bang!
Another punch.
The fist shattered the head of a Slaughterer, shaped like a multi-legged centipede, wielding scythe-like bone blades; foul blood and mucus splattered across his face.
But he felt nothing.
His fist mechanically rose, searching for the next target.
Rip!
A bone blade grazed his ribs, leaving a trail of blood and torn combat suit fragments.
Excruciating pain?
He was long past feeling it.
He merely twisted his body by muscle memory, a hand-chop severing the base of the bone blade, then, in the same motion, plunged the broken, sharp bone shard into the compound eyes of another charging Slaughterer, resembling a rock golem.
Boom!
A burst of pure power blew apart a third flying Slaughterer attempting a sneak attack, scattering foul fragments.
Kill! Kill! Kill!
Until…there was nothing left to kill.
His fist, imbued with enough power to shatter small planets, swung out fiercely, only to strike the viscous, cold, empty air of the void.
Inertia carried him staggering forward a few steps.
No sound of shattering carapaces, no whoosh of bone blades, no hum of energy specters.
Dead silence, an unprecedented, absolute dead silence, like a cold tide instantly engulfing him. He stood there bewildered, his molten-gold pupils scanning his surroundings blankly.
Beneath the deep grey sky was an boundless and pure dark void; the twisted black rock badlands, the ferocious Slaughterers, and even the planet of corpses beneath his feet had vanished.
It was as if the brutal, bloody battle, which had lasted for an unknown duration and drained him of everything, was merely a long and painful hallucination.
Only the countless bone-deep wounds on his body, his tattered clothing almost soaked through with golden blood, and the feeling of utter depletion within him, as if completely hollowed out, unable to ignite even a single spark, silently spoke of the cruel truth.
Instinct, the last thing that had sustained him in battle until now, suddenly extinguished with the disappearance of his target.
"Ugh…"
An extremely faint, hoarse, almost inarticulate groan escaped Mark's cracked, blood-crusted lips.
The sound was so abrupt, so lonely, in this absolutely silent domain.
He finally stopped.
Fatigue, not the weariness of sleep deprivation, but the ultimate exhaustion of his very life foundation, completely drained, penetrating every cell, every part of his soul, as if billions of mountains had crashed down, crushing his already overburdened spine.
His knees buckled, and he fell heavily forward onto them, like a broken puppet from which all bones had been removed.
No, there wasn't even ground for him to kneel on.
He floated up, losing all support, like cosmic dust, beginning an endless drift in this boundless, up-and-down-less absolute void.
No light, no sound.
No touch, no direction.
Absolute darkness, not the darkness of night, but an emptiness where even the concept of black itself seemed superfluous.
It devoured everything, including sight, including the sense of existence.
Mark opened his eyes but saw nothing, not even the darkness itself, only a vast, empty void.
Absolute silence, more maddening than any clamor, no heartbeat, no breath, no blood flow, not a single sound from the outside world.
Only the faint, chaotic hum from the depths of his own consciousness, caused by extreme depletion, like cosmic background radiation; this sound, amplified by the dead silence, became the most tormenting noise.
His sense of space completely collapsed.
Up, down, left, right? Front, back? These concepts were utterly meaningless.
He felt like a speck of dust dropped into an infinite ink bottle, aimlessly floating and spinning in a viscous medium.
He tried to stretch his limbs but felt no resistance, nor did he feel the existence of his limbs, as if his body had melted into this void.
The only thing proving he still had a body was the omnipresent, bone-deep agony and coldness stemming from his depleted power and countless wounds.
He tried to think, to find a way out.
"Where…is the exit?"
The thought was like a stone dropped into a deep pool, no echo, only a deeper emptiness.
No stars as coordinates, no gravity to guide direction, no energy fluctuations to track.
This pocket universe was like a perfect, internally infinitely smooth Klein bottle, with no beginning, no end, no boundaries.
Movement in any direction might be futile, perhaps even just spinning in place; he was like a blind man lost in a pure white room, where even movement itself had lost meaning.
He concentrated his last shred of willpower, attempting to perceive the spatial structure, searching for the slightest wrinkle or crack.
Those were the traces of Taviel's power at work, perhaps the only breakthrough.
However, what came back was only a smooth, dense, despairingly cold barrier.
The walls of this pocket universe were indestructible, perfectly isolating inside from out, and cutting off all his hope.
Each attempt was like striking the Wailing Wall with a withered bone.
Every time he concentrated, it was as if he was drawing the last drop of oil from the depths of his soul, making the faint flame of his consciousness flicker even more precariously.
Agony, coldness, and the sense of nothingness, like billions of tiny insects, frantically gnawed at his remaining sanity.
Despair was no longer an emotion, but a tangible poisonous mist permeating every inch of his existence.
Time, here, became the cruellest torture.
Without reference points, every second was stretched into an eternity.
His initial rage had long since been exhausted, replaced by an endless, slow, suffocating torment.
Absolute darkness and silence began to erode his consciousness itself.
Illusions began to breed in the ruins of his mind.
He saw the brilliance of stars twinkling in the distance, warm and full of power; he desperately swam towards them, but could never get close.
The light eventually extinguished, turning into cold ashes.
He heard the calls of his comrades, Allen's calm commands, Eve's concerned inquiries, even Trigg's cold mockery, clear as if whispered in his ear, but when he tried to respond, the voices instantly vanished, leaving only deeper dead silence.
He felt his body melting, as if the matter composing him was slowly being assimilated and decomposed by this void.
His fingers disappeared, then his arms, his torso…
He tried to grasp himself in terror, but touched nothing.
This fear of existential dissolution was more shattering than any physical harm.
Taviel's cold, malicious whispers were no longer an external sound, but poisonous weeds sprouting from the deepest parts of his consciousness, alongside despair.
"Give up…Son of the Sun…"
"Your light…is destined to extinguish here…"
"Merge with the silence…become part of the eternal void…this is your destiny…"
"Struggling…only prolongs the pain…"
"Submission…is liberation…"
These whispers, like maggots clinging to bone, repeatedly assailed the crumbling dam of his mind.
They exploited his current weakness and despair, precisely striking at his core beliefs.
Protection, hope, indomitable spirit.
They told him his persistence was meaningless, his sacrifice unknown, his very existence a mistake.
"Then who am I?"
A fundamental question emerged amidst the endless torment of darkness.
Mark Grayson?
Son of Nolan Grayson and Debbie?
Commander of the Order Alliance?
These identity labels seemed so pale and ridiculous in the face of absolute nothingness.
The meaning of his name was dissolving, the value of his existence collapsing; he felt himself becoming part of this void itself, a nameless wanderer with no past, no future.
The last spark of active consciousness, like a flickering candle in the wind, finally…extinguished under the repeated assault of boundless darkness and cold whispers.
He no longer tried to move, no longer tried to think, no longer resisted.
His body completely relaxed, floating and spinning in the viscous void, like a cold meteorite that had existed there since the birth of the universe.
His molten-gold pupils completely lost their last glimmer of light, becoming hollow, dim, reflecting the endless, all-consuming darkness.
The blood seeping from his wounds had long congealed, like cold stardust adorning this humanoid wreckage.
Only a faint, almost imperceptible vital sign, perhaps a heart still beating at an extremely slow, potentially stopping rhythm, or perhaps the unextinguished embers deep within his soul.
Still proved that this existence, once shining like a star, had not yet been completely worn away by this silent prison.
But at this moment, Mark Grayson was an empty shell floating in eternal nothingness.
His spirit, shattered by the endless torment of darkness, had sunk into the deepest parts of his consciousness, completely engulfed by cold despair and Taviel's whispers.
He had become a silent, drifting wreckage in this pocket universe, waiting to be finally decomposed and dissolved.
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