There was no sound in the world.
No rumble of the earth, no heartbeat, not even an echo of existence.
Everything was falling apart in a deep silence, a silence deeper than nothingness itself — as if it was a sound that belonged to before creation.
In the heart of that silence stood Ashen.
His eyes were glassy, wavering between awareness and extinction, and his body trembled as if trying to remember its own shape.
The ground beneath him had vanished completely. Nothing remained but a red void, breathing like a living being, pulsing slowly like a cosmic heart on the verge of exploding.
Then it happened.
The two giant eyes that had been watching his body and soul began to crack.
The cracks were not just fractures of light — they were rivers of blood bursting forth, blood unlike any ever known to existence.
Each drop carried screams that did not belong to any time or creature, as if they were the cries of souls crushed across ages.
The eyes exploded.
Everything within them — sight, awareness, spirit, mystery — turned into a flood of glowing blood.
Two rivers of blood: one descending from the sky, the other rising from the abyss.
They met at his body.
Ashen did not move.
He couldn't.
Every cell in his body was screaming, every atom of his soul trembling, as the two rivers coiled around him like serpents from hell.
Then they pierced him.
It was not a physical penetration — it was like an invasion of meaning itself.
The blood did not pass through his skin, but through his existence.
In a single moment, his body was no longer his.
The blood moved inside him as if searching for something lost, as if trying to rearrange his being.
Every vein became a path, every cell a battlefield between what was and what should be.
His body rose into the air, surrounded by whirling currents of red hell.
His features distorted, melting, as if fire was reshaping the human form into something else.
> "What's happening to me?!"
His words were nothing but breaths fading into nothingness — no answer came.
But the blood answered in its own way — through explosion.
The rivers surged toward him with destructive force, piercing his eyes, ears, mouth, and even his pores.
For a moment, he saw that his eyes were no longer his own — they were looking at him from within.
He saw himself through the vision of the blood.
He saw what had never been seen.
He saw inside himself — fear sitting in his chest like a frightened child, anger howling in his ribs like a mad wolf, and pain crawling along his spine like the dead reaching for the light.
The blood wasn't just engulfing him — it was dismantling him.
His flesh fell away, his skin evaporated, his bones cracked open.
Nothing remained of him but a naked consciousness, suspended between sky and abyss, drowned in rivers of blood that were reshaping him as they wished.
And from within that liquid hell, he heard it.
> "You are nothing but an incomplete material."
The voice came from everywhere — from his blood, from his bones, from the void itself.
It was as if existence itself was speaking to him.
> "Merge… or perish."
His soul trembled.
He felt his awareness shrink within, and his body trying to fuse with something beyond understanding.
He saw the blood entering his heart — but his heart was no longer a heart.
It had turned into a sphere of red light, pulsing slowly, like a small sun being born inside him.
Each pulse destroyed something and created something new.
The blood seeped into his bones, his soul, his memories.
He remembered his childhood…
Then forgot it.
He remembered the face of someone he loved…
Then it melted away.
He remembered why he fought…
Then the meaning disappeared.
Only instinct remained.
The instinct to survive, to struggle, the instinct of the beast hidden in every living thing.
Suddenly, light ignited within his body.
The blood that had been tearing him apart began to unite, condensing into symbols — letters of blood dancing across his skin, connecting and breaking apart in patterns beyond human language.
It was the first primitive language — the language of blood.
Each symbol carved a meaning into him: "Destruction." "Transformation." "Eternity." "Power."
The symbols formed and then exploded.
An explosion without light or fire, yet it carried a cosmic sound that made existence itself breathe in a new rhythm.
Time bent around Ashen, and the void took his shape.
He was no longer the human he once was.
And the blood surrounding him was no longer just a red liquid.
They were merging — becoming one.
The blood sought awareness, and awareness sought form.
At one single point, they met.
Ashen opened his mouth, and the scream that came out was not human.
It was a mix of pain, ecstasy, and birth.
Every note of that scream tore a dimension apart and created another.
It was the beginning of fusion and the end of separation.
And in that moment,
nothing remained of Ashen but a body of red light made of blood, dissolving into a merciless river.
Yet within all that annihilation, something small remained…
A white dot, hidden deep within the blood.
It did not melt. It did not dissolve. It was not erased.
It was what was left of him.
It was the beginning of what was to come.