— Kyle Valter’s POV —
Where does the nightmare end, and where does reality begin?
For soone like —who spent his life crawling through human slaughterhouses and watching those he loved turn to ash—the line between dream and waking no longer exists.
Both are hell... just at different temperatures.
The first thing I felt was the absence of sharp pain.
No, the pain hadn’t disappeared—it had turned into a cold, heavy numbness flowing through my veins like a slow-acting poison.
I wasn’t floating. I wasn’t falling.
I was resting on a smooth, freezing surface, like glass polished with eternal ice.
I slowly opened my eyes, as if my eyelids weighed tons of lead.
I expected to see the rotten ceiling of Elysium’s sewers, or the blinding white lights of FBI interrogation rooms, with torture devices and interrogators waiting to peel my skin off.
I expected the sll of chemical disinfectants... or rotting blood.
But what I saw... shattered what remained of my logical mind.
"Where... am I?" I muttered, my voice like the rustle of dead leaves, echoing through a space that seed to have no boundaries.
I tried to sit up.
My muscles scread in protest, and my torn left shoulder throbbed with searing pain, reminding of the helicopter bullet—but the black Eitra had frozen the bleeding.
I braced on my good elbow and looked around.
I wasn’t in a cell.
There were no concrete walls, no iron bars, no reinforced doors.
I was sitting on a circular platform made of glossy black obsidian, about twenty ters in diater.
And beyond its edge... was nothingness.
Absolute void.
An endless sky—but not blue, nor black with stars. It swirled with nightmarish, surreal colors:
Deep violet, sickly crimson, and gray that devoured light.
There was no ceiling, no ground beneath the platform.
I was suspended in another dinsion, in a pocket of spaceti isolated from the laws of physics, gravity, and ti itself.
The air was unnaturally pure—cold, and completely devoid of any scent, as if it had never been breathed before.
"Did I die?" I asked myself, cold panic creeping into my throat.
"Is this my hell? An eternal void?"
But the pain in my broken ribs and the taste of blood in my mouth confird that I still carried the curse of life.
I raised my trembling hand to my face.
The mask. The left half of my black mask with blue lines was shattered, exposing my left eye and bruised cheekbone.
The other half still partially concealed my identity.
Suddenly... I rembered.
The sewer. The filthy water. The silver-haired girl.
Then... fire.
Blue fire.
The mont that mory flashed in my mind, my chest tightened violently.
My breathing accelerated into hysterical gasps.
The images slamd into my skull like spiked hamrs.
Morfind’s burning body. The sll of Victor’s roasted flesh. My screams in the collapsing Valter Palace.
"No... no... don’t ignite... get it away!"
I began to tremble.
A violent, involuntary trembling.
I curled in on myself atop the black glass floor, hugging my knees, digging my fingers into my hair, trying to expel the mories.
Post-traumatic stress did not spare .
It tore apart from within, forcing to relive the worst monts of my life over and over.
I felt suffocated, as if black smoke had returned to fill my lungs.
And as I convulsed in a crushing panic attack... the void in front of tore open.
There was no sound of a door opening.
Just a ripple in the violet fabric of space, splitting like a vertical wound in the air—and from it, one step... entered.
Valisera.
She wore different clothes now.
No longer the formal, complex FBI uniform.
She wore comfortable black pants and a loose white shirt, her short silver hair still damp as if she had just finished bathing.
What completely contradicted her strangeness and cosmic terror... was what she carried in her hands.
An elegant silver tray.
On it rested a crystal glass filled with pure water and floating ice cubes, and a plate holding a carefully grilled steak emitting the aroma of warm spices, along with fresh bread.
She stood directly in front of .
Looking down at my trembling body, curled like a stunned insect.
Her gaze held no hatred, no mockery, not even anger for the agents I had killed.
It was... the curiosity of a doctor dissecting a rare frog.
"You’re awake," she said in her soft, cold, indifferent voice.
I instinctively backed away, dragging myself across the black floor until I nearly reached the edge of the platform overlooking the void.
"Stay back!" I growled in a broken, trembling voice.
"The fire... don’t you dare ignite that cursed fire again! I swear I’ll kill you... I’ll tear you apart!"
My threat was pitiful.
A broken-backed rat threatening a dragon.
Valisera didn’t blink.
She tilted her head slightly and sighed.
She stepped forward calmly and knelt, placing the silver tray on the glass floor beside .
"Calm down, Joker. Or should I say... crying boy?" she said with faint mockery, sitting cross-legged across from , completely unconcerned with the blood and filth covering my body.
"There’s no fire here. I extinguished it. Look—my hands are empty."
She raised her hands to show her empty palms.
My crimson eyes shifted from her hands to her face... then to the tray.
The sll of grilled at and fresh bread hit my empty stomach violently.
The animal hunger inside roared—but...
"What is this?" I asked, my voice still shaking.
"Did you poison it? Is this so cursed Eitra truth serum?"
"Poison?" Valisera laughed, her laughter ringing like silver bells in the void.
"My God, you suffer from severe paranoia. If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve done it in the sewers without blinking. And if I wanted to torture you, I wouldn’t waste a Wagyu magical beef steak on you. Eat and drink. You’re bleeding, and your Eitra reserves are nearly depleted. You’ll die of dehydration before I finish my questions."
I looked at the crystal water.
Cold droplets condensed on the outside of the glass.
I was dying of thirst.
My throat was a barren desert.
But... my broken pride, psychological fear, and absolute distrust of anything that breathed made refuse.
I tightened my lips and turned my face away.
"I won’t eat your garbage, and I won’t drink. Either kill now or leave to rot. I don’t accept charity from governnt dogs."
In truth, I wanted to gulp the water down and devour the at like a starving wolf—but I knew that surrendering to my instincts in front of her ant handing her full psychological control.
She wanted to ta like a pet—and I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction.
Valisera shrugged indifferently.
"As you wish. Hunger is a good teacher of philosophy. But don’t complain later when your stomach starts digesting itself."
A long, heavy silence followed.
I took a deep breath, trying to steady the trembling in my hands.
I had to understand the situation.
I had to gather information.
That was the only way to survive a trap this tight.
"Where am I?" I asked, forcing my voice to sound rough and strong despite its weakness.
"Is this one of the FBI headquarters’ cells? Do you use spatial magic to detain high-rank targets?"
Valisera glanced around—at the violet sky and the shifting void—and smiled calmly, though the aning behind it was deeply unsettling.
"FBI headquarters?" she said with light mockery.
"Please, don’t insult my taste. Those filthy concrete basents don’t suit . No—you are not in Elysium. Nor in Novarion. Nor anywhere on this planet’s map."
She leaned slightly forward, her crimson eyes gleaming with dangerous light.
"This place... is my personal pocket dinsion. ’Void Sanctuary.’ A tear in the fabric of spaceti that belongs to alone. Not the intelligence director, not the CIA leaders, not even Kaiser Dravion himself knows of this place—or can trace it."
My eyes widened.
A private dinsion? Unknown to anyone?
The implication struck my mind like a bomb.
If no one knew about this place... and she brought here secretly...
then I wasn’t an official prisoner.
I wasn’t in FBI records.
"Which ans..." Valisera continued, her tone dropping into a demonic whisper brushing my ears,
"you should be very careful, Kyle. Or Joker. Whatever your na is. In intelligence basents, there are laws, protocols, and other interrogators. But here? There are no laws. If I kill you here, cut you into a thousand pieces, and throw you into this void... the entire universe will never know you existed. Your death won’t be recorded anywhere. You’ll be erased from existence... as if you were never there."
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