Shunya drifted again.
Not into sleep.
Not into darkness.
Into something colder.
The warmth of the bed faded. The ache in his ribs dulled until it felt distant, like pain remembered rather than felt. Sound stretched thin. The room with Naomi and Vikoria pulled away as if someone had gently untied it from him.
Then there was white.
Not the comforting white of daylight.
The endless kind.
He floated in it, weightless, directionless, the same way he had the first time the portal swallowed him. No floor. No sky. Just infinite blank space pressing from every side.
So this is it, he thought calmly.
I died and came back here.
A flicker passed through the white.
Then another.
Text began to appear, not sharp like usual, but unstable. Letters trembled as if struggling to exist.
[Critical Condition Detected.]
The words bent and warped, fading in and out.
[Host survival probability fell below minimum threshold.]
Shunya frowned. His thoughts felt slow, heavy.
Minimum threshold.
