White.
Not light.Not snow.Not any substance that could be named.
Just an absolute white, one that swallowed every point of reference, filling the entire field of vision—boundless, endless. There was no direction to the light, no transition of shadow, not even a sense of distance or depth.
Erika drifted awake, his consciousness like silt resting at the bottom of deep water, struggling upward. His first coherent thought was confusion—confusion so sharp it felt as though he were choking on the purity of the white itself.
"What… is this place?"He tried to ask, but only a hiss of air escaped his throat, dry as cracked desert earth. His lips barely seemed to touch, the sensation indistinct.
He thought he was lying down.But the sense of weight was wrong.
There was no hard or soft surface supporting him, no gravity pressing his body toward any direction. He seemed to be floating—and at the same time, evenly wrapped, supported at every point by the white itself. When he tried to move a finger, what returned was a delayed, faint signal, as though filtered through layers of cotton, accompanied by the illusion of being lightly restrained by countless fine tubes or bands.
Panic had not yet formed.His mind was still too clouded for that.
Just as he tried to gather his scattered thoughts and understand his situation—
A voice.
Not through his ears. It felt as if it were generated directly inside his skull, or embedded into the "background" of the white space itself. Cold. Steady. Without inflection. Like a thin sheet of metal vibrating in absolute vacuum.
"He's awake."
The voice stated it. Not to him—but as a report.
Immediately, another voice of the same texture—perhaps marginally lower—followed without pause, issuing a command:
"Cut it… Continue."
The instruction was brief. Emotionless.
Erika's muddled mind tried to grasp the word. Cut it? Continue what?
There was no answer.
An overwhelming, irresistible fatigue surged forth, like a sudden deep-sea vortex, seizing the sliver of clarity that had just surfaced. It was not sleepiness—rather, it felt like a forced interruption of the very process of living. His awareness of his pulse faded. The need to breathe dulled. Even the energy required to maintain thought was being rapidly drained away.
"No…"He tried to struggle. To shout. To understand what was happening.
But his body no longer obeyed him. He couldn't even muster the strength to lift his eyelids.
The all-consuming white began to rotate inward, dimming, dragging his consciousness down with it into deeper depths.
In the blur, the last remaining fragment of perception seemed to catch something—within the pure white background, extremely faint, regularly flickering pale-blue points of light flashed into being, arranged in some incomprehensible array—before they too were swallowed by the encroaching darkness.
His consciousness blurred again.
Before sinking completely, the last clear thought was not fear, but a cold absurdity:
He seemed to have… just "died" once.
And now, even the process of being alive was about to be cut off?
Darkness, thick as sludge, wrapped around him as he sank.There was no dream. No light. Only a void stripped of time and any sense of existence.
Yet in the deepest part of that nothingness, a fragment of life—brutal, instinctive—thrashed like a suffocating fish leaping desperately from water.
He needed to confirm it.
To confirm that he still existed.That his consciousness had not dispersed.
"Aaaaaaah—!!"
The sound tore through the silence—and tore through him.
There was no meaning, no words. Just raw noise: vocal cords scraping violently, air forced from a scorched chest. He couldn't hear how loud he was—only the vibration of his throat, the burning of his airway, and the dull resonance echoing inside his skull.
Not enough. Still not enough.
"Aaaaaaah—!!"
The second scream followed immediately—stronger, more desperate. As if he meant to expel the very last breath in his lungs, the final shred of his soul's insistence on existing, through that cry. The sound crashed and rebounded within the confined space, making his ears ring. He even felt his cracked lips split open, tasted blood on his tongue.
Then—
"Ah—!!"
A sharp, terrified scream—clearly female—pierced through his self-affirming howl like a needle, intruding without warning.
Immediately after came—
Crash—clatter!The chaotic sound of metal or glass instruments hitting the floor and shattering.
This foreign, unmistakably real noise was like a bucket of ice water mixed with shards of glass, hurled straight into his raging consciousness.
He snapped his eyes open.
His vision was a blur of light at first, then rapidly focused.
Alive.
That realization struck harder than any scream. Pain had returned—the burning in his throat, the ache in his chest, the bone-deep soreness as though his body had been taken apart and poorly reassembled. And there was the familiar, lingering pain at the mark on his arms—embers not fully extinguished—along with the faint sensation of residual energy flow.
His sense of smell followed. The air was heavy with medicinal chemicals, a faint trace of blood, and something else—something so familiar it chilled his marrow: the scent of the Sanctum 's infirmaries, or certain "contemplation rooms"—that forced cleanliness tinged with the withering of life.
His vision cleared.
He lay in a narrow, white room with smooth walls. Beneath him was a hard, flat bed, covered by a thin, coarse white sheet. There were no windows. Only a flat ceiling panel emitting a constant, cold white light.
This was not the depths of the Black Tower.Nor the pure white void.
This was… something like a cell. Or a medical observation room.
Familiar. Too familiar.
Panic clenched his heart—stronger than in the void. He wanted to jump up, to flee, anywhere at all—
But when he tried to move, he realized his body was as heavy as if filled with lead. It refused to respond. His legs felt like dead timber pressed against the bed. Profound weakness, combined with some kind of drug or energy suppression, locked his torso and limbs in place.
As that realization dragged him deeper into fear, the woman's voice rang out again—close by now—trembling with tears and near-collapse devotion:
"Merciful Father… please… please forgive me… forgive my lapse…"
With great effort, Erika rolled his eyes toward the source of the sound—near the door.
He saw only the blurred figure of a nun in plain white robes, kneeling with her back to him, facing outward. On the floor lay a splash of pale yellow liquid reflecting cold light, along with shards of ceramic. Her shoulders shook violently.
Then—Click.
The door closed, cutting off the kneeling figure and the outside world.
The room was left with nothing but Erika's uneven breathing, the indifferent ceiling light, the lingering smell of medicine and blood, and the crushing helplessness pinning him to the bed.
The scream had confirmed life.
But living seemed only to mean falling into another nightmare—one more real, more inescapable.
And the "Merciful Father" the nun had spoken of…its referent was obvious.
The Sanctum?
Had he… come back?Or had he never truly left?
Alive—but imprisoned.
That realization embedded itself like iron caltrops into every nerve that tried to think.
He trusted no words. Only his own power and perception.
Forcing himself to ignore the nun's disturbing prayers and trembling, he drew his mind inward, attempting to sense—to activate—the mark.
His consciousness probed.
Nothing.
Not exhaustion.Not dormancy.
But… a smooth insulation.
The heat of the mark still ached faintly beneath his skin, yet not a trace of energy responded—like a faucet welded shut. He knew the water was there, on the other side, but not a single drop could be drawn.
"Please relax immediately."
The woman's voice came again, much closer—right beside the bed.
She had approached without his noticing. Her head remained lowered, gaze fixed on the white sheet covering him rather than his face. Her fingers curled slightly at her sides, betraying tension, while her voice struggled to maintain calm.
"You are safe now. The Merciful Father… watches over us."
Safe? Watched over?
Only absurdity and deeper wariness filled him.
He had seen too many silent harvests, too many cold experiments. He refused to believe a single word. Yet reality—his inability to move even a finger—forced all doubt and resistance to choke back down his throat, condensing into a wordless glare.
The nun did not seem to expect a response. Or perhaps her training accounted for silence and resistance alike.
Noticing his cracked lips and strained swallowing, she turned to a metal cart, retrieved a small cup of water and a thin straw.
"If you experience any discomfort, you may inform me at any time," she said, carefully guiding the straw to his lips, her movements precise—like handling something fragile."I will be outside most of the time."
Her gaze lingered on his pallor—made worse by his failed attempt to activate the mark. She paused, then added in a lower voice, carrying a strange mixture of indulgence and restraint:
"If… it becomes too painful… screaming… is not entirely forbidden."
She did not finish the sentence.The final note lifted slightly, leaving behind a deeply unsettling blank.
Just…?
Just what?Would someone hear? Would it be recorded? Would it trigger "necessary" intervention? Or violate some unseen rule?
Erika did not touch the straw. He stared into the shadow beneath her head covering, trying to read her expression—to decipher the meaning behind the unfinished words.
Then—
Knock. Knock.
Two short, precise taps on the door cut through the tension.
Almost instantly, the nun's body stiffened—just barely—before the programmed concern drained from her face, replaced by swift, procedural calm. She returned the cup and straw to the cart as if the exchange had never occurred.
"Rest well."
Her voice had returned to its original, flat steadiness.
She turned away without another glance at Erika and walked directly to the mess by the door—the spilled liquid and ceramic fragments.
She crouched and began to clean, quietly, efficiently, wiping the floor with a damp cloth. As she worked, head bowed and back turned to him, a fragment of hymn drifted softly from the shadows—monotonous, repetitive—like an unconscious habit, or a ritual of self-soothing and identity reinforcement.
The knocking did not repeat.Beyond the door, silence.
Inside the room remained only the soft scrape of cloth against floor, the nun's barely audible humming, Erika's suppressed breathing, and the faint, maddening hum of the overhead light.
Erika lay on the cold bed, unable to move, his power sealed, listening to the deliberate cleaning, watching the nun's fully turned back—as though he were nothing more than an irrelevant furnishing in the room.
Safe?
This dead, sterile white was colder—far colder—than the blade wheels of the Black Tower's depths or Quinn's inscrutable gaze.
And that unfinished "just…"hung like a guillotine suspended in midair, uncertain of when it would fall—or upon whom.