There is no up, there is no down. There is only emptiness and absolute darkness.
Inside the place filled with pitch-black darkness, a young man with messy sakura-pink hair could be seen. He wore tattered clothes, and his body was covered in bruises and bandages—clear proof that he had just gone through a very fierce battle. Beside him, a small blue creature resembling a cat with a green backpack on his shoulder was also floating aimlessly in the darkness.
The young man's eyelids twitched. He was having a nightmare, reliving the memory of when a giant black dragon attacked him and his friends. He remembered perfectly how they had all united and tried to fight the monster with all the power they had, but the result was completely futile.
In his slumber's vision, he saw the black dragon flying high toward the sky, flapping its giant wings until it blocked out the sunlight. The creature was preparing to unleash a deadly roar that would wipe them all from the face of the earth.
Trapped in that painful memory, the young man could only groan softly in the midst of the void's silence.
In his sleep, he saw his friends starting to reach out to one another.
"We won't let everything end here!" the young man cried out while reaching out and grasping the hand of a blonde-haired girl beside him.
From another side, a black-haired young man also spoke up, cutting through the panic. "Everyone, combine your power into one! Let's show this creature the bond of our guild!"
The sakura-haired young man looked around. He saw all of his friends starting to hold hands, refusing to surrender to fear.
"That's right! Let's all go home together!" shouted a small-statured old man among them.
"Everyone..." muttered the young man with a tight chest.
A large circle formed from their tightly linked hands. Facing the despair descending from the sky, they all shouted in unison:
"FAIRY TAIL!"
And... BOOOM!!!
The black dragon unleashed its deadly roar toward the island. The absolute attack hit the young man and his entire family head-on.
The young man gasped and opened his eyes. "Argh..." He groaned in pain while forcing himself to sit up in the middle of the void.
He held his throbbing head. Memories of the final battle against the black dragon crashed back into his mind. "Right, we were fighting that black dragon, and..."
The young man immediately looked around in panic. "Lucy!" he yelled into the darkness. "Erza! Gray!"
He kept calling his friends' names one by one. "Everyone, where are you?!"
He shouted with all his might, but there was no response at all. Only then did he realize that his current location was extremely foreign. "Where is this?!" he exclaimed in shock, realizing his surroundings looked nothing like the island's terrain.
"I-I-Is this the afterlife?! Am I already dead?!" he yelled, growing increasingly panicked.
He tried to stand up. However, when his hand pressed down on what he thought was solid ground...
Poof.
He touched something soft.
"Aye, Sir..." muttered the thing he had just touched.
The young man looked down. His eyes immediately widened upon seeing a small blue furry creature wearing a green backpack on his back.
"Happy!" the young man shouted in relief.
He hurriedly picked up the blue cat and hugged him tightly. "Happy! Thank goodness!" he cried, sobbing.
Happy, who was being hugged so tightly, slowly opened his heavy eyelids.
"Na-Natsu...?" the cat murmured, finally mentioning the young man's name.
"Happy, I'm so glad you're here!" Natsu sobbed with happy tears. But a second later, he suddenly went silent. "Eh, hold on... If you're here, does that mean you're dead too?!" he exclaimed in panic.
"What do you mean, Natsu?" Happy groaned, trying to clear his mind after passing out. The blue cat blinked, scanning his surroundings. "Na-Natsu... where are we?" he asked, only just realizing how foreign and dark this place was.
"I don't know either," Natsu scratched his head. "Maybe we really are dead and this is the afterlife. Hahaha!" he laughed dryly.
"Natsu, this is no time to laugh!" Happy scolded. He struggled slightly and hurriedly got down from his best friend's embrace. "If this is the afterlife, what about the rest of our friends? Could they be here too?!" Happy cried, starting to get hysterical.
"Calm down, I'm sure they're definitely fine—"
Natsu's words were cut off. Natsu, who had initially been sitting with his goofy face, suddenly froze like an ice statue.
Happy, noticing the strange silence, immediately turned his head. His eyes widened seeing the veins on Natsu's face tensing stiffly. "Na-Natsu? What's wrong?!" Happy asked anxiously.
The face of the sakura-haired young man—who was always full of confidence and never knew the word retreat—was now pale as a corpse. His entire body trembled violently and uncontrollably. Happy immediately touched Natsu's arm and shook him. "Natsu! Are you okay?!" Happy yelled, growing more panicked seeing Natsu looking as if he were about to lose consciousness.
Natsu looked down at Happy. His eyes radiated an indescribable horror.
"Ha... Happy..." Natsu's voice trembled violently, almost like a desperate whisper. "Whatever happens... never look behind me."
"Na-Natsu...?" Happy swallowed hard. Never, not once in his life, had he seen Natsu this terrified. Even when facing the black dragon, Natsu still dared to challenge it. Curiosity mixed with horror crept into Happy's chest. What exactly was behind him?
And then, suddenly...
Natsu's sensitive nose caught it. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His Dragon Slayer instincts screamed at the top of their lungs, warning him that death was breathing right down his neck. An absolutely absurd pressure of energy slammed into his back. This was not just magic; this was absolute terror. The weight of the aura felt as if all the oceans in the world were dumped onto his shoulders.
Natsu could smell the scent of primordial mud, ancient blood, and suffocating nothingness. Whatever giant existence had just opened its eyes behind Natsu, that monster possessed an energy thousands of times more ancient, darker, and more terrifying than the black dragon.
"Happy!!" Natsu instantly hugged the blue cat tightly before he had the chance to look behind Natsu.
"Natsu..." Happy called softly. The cat realized that his best friend's body was drenched in cold sweat.
"Don't do anything," Natsu whispered in a strained voice, telling Happy to stay still in his embrace.
'What is this... This power is so terrifying... This is not the power of a living creature at all,' Natsu thought to himself. Natsu, who for his entire life had almost never used his head to think, was suddenly forced by his instincts to contemplate quickly. 'Don't move. Stay still.' The Dragon Slayer instincts in his blood screamed, ordering him to submit absolutely to the figure behind him.
Then, amidst that suffocating silence, the two of them heard a song.
"Aaaaaa.... Aaaaaaaaaa.... Laaaaaa...."
Upon hearing the melody, Natsu could only bow his head deeply while cradling Happy. Happy, who was about to struggle, suddenly froze. He finally felt the weight of the existence behind Natsu, making his breath feel as if it stopped in his throat.
The figure behind Natsu spoke again.
"Aaa... aaaaa.... my children...."
Her voice began to sound clear. Instead of passing through his ears, the voice felt like it was speaking directly inside Natsu's head. Strangely, upon hearing that tone, Natsu's heavily trembling body slowly began to calm down. He and Happy could suddenly breathe again. And right at that moment, Natsu began to smell something else.
"Aaaa... aaaaa... Aa... Do not... be afraid..."
The clearer Natsu heard the voice, the stronger he felt the profound outpouring of sorrow and loneliness from its tone. However, in contrast to that sad emotion, his sensitive nose caught a very terrifying scent.
"Aaaa... Turn around..." the voice pleaded.
Natsu swallowed hard. He tightly gripped the white scarf given to him by Igneel around his neck, while his other hand protected Happy against his chest. His sense of smell was now filled with the scent of very dense and salty seawater, mixed with the smell of wet clay, swamp mud, and a faint metallic aroma... exactly like the smell of fresh blood.
Natsu gathered all his courage. He slowly rose from his sitting position and turned around, preparing to face the figure behind him. Just as he moved, the voice echoed again.
"It is very cold here... very dark..." the voice moaned.
Natsu finally turned around completely. His eyes immediately widened in horror upon seeing the true form of the figure. Looming before him was a giant—a star-eyed woman with a pair of massive horns, her body tightly bound by chains of light that pierced through the eternal darkness. Beneath the giant's body, a sea of black mud rippled softly.
Natsu stood stiffly in front of the entity. The tips of his feet almost touched the puddle of black mud. He could only stand in silence, staring at the tightly chained giant before the telepathic voice seeped into his mind once again.
"Aaaaaaa.... My new child.... you are warm... And bright..."
Natsu wanted so badly to shout and oppose those words. He wanted to retort that he was Igneel's child, not the child of this giant creature! However, his mouth was locked shut. The pressure of the aura and the thick scent emitted by the creature were too strong to resist.
The young man could only swallow his saliva. His instincts screamed, confirming that this giant creature possessed the blood of a dragon. However, this was different. If Igneel smelled like warm ash and firewood, this creature's scent was completely foreign to him. This ancient smell instinctively told Natsu that the entity in front of him was no ordinary monster or dragon, but rather a sacred existence that far surpassed Igneel or any dragon that had ever existed.
Slowly, Natsu set Happy down from his embrace. The blue cat, who had just been freed, immediately turned around, curious about what had made his best friend so terrified. As soon as he saw the giant figure, Happy instantly froze stiff.
"Happy, get behind me now," Natsu ordered in a heavy tone.
Hearing that, Happy hurriedly ran and hid behind Natsu's back. Shaking with fear, he tightly gripped his best friend's leg. "Na-Natsu... wh-who is she...?" Happy asked haltingly.
"I don't know, but it seems she's just acknowledging my presence," Natsu replied without daring to avert his gaze from the giant's eyes.
Natsu gulped down his dry saliva. He clenched his fists, trying to fight the terror of his instincts, and then gathered the courage to ask the giant.
"Who are you?!" Natsu yelled, his voice echoing through the darkness of the void.
As an answer, a song was heard drifting in his head once again. "Aaaaa... Aaaaaa...."
Inside Natsu's mind, a woman's voice—soft, echoing, yet laden with eternal sorrow—began to string her broken words together.
"I am... the ocean..."
"I am... the mud... where everything began..."
"I am... your... New Mother..."
Right as the last word was spoken, a foreign memory suddenly struck Natsu's mind like a bolt of lightning. The young man gasped. He saw a vision that was not his own: a sight of a very blue and peaceful primordial ocean where life first breathed. Then, the scene morphed into immense pain.
He saw how the ocean was slowly rejected, abandoned by the very children she gave birth to, cast away into a cold dimension of nothingness, and bound by absolute chains.
The pain and loneliness from that brief memory were so strong that it made Natsu's chest tight. Along with that memory, an ancient name was forcibly etched into his mind.
Natsu stared into the giant's starry eyes. His lips trembled slowly as he spoke the name of the creator entity.
"Tiamat..."