Swoosh—
"This… is?"
Morca's eyes snapped open. A sharp breath escaped his lips as his eyelids parted, revealing a stark white ceiling that felt disorientingly, bone-deep familiar.
"Why does this ceiling…?"
He stopped, trying to twitch a finger to test his limbs, only to realize he could move his entire hand effortlessly.
With a sudden, fluid motion, he pushed himself upright, sitting straight on the soft, fluffy mattress. As his gaze swept across the room, long-buried fragments of memory stirred within him.
"Am I… back on the Astro Continent?" His voice was low, hollow with disbelief.
He remembered clearly. He had been in the bathroom of their cottage, hidden deep within the isolated valleys of the Mount Sham province. He should have been in the absolute throes of awakening his lineage flaw.
Did I… return to the past?
His eyes scanned the perimeter once more. Everything looked exactly as he remembered—unchanged, untouched by time.
The room remained wrapped in that quiet, crimson half-light that bleeds into the world just before sunrise. Shadows hung soft and unmoving within the dimness. To his right, near the main door, a tall wardrobe stood like a dark, looming silhouette. Beside it, the mirror stand reflected nothing but the room's lingering gloom, its surface cold and lifeless at this early hour.
Instinctively, he turned to his left. A small bedside stool held his golden alarm clock, its faint ticking the only sound fracturing the heavy silence of dawn.
5:15 AM.
The exact hour when the world seemed to hold its breath, when every soul unknowingly chose the course of their day.
On the other side of the bed, a matching stool supported his night lamp. Its curved, modern frame was barely visible, outlined only by the pale, bloody light slipping through the window panes. His gaze shifted further, landing on his study table beneath the window. A chair was tucked neatly beneath it, the desk lamp still angled toward the empty space where his notes usually rested.
And at the upper-left corner of the room, the bathroom entrance remained quiet and still, its shadows pooling deeper as though they clung directly to the doorway.
"Everything looks exactly the same," Morca murmured to the empty room. "From the arrangement of the furniture to the quiet peace outside. Even the air…"
He paused, drawing in a slow, deliberate breath. The air was soft, slightly humid, and carried the rich, distinct scent of greenery from the street plants below.
"How long has it been since I last breathed this air…?
"Morca exhaled sharply. Then, as if a switch suddenly flipped in his mind, he swung his legs off the bed and walked steadily toward the mirror stand.
Click.
He flicked the light switch, bathing the bedroom in a soft, warm glow.
Morca stepped closer to the mirror. The change caught his attention immediately, yet it wasn't the kind of mutation he had braced himself for.
The mirror reflected nothing.
It was as though no one stood before it at all. Strangely, panic did not come. His expression remained entirely calm, almost indifferent, as if staring into a void where his body should be was an ordinary occurrence.
"The mirror can't reflect me… yet I can clearly feel my own form," he whispered.
What he sensed was no longer the frail, cracked vessel that had haunted his entire existence. Instead, his fingers brushed against smooth, pale skin. Whole. Untainted. His left eye, once hidden behind a black patch and plagued by that agonizing darkness, now felt identical to his right. Both were clear. Both were complete.
There was no pain. No illness. No lingering trauma. For the very first time in his memory… he felt alive. Truly alive.
This was the existence he had spent a lifetime longing for. No one would call him broken here. No one would mock him.
And yet, Morca's brow furrowed. "Then why… do I feel so incomplete?"
At that exact moment, a gentle, freezing breeze slipped through the narrow crack of the window and brushed against his face.
The air felt… wrong. Distant. Artificial.
This was not the atmosphere of the Mainland he remembered.
Morca stepped toward the window with measured, deliberate strides, his body tightening with a quiet, growing unease. Leaning forward, he peered through the narrow gap, cautiously surveying the world outside.
What he saw froze the blood in his veins.
The outside world was bathed in a dim, eerie luminescence. A massive, crimson moon hung abnormally high in a bruised, grey dawn sky, casting an unnatural, bloody tint over the silent alley below. A thin mist of cold dew drifted lazily through the air.
"Nothing out of the ordinary… just the moon looking a little red," he muttered, the words tasting like a lie as he tried to convince himself. "That's… normal."
Yet the unease within him didn't fade. It deepened, boring into his chest.
Just as he reached out to draw the curtains shut, something else caught his attention.
The falling dew—it wasn't settling.
Instead of dissolving into the rooftops and the concrete alleyways below, the droplets were rising. They evaporated upward, retreating back into the sky as though being violently pulled toward an unseen source. Even the crimson moon high above seemed to be shifting, drifting unnaturally away from the eastern horizon in a reverse orbit.
Morca suppressed the dread creeping through his veins and turned away, walking back to the small golden clock. He picked it up.
And froze.
The clock hands were moving backward. Slow. Steady. Counterclockwise.
"Could this… be my awakening trial?" His crimson eyes locked onto the inverted ticking hands. "If it is… then what exactly is it testing?"
Before losing consciousness in the cottage bathroom, Morca had already resolved to face whatever nightmarish gauntlet the genetic sphere threw at him. He had known that awakening a lineage flaw required overcoming a corresponding trial. He had even been looking forward to it.
But now, a sharp, unsettling question cut through his thoughts:
If this is truly a trial, and it's happening within my memories of the Mainland… then whatever occurs here… could it affect reality?
The moment that thought crossed his mind, a voice—ancient and older than time itself—lashed through his consciousness.
[Renounce the broken path. Renounce Nihility. Remain.]
The sheer weight of the voice startled him, his muscles tensing instinctively. He hadn't expected an intervention. Not without warning.
"Is this a test of identity… or something deeper?" His expression hardened, his eyes narrowing. "If it's merely about renouncing my path, it should be easy to reject. But this is a trial. It can't be that simple."
Uncertain, Morca remained rooted to the spot, his gaze glued to the golden clock as its hands began to spin rapidly in reverse. He couldn't stop it.
The sun set in the window, blazed instantly into a scorching afternoon, and rose again, only to collapse backward into dawn. Days unraveled in reverse within mere moments, yet everything inside the room remained completely stagnant. The only constant was the ceaseless, maddening ticking of the clock.
At first, the sound was steady. Tick-tock-tick.
Then the rhythm began to distort, loosening into a harsh, uneven grinding sound, like heavy metal gears tearing each other apart.
Beyond the glass, the lighting shifted erratically. The sun and moon replaced one another in rapid succession, as though the cosmos itself was bound to the clock's broken gears. At first, the transitions were gradual. Then, they became violent. Light and darkness flickered like a strobe light.
And then—
RING—RING—
A sharp, deafening bell shattered the silence of the room.
Morca snapped his head toward the door. "Someone… is at the front door downstairs?"
Without hesitation, he crossed the room, threw the door open, and stepped out into the hallway.
Behind him, inside the light-bathed room, an identical reflection suddenly slipped out from the empty mirror. It moved in a fraction of an instant—a mere blink—and merged seamlessly into Morca's elongated shadow. It was unnoticed, silent, as if it had always been waiting there.
Morca descended the hallway without a pause. The distinct possibility of a trap lingered in his mind, but it wasn't enough to paralyze him. He wasn't just going down to answer a bell.
He wanted to know if his father, Claudius, would be standing on the other side.
Tap… tap…
Moments later, the isolated sound of his footsteps echoed softly through the quiet house as he made his way down the stairs.
Downstairs, Morca was greeted by a cold, eerie living room. It lay dark and utterly lifeless, standing in stark, disturbing contrast to the warm, vibrant space he once knew. No warmth remained. No human presence could be felt. Only an oppressive, heavy silence lingered in the air.
He descended the final step and paused on the cold floorboards. Turning to his right, he headed straight for the kitchen. It wasn't because he expected to find anyone hidden in the dark—but because there was something he desperately needed.
Moments later, he returned to the dim hallway.
A silver kitchen knife was held firmly in his right grip.
"I don't know what's waiting on the other side of that door," he muttered to himself, his fingers tightening around the black handle. "I have to be prepared for the worst."
Steeling his nerves, he stepped toward the grand entrance. He steadied his breathing, shifting his dominant hand behind his back to conceal the cold steel blade against his spine.
He drew one slow, calculated breath, exhaled, and placed his left hand flat against the door handle.
Cautiously, he turned it.
The door creaked open, groaning on its hinges as Morca kept his body half-concealed behind the heavy wood frame, shielding himself from any immediate strike.
The very instant the gap widened, the scene before him unfolded.
It was beautiful.
It was chaotic.
Morca's mouth fell open in stunned, breathless silence. Of all the horrors and tests he had anticipated from the genetic trial, he had never, ever expected to witness a spectacle like this.