Another World - Part 2

Caio fell through the darkness, the void swallowing him like an endless sea. He drifted into sleep, exhausted, and woke to find only more darkness, cold and oppressive, as if the universe itself ignored him. He wasn’t a man of grand emotions but of cold reason—and so he accepted his fate. He kept falling, his body weightless, suspended in a silence that hummed faintly in his ears. He slept again. Woke again. The cycle repeated, countless times, until he noticed something odd: no hunger, no thirst.“Why can’t I just die?” he muttered, his hoarse voice echoing into nothingness. “What kind of dimension is this, where death doesn’t exist?”He fell. And fell. The darkness enveloped him, and he stared back at it, as if they were old acquaintances. Days, months, years, centuries? Time lost meaning. Thinking about infinity hurts the mind, he mused, a weight growing in his chest. He no longer knew how long he’d been there, only that he was. Perhaps that was the essence of infinity: to exist without end, without purpose, just him and his thoughts in a bottomless abyss.Then, something shifted. His body brushed against a rough surface, like cracked stone, halting his endless fall. He raised his head, heart racing. “Is there a floor? Can I finally walk?” he asked the void, his voice laced with sarcasm and a flicker of hope.
Caio walked, but the darkness persisted, a formless abyss swallowing each step. At some point, exhausted, he sat and stared silently into the void, the weight of infinity crushing his thoughts. Have I become part of this? A mere consciousness lost in the shadows? Who am I now? He lay on the intangible ground, cold as dead ice, and realized with a shiver that he could no longer feel his left hand—as if the darkness were dissolving it.“Another one has arrived,” a voice said, deep and raspy, slicing through the silence like a blade.Caio jolted upright, heart pounding. “Wh-who’s there?” he stammered, eyes searching the darkness in vain.“Calm down. I’m like you,” the voice replied, its tone a mix of weariness and bitterness. “An outcast.”“Like me? No, wait, explain!” Caio pressed, his voice trembling with impatience. “Where am I?”“You don’t have much time,” the voice shot back, now urgent. “But hear my offer.”Before it could continue, Caio cut in: “Please, just tell me what this place is!”The voice laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “You were thrown into the Threshold, the limbo where the Gods discard their trash. Here, you’re about to dissolve, to cease existing, swallowed by this darkness.”“Limbo? Trash?” Caio frowned, sarcasm creeping back. “You mean die? So how are you here, still alive?”“Alive?” The voice gave a bitter laugh. “What a cruel joke. No, I’m not alive. I lost my body to the Threshold, but I’ve held onto my consciousness… for now.”Caio blinked, processing. “So I can finally rest? Just vanish?” he asked, his tone laced with irony to mask his fear.“Wait, child!” The voice sounded almost desperate. “Don’t give up so easily! Don’t you want revenge against those who cast you here? By the way, why are you here?”
Caio answered, his voice dripping with sarcasm: “Did I do something? I didn’t do anything to anyone. Giving up doesn’t sound so bad, actually. Kinda feels like a win. Revenge? Nah, too depressing. I’m out.”The voice in the darkness hesitated, then replied with urgency: “I’ve waited eons for this chance. I can’t lose it!”“What are you even talking about?” Caio asked, frowning, the cold void of the Threshold pressing against his skin.“I know a way to escape this place,” the voice said, now alive with feverish hope. “If you’re interested, I’ll share it. But we need to make a pact first.”“If you know how to get out, why didn’t you leave?” Caio shot back, skeptical.“When I had a body, I didn’t know how,” the voice admitted, tinged with bitterness. “I spent an eternity here, and only then found the way. But my body had already dissolved. I waited, and waited, until you fell here.”Caio tilted his head. “And now you want me to take your deal?”The voice paused, as if weighing its words. “Yes.”Caio sighed, the weight of the abyss crushing his chest. “After falling in this endless void, I wanted to die more than anything. Now that I can just fade away, you’re telling me to keep going? Sorry, but vanishing sounds way better.”“Please!” The voice sounded desperate, almost a scream. “I don’t know when another will come, or if they will. Don’t let me fade without finishing my revenge!”“Why are you so obsessed with revenge?” Caio asked, his voice softer, almost curious. “How do you hold onto that hate after all this time? What did you go through to choose it over the relief of disappearing?”“You wouldn’t understand, fellow outcast,” the voice replied, low and heavy with ancient pain. “But if you’d seen what I saw, suffered what I suffered, you’d burn with the same desire.”Caio snorted, but before he could reply, a chill coursed through his body. His vision darkened, the purple mana in his chest flickering weakly. “So this is it?” he whispered, his voice faint. “Finally. Relief.”The voice, watching Caio fade, cried out: “No! I can’t delay my revenge any longer! My time is running out. I can’t hold my consciousness in this abyss anymore!”“Sorry, cellmate, but you’ll have to live a little longer,” the voice said, sharp as a cold blade.In the endless darkness of the Threshold, a solitary glow erupted—a crystal shaped like flame, pulsing with purple light that seemed to burn the void itself. It floated before Caio. “Forgive me, but my fate and my revenge depend on this,” the voice whispered, trembling with desperation.Before Caio could protest, the crystal fused with his body, a searing wave of heat surging through his chest. His left hand, once dissolved by the void, reappeared, now etched with purple symbols glowing like embers. He cried out, the sensation a mix of pain and vitality.The hooded figure, now partially controlling Caio’s body, extended his arm with effort, purple mana flaring in glowing veins. “Come on, almost there!” the voice shouted, its energy draining. “I’ll use every ounce of my strength, but I’ll make it!” A fractured rift tore through the void, an unstable portal flickering with purple light. With one final push, the figure, still within Caio’s body, crossed the portal, its consciousness fading like a snuffed candle.…Caio opened his eyes, his body heavy against hot, sandy ground. “Where am I?” he muttered, confused. “She said I’d die, not disappear…” He looked at his chest, where the crystal pulsed beneath his skin, and at his hand, now carved with strange symbols, like living runes. “What the hell is this? What are these symbols?”Slowly, the voice’s words came back: the pact, the promise of escape. “Now I get it,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “You used my body. Ignored my choice.” He sighed. “You know what? I’d have done the same in your shoes.” But then he frowned, sensing a lingering presence in the back of his mind. “Hey, you still there? You hearing me?”More importantly, where was he? He looked around: this wasn’t Earth. Above, three moons shone in the sky—one massive and red, another like Earth’s, and a smaller one, golden like molten metal. So it’s one of those worlds I studied, he thought. But which God owns this one? As he walked, he saw twisted plants with glowing leaves and iridescent-scaled creatures darting through the shadows. Ahead, a stream reflected the moons’ light, and in the distance, a village of rough stone houses emitted a soft glow. Caio decided to head toward the village to gather information.But before he could take another step, a deafening roar tore through the sky. He looked up and froze. “That… that’s a dragon?!” he exclaimed, eyes wide as the winged creature soared, its scales gleaming under the moons’ light.