Darkness.
Silence.
Cold.
Zixuan stood motionless in the kind of void that shouldn't exist.
A total absence of life. Of time. Of warmth. A darkness so thick, it pressed against her skin like wet velvet—suffocating and intimate. It wasn't just the lack of light that disturbed her, but the intentionality of it.
This is the very same void she was in the very moment she welcomed that figure inside of her.
The cold didn't sting—it settled, embedding itself deep into her marrow. The kind of cold that made bones ache and breath come out in foggy gasps, except here… there was no breath. No air. No sound except the faint thudding of her own pulse in her ears.
She didn't move as any motion would feel like a threat.
A betrayal. In this place, stillness felt like survival. She stood there—aimless, weightless, suspended in dread—because honestly, some small, traitorous part of her believed it was safer in the dark than what might be waiting outside of it.
