Darkness.
It swallowed him whole. No sound, no air, no end in sight. Just an endless void, stretching in all directions, smothering him in a thick, unnatural stillness.
Kairos floated there, weightless, adrift like a leaf caught in a current he couldn't see. His body neither cold nor warm. His heart neither racing nor still. It was like time itself had frozen around him.
For a long time, he simply drifted, mind blank, thoughts sluggish.
Then, like a slow, creeping tide, memory returned.
The rain had been coming down in sheets that night.
He remembered the heavy thrum of droplets hitting his jacket, the glow of streetlights blurred by water streaking his vision.
He had just finished at the gym, feeling the familiar ache in his muscles—a comforting kind of tiredness.
His earbuds were in, music low and steady in his ears, numbing the loneliness he often carried like a second skin.
One wrong step.
One car, sliding on wet asphalt.
The world had tilted violently, pain exploding through his body as metal met flesh.
He hadn't even screamed.
There hadn't been time.
Lying there, crumpled and broken on the ground, Kairos had tasted blood and rain on his tongue.
His last clear thought was simple.
I don't want to die yet.
And then—nothing.
A sigh escaped him now, long and low, dissolving into the blackness around him.
It wasn't fear that clutched at him.
It was regret.
He hadn't seen the mountains he'd dreamed about.
Hadn't traveled to foreign countries, tried strange foods, met new people.
He hadn't fallen in love.
Hadn't even come close.
All the things he thought he had time for... stolen away in an instant.
"Figures," he muttered under his breath, voice hoarse, cracking the silence.
The sound of his own voice startled him in that empty void.
Kairos began to move, not because he knew where to go, but because standing still felt worse.
Step after step, forward—or what he hoped was forward—through the blank, empty space.
There was no floor beneath his feet, but somehow, he could walk.
There was no wind, no up or down, no direction at all.
Just him, and the void.
He didn't know how long he wandered.
Minutes. Hours. Maybe centuries.
It didn't matter.
Time meant nothing here.
Then, finally, something appeared ahead of him—a tiny, flickering speck.
At first he thought it was a trick of his tired mind, a hallucination born from loneliness.
But as he approached, the speck grew clearer, sharper.
A book.
Old, worn, floating in the darkness.
No title. No markings.
Just a plain cover, cracked and faded with invisible years.
Kairos hesitated.
Then reached out, fingers brushing the surface.
The book was real. Solid. Heavy in his hand.
"What the hell is this...?" he whispered.
No answer came.
He opened it.
Inside, sketches sprawled across the pages—figures frozen in impossible poses, movements captured mid-strike, mid-flow.
There were no words.
No instructions.
Only the silent language of motion.
For a long moment, he stared at it, uncertain.
Then he shrugged, a small, humorless laugh escaping him.
"Better than just standing around, I guess."
And so, he practiced.
Clumsy at first.
Stiff. Awkward.
He mimicked the figures as best he could, moving his arms and legs into shapes that felt foreign and strange.
No hunger gnawed at his stomach.
No sleep blurred his vision.
His body never tired, but his mind... his mind grew heavy with the crushing weight of endless repetition.
He practiced until he lost count of how many times he had run through the forms.
No progress came.
No new strength flooded his limbs.
No sudden breakthroughs.
It was frustrating.
Back on Earth, at least when he worked out, he could see the difference over time.
Here, he was stuck.
Still just... Kairos.
Sometimes, he would stop and simply walk.
Searching.
Hoping.
Maybe there was a door somewhere.
A crack in the void he could slip through.
Something—anything—that could lead him forward.
But there was nothing.
Only the dark.
And the book clutched tightly in his hand.
After what he could only guess were days—or perhaps centuries—he slumped to the invisible ground and lay there.
"Am I really dead...?" he muttered.
He stared upwards, as if looking for an answer from a sky that didn't exist.
A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Obvious enough."
His voice echoed strangely in the empty space, bouncing back to him thin and fragile.
Kairos sighed again.
Then, slowly, he pushed himself up.
The book still waited for him.
Silent. Patient.
He trained.
And trained.
And trained.
Until one day, something shifted.
His foot landed just a little lighter.
His strike cut through the air a little faster.
The void around him seemed to slow, thickening like honey.
His senses sharpened, details bleeding into focus.
He could feel the way the darkness bent under his movements, like ripples spreading across a still pond.
It wasn't strength.
Not yet.
But it was something.
And something was better than nothing.
Encouraged, he threw himself into practice with renewed focus.
He perfected each form, each technique, repeating them until his body moved without thought.
Every now and then, in moments of sheer frustration, he would snap, throwing the book down and shouting into the void:
"F**k this shit!"
The words burned in his throat, but somehow, they made him feel less alone.
Afterward, he would always pick up the book again, muttering apologies to no one.
He hated this place.
Hated the loneliness, the silence, the not-knowing.
But he hated the idea of giving up even more.
Time slipped away.
Decades, maybe centuries.
He lost track of everything except the rhythm of practice:
Move. Strike. Flow. Breathe.
The book, he realized eventually, had nothing more to offer him.
He had learned every style, every variation.
Now, he was just polishing what he already knew.
Refining. Perfecting.
It was lonely work.
Mind-numbing, soul-crushing.
But it was all he had.
Then, one day, as he moved through the forms with perfect grace, something pierced his mind.
A sharp, stabbing pain, like a blade of ice driven into the core of his being.
He staggered, gasping, clutching his head.
The void around him pulsed, twisting strangely.
He gritted his teeth, fighting against it with everything he had.
He had endured too much to break now.
Slowly, painfully, he forced himself to open his eyes.
And what he saw made his breath catch in his throat.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity—
The void was changing.