Chapter 104: The Wanderer Who Laughs (4)

There was no sound.

No echoes, no whispers, not even the distant hum of something existing.

The emptiness was not merely the absence of all things... it was more than that.

A void so absolute it did not allow even the concept of emptiness to remain.

There was no up, no down, no horizon stretching into infinity.

Only nothing. Non-Existence...

Yet... looking closer, a body lay within it.

A form battered and broken, pressed against the floor of a place that did not exist.. a place of Non-Existence....

And there he was.... Darkness Angel.

He was still alive.

His chest rose, barely, in breaths so shallow they barely disturbed the stillness. His form twitched once, faint, as if struggling against the weight of something greater than mere agony.

And then.. Footsteps.

A sound that should not have existed here.

A slow, measured rhythm, casual in its approach, echoing without an echo.