Darkness, complete and absolute, with no beginning and no end, stretching out in every direction like an ocean of black ink.
Hajin drifted in it, a leaf caught in a still current, floating without direction or sensation or anything at all. No ground beneath him, no sky above, no air in lungs he couldn't feel. Just the endless void and the silence that came with it.
And then the pain found him.
It started somewhere deep in his chest, a dull ache that built and built until it became impossible to ignore. His ribs, the statue's jaw clamping down with crushing force, the crack echoing through his skull as something warm flooded his internal cavity and the world went white.
He tried to gasp, to move or do anything at all, but his body had become a foreign object he could no longer command.
His eyes were open, he realized, somewhere far away in a reality he could no longer touch. His eyes were open and staring at nothing, unblinking, unseeing.
