Dark Passage

The instant boundless darkness and chaos came crashing toward him, Ted Riel realized something had gone wrong.

Yet when he tried to immediately stop the teleportation and return through the Gate, he found that his power did not respond—and the illusory door that had been beside him a second earlier had vanished into the endless darkness and chaos at some point.

Calm down.

The Truth Keeper slowly drew a breath. He regained his composure in the shortest possible time and restrained the instinctive urge to immediately observe and sense his surroundings. In the darkness, he stood silently where he was, making no attempt to listen to or look at anything. At the same time, he gradually withdrew his senses and controlled his thoughts, using the Mind Control Method he had mastered through long training to suppress, as much as possible, the curiosity, desire to explore, and capacity for association instinctively possessed by a mortal.

This would help him resist any malicious force that might lurk in the surrounding environment, or prevent him from rashly coming into contact with "knowledge" he should not touch while unprepared.

Rahm taught the world that countless truths lay hidden within darkness—in darkness, anything might appear, but less than one in ten thousand things within it were harmless to mortals.

The numbness in his mind gradually spread, slowly forming a barrier that shielded his consciousness. The Blessing of Foolishness granted by Rahm descended. Ted Riel let out a soft breath and relaxed slightly. Only then did he begin cautiously restoring and rebuilding his senses, keeping his mind under control to preserve the most basic reason and judgment as he looked toward that seemingly endless chaos.

Muddled shadows filled his vision. In the darkness seemed to lie a boundless wasteland, or perhaps countless enormous, towering, indescribable silhouettes