For the next few days, Fairy Tail Guild was steeped in deathly silence. Its usual clamor and vitality had vanished without a trace. Everyone remained silent, as if their souls had been drained away, able only to wait in suffocating anticipation and hope that familiar figure would push open the doors and return with his hearty smile.
Yet all Erza received from Selene was a chilling silence. The dragon scale used to sense Ye Yang's whereabouts not only gave no response, but even Selene herself could no longer sense its existence. The only explanation was that the scale had been completely destroyed, and that usually meant...
Erza bit her lip tightly and buried that terrifying suspicion deep in her heart. She could not say it aloud, because everyone's eyes still burned with the unwavering conviction that Ye Yang would never die. That belief was the final pillar keeping the guild from collapsing.
Meanwhile, in a strange space that was immaculate white and boundless, Ye Yang lay quietly on the ground. His eyelashes trembled slightly before he suddenly opened his eyes and sat upright.
"I... didn't die?"
He looked around. As far as his eyes could see, there was only pure, absolute white. There was nothing here—not even the Observation Haki he had always been so proud of could detect the slightest fluctuation of life or matter, as though it had sunk into the sea.
"Damn it, this place... don't tell me it's heaven?" he muttered, then urgently called out in his mind, System! System! Open the panel!
There was no response. The system that usually answered his every call seemed to have vanished completely. He could not even summon the most basic light screen.
"Hey! Is anyone there? Could someone who's breathing show up?!" Ye Yang could not help shouting