The inky Blood Sea swallowed all the giant wolves. Amid Asano Kiyoshi's murmurs, the entire world sank into pure night.
It was a strange space devoid of all sensation, comprehension, existence, and passage.
Here, time and space seemed to have lost their meaning. The beginning was the end, and an instant was eternity.
This state was strange. Stark felt as though he stood at the boundary between life and death. He could see many things, yet it was as though he could see nothing at all.
His entire body felt as if it were wrapped in seawater, yet that seawater was not cold. Instead, it was warm and comfortable, a sensation Stark had never experienced before.
He had once read about this feeling in a book. It was called sunlight.
Yet he opened his eyes again in confusion. Everything around him was pitch-black, and the deep, ink-like seawater had nothing to do with the sun that symbolized light. Still, this strange scene left him utterly intoxicated.
The next moment, the inky seawater stirred slightly. Then Ninny appeared before Stark. But this time, her face was streaked with tears as she looked at him and murmured:
"Stark, I want to stay by your side..."
She seemed to say something else afterward, but Stark did not hear it. He watched Ninny slowly leave, waves of pain surging from the Hollow hole in his chest.
That pain was different from a physical wound. It pierced straight through his heart. He chased after the departing Ninny, calling her name again and again, but wrapped in that ink-like seawater, Stark could not move a single step. No matter how he unleashed his Spiritual Pressure, he could never escape this black deep sea that had only moments ago made him so reluctant to leave.
He could