There was no Sun Moon, no stars—only eternal rotation, devouring, and silent annihilation.
The "hybrid's" consciousness was like the last candle flame in the wind, maintaining the barest state of existence amid absolute silence and nothingness—something closer to "observation" than thought. It—he—felt the slow, despair-inducing process of being "digested," and also sensed the core of the Ninth Tentacle's remains, driven by its survival instinct, absorbing tiny fragments of "silence" and "decay" from the sparse, violent energy of the same origin around it.
The process was as slow as the breathing of the universe.
Perhaps a year had passed. Perhaps ten. Perhaps even longer. Time had lost all meaning here. The tiny volume of the "hybrid" maintained a fragile, gradually shrinking balance between "digestion" and "absorption." Until one moment—
Deep within the Vortex Core, an ordinary, periodic energy tide formed an exceedingly brief, faint "exhalation" amid the violent currents—outward rather than inward.
That "exhalation" was so weak it could be ignored. To the immense Annihilation Vortex Core, it was merely an insignificant ripple. But to the "hybrid," delicately balanced amid the cracks between laws and its surroundings, it was a towering wave.
The edge of the Silence Bubble was brushed by that faint energy current, whose direction differed ever so slightly. The balance shattered.
Like a dead leaf trapped in a swamp, gently nudged by a chance undercurrent.
The hybrid's fragile adhesion to the surrounding force of "annihilation," barely maintained until then, was torn open by that weak external force.
Then, it "slipped" out.
It did not move on its own, nor did it teleport. It was "thrown" away like garbage by that brief outward energy current, cast out of the Silence Rift that had sustained it for countless years—and imprisoned it for just as long.
The instant it left that