Hell lay buried there—not hell in the traditional sense, not the kind ruled by flames, brimstone, and demon kings, but an endless pitch-black void where you could not see your hand before your face.
When he passed through the final invisible barrier, he felt a bone-piercing chill.
Not the cold of winter. Winter's cold was alive—it moved, changed, and could be kept out by clothing. The cold here was dead. It seeped outward from the depths of the soul, impossible to block or escape, like countless ice needles piercing your consciousness all at once.
His consciousness contracted slightly—not out of fear, but instinct—and then he continued sinking.
There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky overhead, no boundaries around him.
He floated in an absolute, pure, endless darkness.
This darkness was not the darkness of night. Night still had starlight, moonlight, the distant lights of cities. Here, there was nothing at all. Even the very concept of "nothing" had been swallowed by the darkness.
His consciousness was like a drop of ink falling into the ocean, instantly swallowed by the darkness, unable to distinguish up from down, left from right, far from near, high from low.
Silence.
Not ordinary silence, not the kind of quiet late at night where distant barking dogs and chirping insects could still be heard.
The silence here was such that sound itself had died.
No wind, no water, no heartbeat, no breathing.
Even the faint rustling sound produced by the flow of his own consciousness, a sound only he could hear, was magnified countless times here, like someone endlessly turning pages beside his ear.
You could hear the tremor of your own soul, hear every ripple of thought, hear the threadlike hum those ripples made as they echoed through the darkness.
The sound was