The darkness before dawn was the deepest of all.
Just as Cui Ciyou stood by the window,
Looking down over Wite City as it slowly awakened in the first light of dawn,
His pupils suddenly contracted.
He realized that something was wrong with everything around him.
Space seemed to freeze in an instant.
Outside the window, the grand, hazy outline of "Wite City,"
Along with the daylight that had just begun to emerge,
Was rapidly, eerily fading away, like cheap ink bleeding in water.
Inside the room, the tables, chairs, and outline of the bed
Became like reflections in water.
They began to twist and blur violently, finally dissolving into chaos.
It was as though an irresistible force had seized the entire world,
Stripping away all color, sound, and even physical substance.
The world before Cui Ciyou's eyes sank into an eerie, heart-clenching silence of gray and white.
This feeling... is it happening again?
The thought had barely surfaced in Cui Ciyou's mind
When his surroundings began to change violently once more.
The gray-and-white space dissolved again.
Finally, the entire world transformed into...
-An endless expanse of pure, dizzying white nothingness in every direction.
This was a space Cui Ciyou had entered before.
An absolute domain belonging to a certain being.
Without warning, a voice rang out directly inside Cui Ciyou's head.
That voice was all too familiar...
It carried an ethereal quality that seemed capable of piercing the soul.
There was also a lightness to its tone that could almost be called "friendly."
Yet that seemingly harmless tone
Made every muscle in Cui Ciyou's body
Tense to its limit in an instant.
"Yoo-hoo... little Ciyou, we meet again."
"You look like you haven't slept well."
"Did you have a bad dream?"
The familiar voice asked with apparent friendliness.
Cui