Ash and the Shadow

"Why can't we ever reach the end? Did we take the wrong way... What do you guys think?"

On the sixteenth level of the Silent Helix, Ash was walking along a boundless wall. The moment they entered the sixteenth level, they saw that this wall was the only thing in the endless darkness.

After Igula told him everything, he and Gwen returned to the fifteenth level, leaving Ash alone to cross the unknown trial of the sixteenth level.

Ash soon reached the wall, but no attack worked against it, and he couldn't fly over it either, so he could only walk along it. After walking for a while without anything happening, he grew a little impatient and instinctively wanted to ask the others what they thought.

But once he opened his mouth, he suddenly realized this place was truly huge, his voice truly hollow, and everything around him pitch-black. He really was tiny here. Panic born from gloom, anxiety born from the unknown, gradually crawled into Ash's heart, making him instinctively press close to the wall beside him, trying to find even the slightest support.

In truth, the previous trial grounds had been no smaller than this place, but Ash had never felt panic; the Void Realm was even more unknown than this place, but Ash had never felt fear.

Because in reality, he had Igula and the others, and in the Void Realm, he had Sword Maiden, Witch, and Vesir. With them around, no matter how vast the world was, it did not feel empty; no matter how unknown the darkness was, it did not feel frightening. Whether he returned to reality or to the Void Realm, Ash could loudly say, "I'm back."

Or, in Ash's cruder words, "With someone by your side, even if you die, there's someone