Acryl couldn’t feel his body, limbs pinned against the air. His eyes were hurting like someone was pressing a needle against them. He couldn’t feel anything around his spine, even his Realm-arts. Acryl couldn’t concentrate on his Realm-arts to unsheathe. His ears were filled with two things: his own heartbeat and ringing from afar.

  Acryl felt like he was dreaming a dream he could not control. Everywhere surrounding him was dark, and barely could be seen through.

  Judging by the few features and the general colors, Acryl recognized that this was the compartment of an aircraft. His ears were ringing, silenced, and only his heart pounded. Acryl stepped on a flowing goo that quickly evaporated before he could see the color of it.

  He saw a glimpse of light coming from the side. Far away and illuminating the way towards somewhere.

  “Follow the pole star, it guides you home,” Acryl recalled the old saying from old people around the Grand Dome. Now thinking, the light from afar was as bright as a star on the finest days of stargazing. Acryl couldn’t decide where the light came from. He slowly navigated through with his hand and the dim light ahead.

  “Furnace…archetype Realm-arts? Do they transfer objects into other spaces?” he said to himself as he recalled the chart of four Realm-arts archetypes. Acryl tried to distract himself from the fear of being alone. Yet his heart pounded faster and faster.

  “…Doesn’t seem very key archetype and not too destructive to be Kindling,” Acryl continued his line of thought about the situation as he slowly explored the compartment. The room has a door leading to the hallway.

  Right behind it was the source of the light.

  As he took a step out and looked around, he saw the other compartment’s doors open and illumined by the light afar, it was brighter than before, as if it were a sun rather than a star, on the opposing side, empty darkness. Acryl was standing in the middle of the light and the dark. There was no gray zone for them, only a sliced-up line where the light boundaries with the darkness.

  In the field of light, Acryl saw the opened doors turned into ashes when the light touched them.

  The light, out of nowhere, blasted his eyes as he bent down to the ground. At the same time, footsteps started echoing. Acryl wasn’t sure what it was, but it definitely wasn’t something earthly. Heavy yet swift as if it were a feather made out of lead.

  He heard it came from the direction of the light. Stomping and pounding, almost in sync with his accelerating heartbeat. From its sound, Acryl couldn’t figure out the thing’s size. It felt like a stone rolling down from a hill, but for seconds it sounded like leaves crunching under Acryl’s feet.

  Head filled with pain, he stood up, hitting and balancing on the wall of the hallway, and ran as fast as he could to the darkness. Acryl imagined himself as a bolt shooting from an arrow. An arrow shot against the black curtain of nothingness. He felt a pain coming from his chest, but he couldn’t stop.

  The road ahead had no end in his view, but his instinct told him this was the way. The only way to live. Although he wanted to figure out the situation and the connection between this space and the gigantic abnormality they had encountered, it wasn’t the time for it.

  “This can’t be the end,” he muttered to himself.

  He ran, and when he got knocked over, he crawled and ran again and again. He saw no destination, only all-devouring darkness ahead and the light chasing him. Cold and sharp, he couldn’t smell or see anything. It felt strange, the light didn’t expel darkness at all, and so was the darkness. The ground felt like stepping onto tubes of colors, and with every step, it felt harder to advance.

  Acryl noticed that it wasn’t some kind of absence of light; he could still see the color of his clothes and his blood-pumped hand. The white steam coming out of his mouth was as visible as clouds on a sunny day.

  Acryl couldn’t recall how long he had run. He felt truly desperate. He can activate his Realm-arts, of course, but there is nowhere to go. Something unknown was purging him to run, far into nowhere, yet both choices seemed meaningless now. Acryl, though, was a crossroads where both led to the same destination.

  “The less regret you have, the further you walk on the path of Realm-arts!” the voice of Suiming echoed.

  “Does that mean…the more choices I make…the further I walk?” Acryl muttered. His legs stopped swinging, his breath slowed down alongside the despair in his mind. The pain in his chest was still there. Acryl felt that it was time to roll the dice, to gamble on the other side.

  Realm-arts: Pure-white Palette

  Acryl turned back, towards the light as if he was about to embrace it. The brightness devoured him whole as a strong wind blew against his face. Acryl shut his eyes, his instinct.

  He felt every centimeter of his body was pierced through, yet he felt no pain at all. The wind howled and whispered in his ear while the distant stomping came closer. Those whispers muttered words he could not understand with a sound that reminded him of scratching a linen canvas with a knife. His heart was almost pumping out of his rib cage.

  Against the blinding light, Acryl opened his eyes and his Realm-arts unsheathed.

  The light was a storm. A storm composed of colors that he could not see and understand, yet he could feel something was there. Acryl could not differentiate one color from another in this blizzard of light; they mixed and blended, yet there was no contrast and no gradients between them. But Acryl could tell that it is not monotone white. Nothing was comprehensible to his brain, not even the unpleasant smell seemed familiar to anything.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  He could feel the rough texture of the light, but his hand wasn’t touching anything. The light felt not-bright yet not dark at the same time. He wouldn’t call himself a master of colors or optics, but he is sure that even the greatest painter, the best optician, and the brightest mind can’t even say what that color is.

  He believes that he leans towards the School of Lantern when it comes to Realm-related matters, that things can be explained with utter reason, but the light has left Acryl dumbfounded. Against the unknown, he felt like an ant. A student who has just stepped into a classroom.

  Acryl flinched as he tried to move forward. Each step felt heavier and heavier when he tried to march forward into the light. He didn’t turn him into ashes when he touched the light like that door, but he could feel an unpleasant feeling all across his body. Pain but less torturous, itchiness but more unbearable. It felt like something was brushing his blood vessels from inside.

  The wind that he was numb from blew against him restlessly. The thing that stomped towards him was still marching, yet Acryl saw no sign of it near him. Acryl fidgeted with his fingers. Swallowing while trying to calm his chaotic, shallow breath. Yet like that light made of incomprehensible hues.

  Acryl thought he was prepared. Prepared to take everything head-on. Rolling every dice possible in this journey that Existence knows how long. But he does not want to let go of anything.

  I’m not giving up. Not for now. He thought.

  Thinking about it, he activated his Realm-arts. It hurts to do so. But Acryl could endure it for now.

  As his sharpened power unsheathed, he saw a change in the storm of color.

  The wind that blew towards him howled in another direction. A never-ending hollow was placed right in front of him.

  Acryl saw his image reflected in the hollow. Out of caution and a slight curiosity, Acryl melted down a piece of his surroundings, formed it into a spike, and stretched it into the hollow. He felt nothing from his creation.

  Subconsciously, Acryl looked right into it. In there, he saw nothing. Absolute nothing, yet he heard countless sounds clashing into his ears. They are voices, whispers and laments, war chants and speech. In there, he felt countless emotions as if the non-existent speakers were right next to him.

  “…Are they people trapped in here?” Acryl muttered to himself.

  For no reason he could tell, Acryl tried to hold back tears, anger towards enemies, and despair at the same time.

  “Seren! Seren! Can you hear me? The core is here, I won’t make it, but you! You can break the core before it takes the soul of us!”

  “But, sir!”

  “It’s a command! I command you not to die!”

  Seren? Like the Letter-Writer? No, it must have been a coincidence.

  He somehow thought that the emptiness ahead was an iris of an eye. In Acryl’s eyes, the hollowness warped like a palette stirred with a brush. He saw the emptiness slowly merging into each other, yet not expanding anywhere.

  He couldn’t feel the mass he created with his Realm-arts, but it felt harder and harder to push it inwards. As he was concentrating, he heard noises from behind. He turned back. There was no one, not a single soul, and not even an object was there. Only the light he had embraced. Then he came to notice one thing. His face was filled with fear in one second. Fright he had never felt before. An instinct that told him to stop staring into the front. As if he were drowning in the ocean, sinking deeper and deeper yet never touching the bottom. He suffocated yet could not swing his arms upwards.

  But he saw from its undefined contour, the color that did not exist in the spectrum. It was an eye.

  The noise was something else. A heartbeat. What seemed like the iris of the eye turned to Acryl.

  In its reflection, Acryl saw himself, his tired face, and dirty clothes that were stained in unearth colors. Out of nowhere, the colors in the reflection shifted, reshaped, and reconstructed as if it were a drop of blood in a tub of water. Acryl felt that he was falling as the image in his eye shrank.

  As he felt that all hope was lost, he recognized the reflection that was flowing and changing. Time seemed to be moving more slowly. It was Canvas reflected in the eye.

  At first, Acryl thought it was his hallucination, but that figure stayed there and stayed. At the same time, he felt that he had stopped falling. As he was confused, the iris broke, and the image of Canvas shattered and twisted in a way that was horrifying to look at and even think about. Blood oozed over the creation of his Realm-arts and sank him whole, the liquid suffocating him.

  It was thick and smelled like burnt iron and soil at the same time. While the blood flooded down into the white nothingness below Acryl, he heard voices and saw visions of something ancient.

  He saw the ruins beneath the Prolonged mist, the towering yet unseen pillars, and barely hanging buildings.

  Smells of mosses, blood, and great flesh rotting pierced into his brain. He saw the ancient warfare between two Existences, and his head filled with scenes unseen. Acryl felt tiny, his head felt like it was stuffed with that blood and was going to blow up from the things he felt. The memories and scenes flashed thousands of times, but in the end, he could not even understand any of them.

  He let the words flush his ears, let the blood fill his lungs, he could not feel his Realm-arts anymore.

  Then he choked on something. Something powder-like, as if the blood had burnt. Acryl tried to resist, yet he simply could not. He tried to use his Realm-arts, perhaps to hook himself on something, but the colors simply broke apart by the flood of blood that did not seem to end.

  But then a light shone. As if it were a star. A sphere of unseen colors was slowly moving and spinning.

  He remembered the core of the voices told. Acryl strengthened his arm against the pressure, against the force, and he held the light with the colors of his Realm-art. The light created a vacuum for Acryl to cast his Realm-art. His Realm-art cannot convert living matters into colors, but he wasn’t sure if those bursting blood counts. Or even that the living matter that exited the body for a long time could be seen as dead matter.

  Follow the pole star, it guides you home.

  Acryl groaned as he tried to cast his Realm-arts. He felt his muscles, his flesh, and his mind were in pain from the overdrive.

  He felt it, felt his own creations. His sharpened Realm-art allowed him to create larger and more complicated structures. Then, as if it were a palette thrown against the ground. The colors burst out, creating an explosion of Realm-arts. Blood turned into something else, becoming a part of Acryl’s Realm-arts. The silent roar of it filled the space, and the core broke with a clean sound of breaking like glass.