The process of rising back to consciousness was the exact reverse of falling.
My body was slowly floating upward from an abyss where not even light could reach. Countless bubbles scattered around me, casting afterimages of memories across my mind.
Familiar faces.
A mother who had strangled her own daughter. She had regretted it all her life, yet fate had ultimately refused to sever the bond between parent and child. I saw the tense face of Instructor Mu—‘Nothingness.’
A man who had turned his back on the secular world and done nothing but swing his sword. Yet he, too, carried a hidden wound. Was that not why he tended a field of Sepia Flowers every day? Instructor Heo—‘Void,’ never one to be honest with himself, wore his usual prickly expression.
A girl born with the blood of a monster. She had lived her entire life amid disregard and contempt, tormented by an inferiority complex. Even so, there was something precious she had never been able to abandon. My junior, called Gong—‘Emptiness,’ looked at me pleadingly.
And was that all?
The closer my body drew to the surface, the more bubbles enveloped me. Scenes softened as though slowly melting together, spreading chaotically across my vision.
An old woman who always remained at the summit of the mountain.
That woman was a traitor. Blinded by a realm she could never attain, she had turned her back on her own martial school.
But why…