Falling.

Falling…

I just kept falling without resistance. Everywhere I looked, there was nothing except for eternal darkness. No sky or air exerting friction on my body, no earth or ground to land on, no sun illuminating the world, no moon, no stars, literally nothing.

But I could still see the translucent silhouette of my body, I could feel myself consistently accelerating with no way of slowing down. As this space had no sky, I would never reach terminal velocity.

The speed of my descent was just going to keep increasing at a consistent rate without any limits.

I don’t remember how long I had been falling but I knew when I first fell…

My life before being engulfed by this darkness and continuously falling into a bottomless abyss wasn't much better than my current situation.

So much time has passed that most of my life feels like a distant and incomprehensible memory. However, I still know who I am—I am a stranger in my own body. Inexplicably, my body never felt like a home for my hollow soul.

I felt disconnected from everyone and everything, like a stranger in the world I was born into. My life was filled with poverty and suffering, constantly pushed around by the world and its people.

I don’t remember much about the few individuals in my life, but I did have a handful of friends and a small family in the slums of a snowy village.

I remember working in the biting cold, and it was incredibly dreadful. I can’t even recall what my job was, but I remember hating every second of it. The numbness in my toes and fingers brought me to my limits every single day. yet it felt worthwhile because, after leaving the frigid outside world, I was enveloped in the warmth of my humble home.

Some of my most cherished memories were of the times my mother poured warm water over my icy hands and feet when I returned home after a long, cold day at work. I loved the feeling of gradually regaining sensation as the accumulated, frigid pain subsided.

My mother always went above and beyond to take care of me during the difficult times we faced. I loved her like any son would. Yet, I still felt a barrier between my soul and everyone and everything else; I didn’t truly feel like myself, and I wasn’t truly home. However, with the company of my loved ones, it wasn’t all bad. I felt strangely content.

Those were the days… well at least before the last day of it all. I remember riding in a carriage—no it was more like an omnibus: A bus-like carriage carrying about a dozen people with two or more horses at the front pulling it forward.

I don’t remember why I was on the omnibus, and I can’t recall where I was headed. All I remember is the sound of a piercing scream calling out my name—my name? What was my name again? It doesn't really matter; I’m just the narrator after all.

I distinctly heard a scream calling out to me, but no one else on the omnibus seemed to notice it. It was barely dawn, and everyone else was probably still sleeping in the dark, enclosed bus—except for the driver, of course.

I asked him to stop because I needed to see who was calling out to me. At first, he didn’t respond, but after I repeated my request several times, he finally obliged. For some reason, I felt incredibly excited to find the source of the scream. I pulled back the curtain beside me, unlocked the door, stepped out of the bus, and turned around.

There was less snow in this region than in my homeland, but I could still feel the chill creeping up through my leather shoes.

The scene is vivid in my mind: rays of the rising sun streamed in from the east, warming my skin with a pleasant glow. The sunlight illuminated the serene white landscape, while a gentle, cold wind blew against my muffler, causing it to flutter slightly.

To the west, a majestic snowy mountain shone brightly in the rising sun. I looked north, where a taiga forest filled my view. As I walked forward towards the source of the scream, I saw… I saw…

I can’t quite recall what I saw, but I vividly remember the surge of emotions that overwhelmed me as I laid eyes on that obscure sight.

My heart swelled with joy, my fist clenched with wrath, sorrow poured from my eyes in tears, and agony churned within me. Who knows what else I felt at that moment?

Memories after that moment were fragmented and incomprehensible, but I do remember my soul being evicted.

Quite literally, my soul was kicked out of my body in the form of a translucent entity. I still don’t know why or how that happened, but it was the reality of my situation.

I found myself levitating in the air like a weightless object. Momentarily, I felt ecstatic. Unlike the constant alienation I was accustomed to, I felt one with the universe for the first time in a long while. However, my naivety prevented me from realizing that for every ray of light, there is a shadow lurking silently and deadly.

Not for me, though. My existence didn’t cast a shadow at all; my soul had become completely intangible to reality. I didn’t feel the friction or the chill of the cold breeze, and the sun’s light passed through me as if I were made of translucent glass. Strangely, not feeling anything made me feel everything.

But after a moment of bliss, my translucent soul body kept levitating in the air and then…

I suddenly started plummeting, plummeting into an unknown and desolate abyss. I tried to resist and grab onto something, but my hands—no, my entire body—just phased through all matter. I fell through the snow, the dirt, and the hard land beneath it.

My memories after the initial downward acceleration were mostly incomprehensible fragments of information.

I saw underground bodies of water, such as still prehistoric lakes brimming with unknown creatures, and hidden rivers larger than anything I had ever seen. I even encountered giant icebergs containing remnants of forgotten history. There were fossils, ancient murals, ruins of unknown civilizations—so much more that I could only glimpse before passing through.

Eventually, I passed through a thin layer of lava and found myself truly lost from light. After falling so far that no light source remained, I became surrounded by sinister shadows. I tried to shake them off, but they were incredibly persistent.

After struggling for a while, they ultimately overwhelmed me. The shadows gathered around my soul and devoured it. After that, I found myself as a lonely spirit descending into a bottomless abyss, a realm of limbo.

At first, I felt confused and terrified. I thought I had died and that this was either the afterlife or maybe even hell.

However, after some reflection, I concluded that I probably hadn't died. Although my last memory of the real world was traumatic, I didn’t believe it had led to my demise. Was I Isekai'd? What’s the point of being transported to such a dull realm?

For quite a while, I kept thinking and trying different tricks, experimenting with my spirit-like state, but nothing worked. After countless attempts, I felt hopeless. The only option left for me was to try and kill myself to stop this endless torment.

But upon remembering the promise I made to my mother in the original world, I didn’t. But now, it seemed like there was no other way to escape this unending prison. So I just closed my heavy eyes and kept falling...

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…

After what felt like falling for all eternity, I had finally landed on something.

I’m not sure how I ended up here. Was I at the bottom of the abyss, or in a completely different place? It’s anyone’s guess.

I took a deep breath and found myself lying flat on my back, gently swaying up and down with my eyes closed. I was floating atop a great body of water. But this wasn’t just any ordinary water…

Even in my soul-body state; where I was supposed to be completely intangible to reality, I felt an almost nostalgic feeling… I was cold, I was wet.

I could feel the ruthless chilling touch of the cold ocean piercing the back of my soul body like needles from every direction.

Why is this water the only thing I can touch and feel? I still can’t feel the wind in this world, or maybe it doesn’t have an atmosphere in the first place, so is it just an ocean world?

I do taste a bit of salty water but I can’t smell it—or smell anything for that matter, what's going on? Well, no way to find out other than research…

But before I could open my eyes an abstract image took shape in my mind:

///

[World unlocked]

[

– Limbo Realm: The space between reality and illusion.

• Abyss Dimension / Abyssal Limbo Realm (The Dimension of eternal descent)

• Nightmare Dimension (Endless Eclipsed World of the Dark Ocean)

• (ƨnoiɈɔɘlʇɘЯ ϱniqoo⅃ ʇo noiƨnɘmiႧ) noiƨnɘmiႧ bɘɿoɿɿiM

]

///

What the...

Before I could fully understand what was happening, the abstract image vanished, leaving me deeply perplexed. I barely caught a glimpse of the names on the chart, and I couldn't make out all the content in the brackets. It mentioned something about "World Unlocked." I wonder if I've done something that unknowingly unlocked any forbidden spaces.

From the formatting of the chart, I can infer that a "realm" refers to an all-encompassing reality, while "dimensions" are subdivisions within that realm. If "Limbo" is considered the realm, then this ocean-like area below me should be the "Nightmare Dimension," What was that about the eclipse though? Additionally, the space I was previously falling through endlessly is referred to as the "Abyss" or the "Abyssal Limbo Realm."

And more importantly, how are all these connected? Could I really trust this abstract image though? Maybe it's lying to me for some reason...

I guess there is only one way to find out.

...

I slowly opened my illusory eyes fighting through the pain of shivering cold to observe my surroundings., only to see an unholy sight.

This nightmarish ocean world seemed like an entirely different dimension than the abyssal limbo realm that I fell through for eternity. Regardless, the scenery before my eyes terrified my naked soul even more than the feeling of an eternal fall.

At my zenith was a completely eclipsed sun, or at least something similar ominous in the starless sky.

This dimension was almost entirely dark like the abyssal limbo realm, but there were two stark differences: a faint yellowish-orange light glistened in the world. It emanated from the slightly visible perimeter of the eclipsed sun.

The sky, on the other hand, looked slightly different too. It appeared to be an extremely dark shade of blue rather than just pure jet black like the limbo realm.

These two things led me to believe that this endless ocean wasn’t just the bottom of the abyssal limbo realm I had been falling through; but rather, it was an entirely separate dimension with its own fabric of space and time.

I am really inside an Isekai aren’t I? Well as ominous as this world seems, it’s at least less mundane than the abyssal limbo realm. When I return I’m gonna show Mom that reading all those fantasy novels was not a waste of time at all! They will help me a lot in this universe…

After that, I tried to locate myself and move around within the faint light of the eclipsed sun. But every direction I looked at, revealed nothing but an endless dark ocean, with just a hint of yellowish-orange glimmer.

I panicked a little, I didn’t know if I needed to eat or do other normal human activities as a soul body, Well I probably didn’t but how long would I survive in these cold and dark waters? I had to find some land mass to stand on…

I swam in every direction for who knows how long. Surprisingly, I never felt physically tired—perhaps because I didn't exist physically. However, the endless swimming still affected my psyche or more specifically my mental state.

I could only endure this mundane task of mindlessly swimming in the bone-chilling cold waters for so long before succumbing to boredom. With every stroke of my arm, I felt a minuscule piece of hope leaving my soul.

Yet I kept kicking my feet and swinging my arms in an attempt to conquer the cold and reach land...

But after what felt like an eternity of aimless swimming, I finally stopped. My hope had been utterly exhausted in vain. No land in sight even after swimming for hundreds of kilometres.

I gave up and decided to lay on my back and float like an inanimate object in the still, endless, dark, and cold ocean.

...

I couldn't tell how much time had passed as I swayed in the mundane rhythms of the dark ocean. It could have been minutes, days, weeks, months, or even years; But I didn’t know—no I just didn’t care to count…

“ABHI!”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice called out a name. It wasn’t my name, but it felt strangely familiar. I had no idea whose voice it was, nor did I know where it came from; it seemed to have travelled through infinity and beyond to reach me in this desolate dimension. Whatever! I still didn’t care and continued my mindless swaying.

I had become too attached to my unremarkable existence, floating aimlessly on the ocean's surface like a log. A log that held no dreams, no hope, and no life—nothing to motivate me to take action, yet it also gave nothing to worry about. The only sensations I felt were the chilling cold of the dark ocean and the gentle crashing of small waves echoing in my ears.

But then, after a few moments of hearing a voice calling out to someone, my eyes suddenly flew open. My subconscious was flooded with clarity, knowledge of my existence, Unknown memories, and all the intricacies of life. This overwhelming lucidity poured into my mind at an alarming rate making me jerk around in the still water.

Crack! Crack!

I heard another sound, and this time I was extremely alarmed due to my sudden sense of clarity. So, I looked around; at first, it seemed like nothing had changed.

But then I suddenly felt an unknown yet infinitely familiar sensation—the sensation of gravity, the feeling of plummeting.

I was lying still on the still surface of the endless dark ocean, yet I instinctively knew my illusory soul body was descending. The speed of my descent was slowly but surely increasing too. For the first time in a long while, I felt panic again.

Looking around I did not understand why my instincts were implying the danger of falling, I had no movement at all, I was just lying exactly still on the endless dark water with only my head frantically moving around to check on my surroundings.

No matter where I looked, my body was perfectly aligned with the ocean's surface. In fact, I couldn’t even tell if I was falling at all if not for my innate instincts, which probably developed from my eternal descent through the abyssal limbo realm.

I then remembered the still dark ocean wasn’t the only thing in this world, and looked straight up at the only other point of reference in this Nightmare Dimension, and what I saw, made my illusory hair stand on end: the eclipsed sun was getting smaller and smaller and smaller...

I slowly turned around and looked down into the depths of the abyssal ocean. The act of flipping in the water always caused me to grimace in pain. The side of my soul body that didn’t touch the freezing dark waters was comparatively warmer.

So, whenever I turned and the unprepared warm side of my soul body touched the bitterly crisp water, it made my stomach churn and my muscles contract because of the piercing cold pain.

As I slowly opened my eyes after enduring the gut-piercing chill, I barely made out two lines glowing with a golden aura beside each other on the ocean floor.

They were perfectly aligned and stretched infinitely in both directions, almost as if they were a single line divided into two. However, their separation spanned an enormous distance, and I felt like I was at the exact centre of it all.

I didn’t sense any immediate danger from them, so I was more curious than frightened and decided to observe the lines a little longer.

...

As I continued to observe the glowing lines for any changes, I didn’t have to wait long. Just a few dozen seconds later, the divine golden glow of the lines intensified, and in the next moment, the entire ocean floor turned effervescent.

Suddenly, a realization struck me like a speeding bullet: those "lines" weren't merely streaks of light; they were cracks in the ocean floor, emitting a golden glow from an unknown source underground. And I wasn’t the one who had been falling; rather, the entire sea level of the dark ocean was dropping at an alarming rate. The endless dark ocean was—

Draining…

……….