"So this is the Unseen Realm."
Jin muttered, doing his best not to glance at the colossal eyeball looming in the heavens. The eye wasn't exactly fixated on him, but its mere presence was overwhelming—like being trapped beneath an ever-watchful, disquieting gaze.
An uncanny sensation swept over him, and Jin instinctively reached for his face—only to freeze in place.
His hand wasn't there. In fact, his entire corporeal form had vanished. He could still see, still perceive his surroundings, but he possessed no physical body.
"What the—?!"
Then it struck him.
"Oh, right... it's my psyche that made the journey here," he realized. "This must be Albedo's doing."
With a resigned sigh, Jin turned toward the shadowy, foreboding world that stretched behind him. He attempted to stand—or rather, that's what he intended.
Though legless, his vantage point rose, as though he had stood upright.
"Interesting," he mused. "So my consciousness responds to intention."
As Jin studied the mechanics of his new state, the massive eye cloaking the sky shifted its gaze, locking onto the space he occupied.
A chill ran through his essence as he bolted toward a heap of rubble from a collapsed city wall, part of what resembled a cavern structure.
From within his refuge, Jin scrutinized the eye's movements. Within seconds, its gaze drifted past.
Holding an invisible breath, Jin remained perfectly still.
"Phew."
Only once the eye moved on did he exhale—despite lacking a mouth.
"It nearly annihilated me."
Jin evaluated his options. He could either leave the city or delve deeper into its ruins.
"Since the Unseen Realm mirrors the human world, its architecture should be analogous," he reasoned, scanning the area.
The oppressive darkness didn't unnerve him. He had faced the unknown before—though never in this peculiar world.
His gaze settled on a shattered sign outside a decrepit shop. The letters were reversed, like reflections in a mirror.
He lingered for a time, then finally tilted his vision skyward once more—toward the heavens where that eye loomed, like a deity surveying its dominion.
Jin chuckled for reasons unknown. The voice wasn't here either. Perhaps... it would never return.
Once, Jin would have felt nothing. But now, something unfamiliar stirred within him. An emptiness swallowed his incorporeal heart. Yet this time, it was different.
He understood. He laughed softly as the realization dawned—it was loneliness.
Drifting through this realm with nothing but his psyche, he had begun to feel. Albeit briefly. If he reclaimed his soul, it would all vanish once more. His flaw would resurface. His curse would awaken. And his heart... it would return to its void.
And perhaps, that would be for the better. Though mere moments had passed, he already despised this alien sensation. He loathed the newly awakened emotions stirring inside him.
The memories of the Forbidden Land began to seep back into his awareness. The weaknesses he had purged resurfaced.
And with them came a truth he had long avoided.
He remembered just how fragile he truly was. Cowering behind the broken wall, he loathed it.
Had he possessed a body, he might have wept. But since he did not, he laughed—like a jester in a tragedy.
Then, a memory surfaced—of how the voice would calm its nerves. So Jin followed its example. As always. And he sang.
"Beneath the hollow, moonless sky,
I see it—an immense, watching eye.
I stand alone, both lost and broken,
A soul adrift, with thoughts unspoken.
The world around me, dark and still,
My mind insists, 'There's nothing—'
Yet that great gaze, it holds me fast,
As if there's more than what appears.
For in the silence, shadows dance,
And through the void, I feel a chance,
A hidden truth, a presence near,
Beyond the eye, beyond my fear."
He inhaled deeply through a nose that didn't exist.
"I'm no good with poems, but they really do help calm you down."
***
It seemed like four days had passed.
Now felling much better Jin made his way toward the city, searching for his lost soul. He wandered through its inverted streets, from the wealth of the upper districts to the dusty, decaying slums below.
Each step he took was deliberate, filled with caution, as if something unseen was hunting him. From time to time, he glanced up at the sky—at the massive eye that now replaced it, ever-watchful. Occasionally, he heard strange, unintelligible sounds in the distance, but their meaning remained elusive.
"It must be the souls trapped in this world," he thought, his mind racing.
But it wasn't the souls of the dead that filled him with dread. Something far more horrific lurked in the shadows.
"I just hope I don't run into a Soul Eater."
Just then, the massive eye shifted again.
"Damn it, not again," Jin muttered under his breath.
He quickly ducked into a nearby house, pressing himself against the wall. The eye stretched endlessly above, consuming the entire sky with its unblinking gaze.
Jin recalled something he had once read on a stone table in a lost temple within the Forgotten Land.
It told of a being that stole the souls of all humans and trapped them in the Unseen Realm. Then, it replaced the sky with one of its ten thousand eyes—always watching, ensuring no one could reclaim their soul.
"Must be doing a pretty bad job," Jin thought wryly, "since thousands of humans have managed to get theirs back."
But then again. Maybe that was its intention all along.
***
Jin pressed on through the void, searching endlessly—though the concept of days had long since dissolved into meaninglessness.
There was no sun to rise, no stars to guide him—only the eternal murk of the Unseen Realm. Time blurred into a ceaseless, suffocating continuum.
He once tried to count—steps, breaths, thoughts—but numbers faded like smoke.
How long had it been? Two months? Ten? Centuries?
In this world twisted beyond logic, time was a dead god.
He wandered empty boulevards beneath the sky's monstrous pupil, the omnipresent Eye. It moved occasionally, sweeping its gaze across the skeletal ruins.
Each time, Jin was ready. Precision governed his every step. He weaved through shattered buildings, sank behind crumbling walls—performing the same bleak ballet. A silent choreography of survival.
But beneath that routine, frustration festered.
No matter how far he searched, the result remained unchanged.
"Why can't I find any souls?" he whispered into the void.
"Why is it all so empty? Not even a Soul Eater..."
More wandering. More futility.
Eventually, he made the decision to move on. This corpse of a city had yielded nothing. He had scraped through every alley, every forgotten basement, every shadowed ruin—and found nothing. Not even a whisper of a soul.
So he wandered again. From dead city to dead city.
Across landscapes fractured by decay, through ruins drowned in ash, he walked.
Years passed—or the illusion of years. Time curled around itself like a dying snake, endless and venomous.
Only silence accompanied him—silence, and the Eye.
And still, he found nothing.
"Am I ever going to find it?"
Doubt slithered in slowly, like rot beneath skin. He had set out with fire in his chest, determined to reclaim his soul. But now, after a thousand nameless nights, that fire had guttered to ash.
Then one day—if it could be called a day—he collapsed.
No legs, yet still he fell. As if despair itself had gravity.
He lay in the cold dirt, staring at the uncaring Eye above. For the first time, he truly, deeply considered surrender.
His thoughts spiraled like vultures.
"I knew this was foolish… How many years wasted? Maybe some Soul Eater devoured it long ago, and I've been chasing a ghost."
The weight of that thought crushed what little resolve remained.
If his soul was gone—eaten, erased—what meaning did his journey hold?
Why dodge the Eye? Why endure silence, madness, loneliness?
He lay motionless, letting despair consume him.
His form—if it could even be called that—felt hollow.
The world had bled him dry.
Jin closed his eyes—his mind's eyes. But there was no sleep, no dream.
Only the cold, relentless press of hopelessness.
For the first time in countless years, he allowed the thought to take root:
His search might never end.
And worse—His soul might already be gone.
And with that truth came the collapse.
Chains of despair slithered from the abyss, coiling around him—chains of his own forging.
They bound him not with iron, but with memory. Failure. Regret.
In their cold embrace, he gave in.
He let go.
But then—
A sound.
Bells.
Distant at first. Faint as wind through broken glass.
Jin's eyes snapped open. He blinked—or thought he did.
"What... was that?"
The sound grew louder, clearer—alien in this world of silence.
And then it came.A light.Brilliant, star-kissed, divine. It fell from the sky like a river of galaxies, scattering the shadows like frightened rats. It pulsed with celestial rhythm, each beat like a lullaby from the universe itself.
And at its core—something moved.
Jin, still kneeling in his ruin, stared upward.
"Are you... an angel?"