The moment the hand grabbed them, the world shattered. Reality fractured like cheap glass. Colors exploded violently across Lucien's vision while a thousand overlapping sounds deafened him, stripping away any sense of up or down.
Then, everything stopped.
A strange, heavy stillness descended. It wasn’t a normal absence of noise; it felt as though their ears were stuffed with thick cotton, deadening every movement.
Nuri's boots slammed hard against something solid. He staggered, his knees buckling, but his feet held. There was a rigid, invisible floor beneath him, and gravity still pulled his weight downward, but looking down revealed absolutely nothing.
White. Everything around him was a blinding, flat white. There was no visible sky, no dust in the air, and no horizon to give the space depth. The emptiness simply stretched endlessly, like a room abandoned halfway through creation.
Nuri's breathing came in short, ragged gasps as his mind struggled to ground itself. He looked to his left, using Lucien’s physical form as his only reference point in the blinding expanse. Lucien stood exactly five paces away, his silhouette sharp against the flat background.
Instinctively, Nuri clasped his shaking hands together, his knuckles turning white as he leaned into the only anchor he had left. He whispered a frantic prayer.
"God of Fate... please answer."
Nothing. No warm energy embraced him; no familiar blessing flowed through his body. The usual comforting presence he felt during prayer was entirely gone.
Nuri's face turned pale. It was impossible. The God of Fate never ignored a believer, no matter who they were or where they prayed. The deity always listened. Always.
Then why was there only this weightless emptiness?
A sickening realization twisted deep in Nuri's chest, growing heavier by the second. His god was completely silent. He wasn't just afraid for his life; a piercing, localized guilt washed over him. Here he was, a holy knight standing in a void, completely abandoned by his creator and entirely dependent on a mysterious stranger to survive. The foundational pillar of his life had just vanished, leaving his spirit utterly hollow.
He stayed trapped in that devastating silence until the air pressure suddenly shifted.
The massive hand emerged once more from the void. Its burned flesh dragged slowly across the white expanse, root-like fingers clawing fiercely at the empty air as if trying to force a new tear. Every time the hand flexed, violent ripples of broken color fractured around it, forcing the creature backward.
Lucien quietly observed the scene. For the first time, his perfect calm fractured.
As he stepped forward, the intense pressure of the unfinished void seemed to push back against him. His shoulder twitched and his breathing hitched. He raised his hand to steady his grip on his umbrella, his fingers tightening until his skin went pale. A look of sharp frustration crossed his face, the environment was actively resisting his presence, demanding immense concentration just to stand upright.
"This..." Lucien murmured, his voice carrying a distinct strain, "is unexpected."
He raised the umbrella, his arm visibly trembling under the heavy atmospheric resistance.
But before he could strike, Nuri broke.
Overwhelmed by the silence of his god and the sight of the approaching monster, the young knight panicked. He lurched backward blindly, his heavy boots stumbling over the invisible ground. He collided hard into Lucien's shoulder just as Lucien swung the umbrella down.
The impact jolted Lucien. His focus shattered.
The heavy chains that erupted from the invisible floor veered off-course. Instead of pinning the creature instantly, the glowing links, forged from liquid starlight and fractured glass, missed the hand's wrist entirely, wrapping loosely around its lower fingers.
The creature roared silently. The loose containment allowed it to thrash violently, sending a shockwave through the invisible floor that nearly knocked both men off their feet. Lucien's eyes widened, a rare, chilling flash of anger cutting through his cold facade as he struggled to drag the chains back into position under the immense physical weight of the thrashing hand.
Meanwhile, outside this broken pocket of reality, the area around the ruined temple had descended into total chaos. The entire stone structure trembled as if something enormous were forcing its way through from the inside. Large sections of the old roof finally gave out, crashing downward into heavy debris while frightened knights scrambled for safety.
"What is happening?!" someone yelled through the dust.
"Wait... where's Nuri?!"
"He went inside earlier!"
Several knights ran toward the temple entrance but immediately jumped backward. The distortion above the altar had grown massive. A giant fracture now hovered in the air, pouring out violent, unstable waves of pressure that made their weapons rattle.
A few knights tried to invoke their blessings, launching bright, golden divine light toward the fracture. However, the moment the holy magic touched the distortion, it vanished. The rift simply devoured the magic whole. Fear settled deep into the knights' faces as they realized their powers were useless.
Inside the white void, Lucien finally forced the chains to tighten, binding the thrashing hand securely against the invisible ground, though his own breath now came ragged and uneven.
Nuri collapsed to his knees, staring at the older man. The illusion of Lucien as an effortless, untouchable god was gone; he was vulnerable, he could be disrupted, and yet he was still manipulating forces that completely defied the natural order.
While Nuri remained paralyzed by his own mistake and the terrifying reality before him, Lucien slowly turned around. The strain was still evident in the tight line of his jaw and the slight dampness on his forehead, but his golden eyes were fixed entirely on the knight.
The gentle, poetic smile did not return. Instead, Lucien tilted his head, his expression entirely analytical, detached, and clinical.
"Do you want to know the truth of our world?"