The massive steel door of the descent gate slammed shut with a sharp, metallic shriek.

  To Adin, it was a sentence—the final severing of his connection to the world he knew. He had expected to be swallowed by a heavy darkness, but upon opening his eyes, he was met with an overwhelming white madness that stabbed at his optic nerves.

  It was a forest.

  But instead of the pulse of life, only a suspended perfection drifted in the air. The sensation beneath his feet was not the soft give of earth, but the cold, slick touch of polished marble.

  Every tree and blade of grass was meticulously crafted from bone-white crystal, revealing edges as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel—frozen like a captured dream.

  In the windless silence, a faint, metallic vibration—like thousands of glass music boxes playing in unison—made his eardrums throb.

  Adin took a ragged breath and made his first step into the heart of the forest.

  At that moment, a chilling tremor seeped from his toes to his brain. It was not mere cold. It was a soul-deep revulsion against the 'Bleaching' that was erasing everything.

  He looked at his sleeve. His deep navy coat had already lost its color, fading into a pale gray, then into a scentless, textureless white.

  He felt his face. The subtle pores and contours were gone. His hands felt like transparent statues gliding over smooth glass.

  He tried to scream, but the cry was absorbed by a white sponge, vanishing without a trace. It was absolute isolation, where even an echo was forbidden.

  "Stop. Move any further, and the 'stain' that is you will be wiped away entirely."

  A voice as transparent as a snapping icicle hung in the air. Beneath a crystalline willow sat a figure, motionless.

  It was a 'Fairy'—or perhaps the wreckage of a human who had once attempted the descent. His body was now a translucent vitreous substance, and his expensive silks had cooled into a pale shroud.

  "What is this place? Why is everything... being erased?" Adin asked with a stiffening tongue.

  The fairy raised his head slowly, with a grotesque sound of snapping joints. His eyes were hollow glass beads, incapable of reflecting Adin's face.

  "This is the Monolith's 'Sanitizing Room,' a sieve for the soul," the voice sounded like ice shards colliding. "A great washing machine born of Ivory's obsession with purity. You are not being 'deleted.' You are being made 'perfect' by the removal of impurities."

  "Perfect? You're becoming a transparent statue. Doesn't that terrify you? Eventually, you'll even forget your own name."

  "A name? That is merely a tag for a heavy past," the fairy let out a hollow laugh. "Why cling to a name when you can become as light as a ray of light?"

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  He continued, his tone devoid of warmth.

  "Down in Ebony, people rot under the pretext of being 'alive,' burdened with pain, stench, and indelible karma. But here, you can shine eternally as 'Nothingness.' This white room, where entropy has ceased, is the only true reality."

  "Nothingness doesn't shine. It's just empty," Adin countered.

  "It is noble because it is empty." The fairy's voice grew sharp. "Do you know why the Nodes pay a fortune to stay here? They wish to be liberated from all 'Friction.' Love, hatred, longing..."

  He leaned in slightly, the crystal leaves clinking behind him.

  "Those unsettling emotions weigh down the soul and cause it to fall. But this forest bleaches that weight away. We are 'curing' the sorrow that plagues you. Discard the wretched details of your life. Then you, too, can remain in this eternal pause."

  "Sorrow is a target for a cure? Without it, I am not myself."

  "That is exactly what we want," the fairy whispered. "To escape the prison of the self and become a perfect background. Look at that dazzling white. It is the purest 'void.' Because nothing is written upon it, it can be anything—yet by being nothing, it is eternal."

  "Those lights are not stealing your color," he added softly. "They are inviting you into this sacred silence."

  Adin realized a horrifying truth.

  This place was crueler than hell. Hell gives you pain, but this place was erasing the 'self' that could feel that pain.

  "A soul that cannot be torn is just a decorative statue," Adin spat out. "I would rather exist in filth and sorrow. I will tear this silence apart."

  But he was fading.

  His parents' faces blurred like washed-out watercolors, melting into the white madness. The forest sought to devour even his memories—his last 'Friction.' As his anchors to the past vanished, Adin's body became a transparent blur on a flat plane.

  I will not evaporate. I still have time left to burn.

  Adin reached into his pocket and gripped a handful of Solet.

  In a world of frictionless glass, he needed a flame to pollute this perfection. He summoned the vast traces of his parents from the MP.10-L Room. The tens of thousands of pages of research, the scent of their tears for Ebony, and the evidence of the love they built to protect him.

  As each record was etched back into his mind like a permanent ink stain, a surge of 'Longing' erupted like a molten vortex in his chest.

  That searing longing collided with the logic of the white forest, generating a violent psychological friction. Adin rubbed that burning pulse of emotion into the Solet powder in his palm.

  Sss— Hiss!

  A flame erupted, tearing through the white silence. Thick, acrid plumes of black smoke spewed from his hand like volcanic ash.

  It was a blatant, filthy insult to the sanitized forest.

  The smoke curled like crude oil spilled on a pristine canvas. The soot settled on the sharp edges of the crystalline trees, tracing their lethal silhouettes in dark ink.

  At that moment, Depth was restored to the flat world.

  The small flame cast a long, dancing shadow across the white floor. With the shadow, perspective was finally recovered. Adin realized the floor was not an endless void.

  Through the shadow's length, he measured the volume of the space and discovered the downward slope.

  "The light lied," Adin whispered through the smoke. "The shadows are showing the true path."

  Adin spotted where the smoke was being sucked away—an invisible current of air, the only crack in this sealed room.

  Clutching the flame, he ran across the slick floor. The fairies scattered in terror, but Adin's gaze was locked on the black map drawn by the smoke. The smoke swirled at a corner of the transparent wall, spiraling downward.

  Adin reached the gap and threw the flame.

  As it fell, its depth was proven by the darkness. There, guided by the shadow, a pitch-black crevice finally revealed itself.

  It was the true darkness, the only exit from this forest of silence.

  Using the black smoke as his final guide, Adin threw himself into the heart of that shadow.

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