Slowly, he opened his eyes.

A sharp, unbearable pain pulsed in his skull, as if his brain was moments away from bursting. His body refused to cooperate—each movement clumsy, sluggish, like wading through molasses. It felt like a million volts of electricity had fried every nerve, leaving him completely numb.

With great effort, he managed to sit up, blinking through the haze clouding his vision.

Then he saw it.

The world around him was impossible.

Floating islands, countless in number, drifted in an endless void. Some rotated lazily, others spun wildly as if caught in a silent storm. There was no sky—only an infinite stretch of web-like white threads pulsing with vibrant, shifting colors, weaving together like the strands of a divine tapestry.

Everything felt upside down—or maybe sideways. Yet beneath him, solid ground.

"What the hell is going on?" he shouted, his voice swallowed by the eerie silence.

As sensation slowly returned to his limbs, so did the pain. A deep, burning ache spread through his body, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand. His legs wobbled under an invisible weight, like chains were wrapped around him, pulling him down.

Stumbling forward, he reached the edge of his floating island. He peered over, expecting to see an abyss, but instead, more islands stretched infinitely below him—no end, no beginning, just chaos suspended in nothingness.

Then, something drifted past him.

A small rock, floating.

And he felt it pull at him.

His heart skipped a beat. He turned to face another island nearby, crouched, and—on impulse—jumped toward it.

A normal human would have plummeted into the void.

Instead, the island's pull drew him in, catching him like a magnet. He landed safely, though a bit ungracefully. The moment his feet touched the ground, the overwhelming heaviness in his body vanished.

His movements felt… natural again. Lighter.

"Every piece of land here has its own gravity..." he muttered, realization dawning on him. "This place is insane."

With curiosity outweighing fear, he began leaping from island to island, testing their strange gravitational pull. Some let him bounce across effortlessly, while others crushed him under an invisible force, like the very earth wanted to devour him.

Yet, there was a pattern.

The islands weren’t drifting aimlessly. They all seemed to be pulled in the same direction—toward something.

And so, he followed the flow.

Eventually, he reached the center of a massive vortex of floating debris. At its heart, suspended in the void, was a glowing sphere of pure light.

"A star?" he murmured. But something felt off.

It wasn't much larger than a house, yet its gravitational pull was immense. The very air around him seemed to bend toward it, tugging at his clothes, whispering for him to step closer.

A deep, suffocating silence filled the space.

"It's so quiet."

His instincts screamed.

Something was wrong.

Then, a voice.

"Because you don’t belong here."

It boomed inside his mind, shaking him to his core. It wasn’t just loud—it was like the universe itself was speaking.

He turned sharply, his head still pounding, and—

There it was.

A towering figure, easily three meters tall.

Bronze skin, stark white hair flowing like a frozen storm. Orbiting around it were small black holes, shifting with the precision of planets circling a sun. Its eyes, marked with the Ω symbol in place of pupils, pierced through him—ancient, unreadable, absolute.

The air warped and bent around it.

Gravity itself seemed to shift at its command.

"Impressive, isn’t it?" the being said, smirking—but there was no warmth in it.

Something in Daion’s gut twisted.

He had no idea where he was.

He had no idea who he was.

And yet, he knew one thing for certain.

He was standing before something that should not exist.