The instant D U's hand touched Null's forehead, the world stopped obeying rules.
Sound collapsed first—flattened into silence so absolute it felt physical.Then gravity twisted, not breaking, but losing certainty, as if unsure which way it was meant to pull.
Null's vision split apart.
Not shattered.
Layered.
He was no longer standing in the ruined chamber alone. He was standing in every place he had ever almost been.
He saw the black-metal throne again—but this time it was cracked down the center, fractured like something abandoned mid-purpose.He saw Aizeno, younger, hands shaking as he stood before the Door, holding a child whose core had not finished forming.He heard Hyung's voice, screaming a name that had never been spoken aloud.And beneath it all—a pressure that did not belong to Adrax.
D U's voice echoed inside the fracture.
"Don't fight what's coming," she said calmly."Choose what stays."
Null's body convulsed.
The spiral in his left eye expanded outward, glowing lines tearing across his iris like stress fractures in glass. His mind was no longer resisting—
It was deciding.
The Door reacted violently.
OR'VYLLA surged forward, the chamber screaming as reality warped inward around its presence.
"KEY," the Entity thundered."YOU EXIST TO OPEN—"
D U snapped her fingers.
Sound slammed back into the world like a gunshot.
"No," she said flatly."He exists to choose."
Her chest tightened.
Then—
Her heartbeat stopped.
Hyung felt it instantly.
"D U!"
She staggered, blood slipping from the corner of her mouth as her pulse vanished—but she did not fall. She remained standing, legs locked, eyes blazing with fractured blue light.
Her voice changed—not louder, but heavier.
"This is the limit," she muttered."My heart pauses… while my core moves."
Aizeno stepped back instinctively.
"That technique— you're suspending causality."
D U didn't look at him.
"I suspend endings."
She pressed her palm harder against Null's forehead.
And pulled.
Something inside Null opened—not a memory, not an awakening.
A junction.
Hyung gasped.
Pain tore through his chest—not physical, not emotional, but something deeper. Something recognized its origin.
A luminous thread ripped free from Hyung's core, stretching across the space between them.
A fragment.
Hyung dropped to one knee, gasping as the fragment slammed into Null's chest.
The impact didn't explode.
It locked.
Null screamed—not in pain, but in realization.
The Third Fragment fused into place.
The Door convulsed violently.
OR'VYLLA roared, the sound bending dimensions around it.
Aizeno whispered, horrified:
"So it didn't stop at two…The core kept dividing."
Null lifted from the ground.
The aura around him inverted—dark folding inward, light sharpening at the edges. The spiral in his eye shattered completely—
Reforming into a symbol that belonged to no one else.
Null spoke.
One voice.One will.
"I am not your key."
OR'VYLLA lashed forward.
A limb of impossible geometry tore through space and struck Null directly in the chest.
For a fraction of a second—
Everything believed he had been erased.
Then the limb stopped.
Split cleanly down the center.
Blood—neither red nor black—spilled into the air, warping reality as it fell.
OR'VYLLA screamed.
Not in rage.
In disbelief.
Hyung stared, breath shaking.
"…He wounded it."
D U's heart restarted with a violent jolt.
She inhaled sharply, nearly collapsing, but managed a faint smile.
"Told you," she said weakly."He's not built like the rest."
Null descended slowly, feet touching the fractured stone.
The chamber did not reject him.
It adjusted.
He looked at Hyung—who was struggling to stand.Then at D U, who had just paid a price she hadn't explained.Then finally at Aizeno.
And last—
The Door.
"You tried to define me with fragments," Null said calmly."So I became the space between them."
OR'VYLLA recoiled deeper into the Door, bleeding something that caused the air itself to rot.
For the first time—
The Entity hesitated.
Fear rippled through its presence.
Null took a single step forward.
The Door cracked wider.
And the world leaned toward what came next.
End of Chapter 55.