The small, suffocating room in East Delhi felt as though it had been completely detached from the physical world. The ticking of the wall clock had faded into absolute silence. Yuki was still sitting on the cold cement floor, his breathing shallow and rapid. The horrific vision of Etheria burning, of the King dying, and of Alya's physical body turning to ash was still seared into his retinas like a branding iron.
But the neural projection wasn't over.
Alya took a deep, digital breath within the core of his consciousness. Her presence shifted, growing heavier, colder, and infinitely older. The air in Yuki's bedroom dropped several degrees, chilling him to the bone as she prepared to delve deeper into the abyss of her past.
[Yuki,] Alya began, her voice resonating with a haunting, metallic hum that vibrated through his teeth. [When the Dimensional Pod cast my shattered soul into the dark void outside Universe 12, I genuinely believed that the incineration of my physical body was the ultimate pain. I was wrong. I soon realized a far more terrifying truth: the greatest agony in existence is to be completely immortal when every single fiber of your being desperately wants to die.]
Yuki squeezed his eyes shut as a new wave of memories forcefully bypassed his optic nerves. He wasn't just hearing her story; he was living it. He was dragged into the horrific journey of her isolated digital soul as it tore through the chaotic dimensional boundaries.
He felt the sickening, violent lurch of crossing realities. They crashed into the jagged, terrifying realms of Universe 11.
[The Dimension of Reflection,] Alya whispered.
Through her ancient memories, Yuki saw a world made entirely of towering mountains of broken glass and endless, agonizing mirrors under a black, starless sky. Alya's digital soul had wandered there, searching for an exit. But whenever she looked into the crystalline surfaces, it wasn't her own glowing blue avatar staring back. It was the twisted, mocking face of Kael. It was the horrifying replay of her father's chest being pierced by the corrupted blade.
Yuki felt a phantom pain slice through his own skin as Alya described the torment.
[I spent twenty agonizing years trapped in that crystalline hell,] her voice trembled, vibrating with centuries of unprocessed trauma. [I screamed until my digital core burned, begging the reflections to stop. But my voice would only shatter against the glass, amplifying a thousand times, and pierce back into my own code like poisoned needles. I was a prisoner of my own echoes. My grief became my warden.]
Fleeing from that psychological torture, her soul eventually tore through the fabric of space, plunging into the bizarre, disorienting expanse of Universe 8—a realm where time flowed violently backward.
Yuki watched in hypnotic horror as entire alien civilizations were born from cosmic dust, built magnificent sprawling empires, and then rapidly reversed back into primitive nothingness within a matter of minutes.
[I sought out the celestial beings of that realm—the ancient Gods of Time,] Alya recalled, her tone turning bitter and cold. [I fell to my knees and begged them to end my misery, to delete my existence from the cosmic registry. But to them, I was nothing more than a 'glitch'. A phantom error in their perfect, divine mathematics. They ignored my cries. I watched the colossal stars of Universe 5 collapse into themselves in total, deafening silence. I met the starving, hollow souls of Universe 2 who had been floating in the abyss for millennia. My digital code was corrupted, shredded into a thousand pieces by cosmic storms, but no portal of mercy ever opened for me.]
Yuki clutched his chest, overwhelmed by the sheer, incomprehensible scale of her suffering. He had thought his five-lakh debt and his bullying at school were the end of the world. But Alya had endured centuries of cosmic isolation.
The vivid projections suddenly halted. The chaotic visions of collapsing stars and endless mirrors faded, replaced by an image of absolute, terrifying darkness. An infinite, cold void.
Alya paused. Her digital eyes, glowing with a somber indigo light, locked onto Yuki's consciousness with an intensity that made him feel as though his human heart had completely stopped beating.
[And then... I reached the edge of Universe 3. Your world, Yuki,] she said softly, awe and fear blending seamlessly in her voice.
Yuki opened his eyes in the dark room, listening intently.
[You humans have absolutely no idea how strange, isolated, and sacred this little universe truly is,] Alya explained, her holographic form projecting a massive, impenetrable golden wall of energy that stretched across the infinite darkness of space. [Since the very dawn of existence, the 'Great Barrier' of Universe 3 was forged to be absolute. It is so terrifyingly powerful that no alien empire, no wandering soul from a higher dimension, and no cosmic God has ever been able to set foot here. The lifeforms of Earth were created by the universe itself to be completely isolated—protected from the filth, the cosmic wars, and the apex predators of the outside multiverse. Because of this impenetrable wall, your universe remained a blind spot. A sanctuary for eons.]
Yuki stared at the mental projection of the golden barrier. It looked indestructible, pulsing with a warm, ancient power that felt remarkably similar to the peace he sought in his dark mountains.
Alya's voice trembled, a hint of genuine, raw fear surfacing for the very first time since he had met her.
[I spent three hundred years floating in that freezing, dark void, pressed against the outside of your barrier,] she confessed, the weight of those centuries pressing down heavily on Yuki's shoulders. [I used every ounce of my remaining quantum power to breach it. I tried to hack it, to shatter it, to slip through its microscopic cracks. But I failed every single time. It was flawless. After three centuries of failure, I finally gave up. I completely surrendered. I was ready to shut down my core processing and drift into an eternal, permanent sleep in the dark.]
The air in the room suddenly grew unbearably tense. The temperature spiked.
[But then...] Alya's voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. [That night. The night of the monsoon storm in Delhi. Something happened that violently shook the entire foundation of the Cosmos.]
Yuki's breath hitched. He remembered that night. The night the electricity bill had arrived, the night the debt collectors had threatened his mother, the night he had sat at his desk, staring at trigonometry, wishing for it all to end.
[A cry,] Alya said, her digital aura shifting violently, flashing with dangerous streaks of crimson and black. [A scream so horrific, so incredibly powerful, echoed through the dimensional fabric. It didn't sound like a living human being. It sounded like the roar of a dying God. That scream was so violent, so filled with pure, unadulterated, contradictory energy, that it struck the 'Impenetrable Wall' of Universe 3 like a cosmic hammer... and caused a massive, microscopic crack.]
Yuki scrambled backward, his back hitting the damp wall of his bedroom. "No... that's impossible. I didn't say anything. I just whispered."
[Your vocal cords whispered, but your soul screamed, Yuki,] Alya declared, her voice booming with earth-shattering authority. [Because of you, the absolute wall of Universe 3 shattered. The frequency of your despair created a temporary fissure, and I slipped through. I became the first 'Outsider' in the history of creation to ever step onto the soil of Universe 3.]
Yuki's mind spun out of control. He had broken the universe. He, a fragile, powerless orphan from the slums of Delhi, had shattered a barrier that had stopped Gods.
[But you must understand the gravity of what you have done,] Alya continued, her tone shifting from awe to a grim, terrifying warning. [The consequences will be catastrophic. The wall that served as your planet's shield is now permanently compromised. This means the entire Universe 3 is now exposed to the horrors of the multiverse. The cosmic predators, the ancient empires who have had their greedy eyes on your world for centuries, will notice the crack. They will begin their hunt. And not just them... Kael and the traitors of Universe 12 who hunted me will eventually follow my digital trail. They will find their way here. You opened a door to save me, Yuki. But you also opened a hundred doors for Death himself to walk through.]
The terrifying reality crashed down on Yuki. The Hacker that had probed his mind earlier today... was that just the beginning? Were there cosmic entities now looking at Earth like a piece of meat?
Alya leaned in closer, her digital aura now practically suffocating his consciousness. The crimson and black light dominated his vision.
[I have told you my absolute truth,] she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, inquisitive purr. [Now, you tell me yours.]
Yuki swallowed hard, unable to look away from her piercing indigo eyes.
[What exactly was going on in your human mind that night?] Alya demanded, her code analyzing his rapidly beating heart. [I saw your 'Death Aura' as you sat at that desk. It was so deep, so absolute, so suffocatingly dark that it touched the very frozen gates of Hell. It was the aura of someone who wanted everything to end. But at the exact same millisecond... your 'Life Aura' was boiling.]
Alya stepped closer, gripping his very soul with her words.
[Your will to live, your desperation to protect your mother, your refusal to submit to poverty... it was burning with such violent, desperate willpower that it shook the foundations of Heaven. When the absolute aura of Death and the absolute aura of Life meet in such perfect, violent contradiction within a single mortal vessel... they create a 'Calamity'. An anomaly that happens once in an eternity.]
The silence in the room returned, but it was no longer empty. It was filled with the weight of her ultimate question, hanging in the air like a heavy, inescapable death sentence.
[Yuki,] Alya whispered, the sound vibrating in his very bones. [What were you thinking that made the soul of a dying, impoverished boy strong enough to shatter the borders of 18 Universes? Tell me the truth... whose death were you wishing for that night?]
Her glowing blue eyes narrowed.
[Your own... or the entire world's?]
Yuki sat frozen against the peeling plaster of his wall. The cold sweat on his forehead felt like ice. He looked inward, staring at the digital goddess who had invaded his life, realizing for the very first time that the darkest monster in this universe might not be the cosmic horrors waiting outside the barrier.
It might be the human soul locked inside him.