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Chapter 4 - He Thought, Therefore It Was

There was no sound when it happened.

No thunder, no divine crack, no announcement from the heavens—because there were no heavens here. Only nothing.

But something shifted.

He was still thinking. Not about reality—but about mutations, martial paths, divine rule, corrupted souls, aura constructs layered over genetic blueprints. His mind had become a boundless forge, ideas spiraling endlessly without pause or purpose.

And then… something felt off.

A breeze.

He blinked. Slowly.

He hadn't blinked in… had he ever ?

He looked down. Grass.

A patch of land. A small island surrounded by absolute black. The edges just ended, like a torn piece of reality floating in the void.

"What the hell…"

His voice came out rough, he didn't realized he spoke . He turned slowly, his gaze sweeping over the impossible scene.

Above, a sky—faint blue, streaked with slow-moving clouds. A soft sun, glowing warm and distant, sat still in the black beyond. The wind moved his hair, carrying the scent of grass and earth.

"This shouldn't be possible."

The island wasn't round. It was jagged—like a piece of terrain violently ripped from a larger whole and tossed into the void. Uneven edges, slopes, patches of grass, small hills—natural in shape, but unnaturally placed.

Above him, the sky stretched in a dome of soft blue, dotted with clouds drifting lazily. A sun hung distant, unmoving, fixed like a spotlight in a stage play. The wind brushed past, warm and calm, as if unaware it shouldn't exist here.

But all of it… ended.

He walked forward, past a dip in the ground, over a slight rise. Then he saw it—clearly. The boundary.

Just a few steps beyond, everything stopped. The air. The color. The ground.

Where the grass ended, the world simply cut off. No fog, no fade. Just a sharp edge—like someone had drawn a border with a cosmic pen and said: nothing exists beyond this.

And nothing did.

Beyond the edge, it was all black. Not night—just absolute nothing. The kind of void that didn't even acknowledge existence.

He stood there, right at the line where reality ended.

"This is ridiculous....."

He whispered it, more to himself than anything else. Because there was no one else.

Not here.

Not in this broken pocket of a world floating in the dark.

He stared into the void, unmoving. The sharp edge of the island beneath his feet made no sense. No curve. No slope. Just—stop, Like the island had been cut out of reality with a perfect blade and dropped into an endless void.

He slowly crouched, hand reaching out by instinct.

But the hand that moved wasn't… a hand.

His breath caught.

He looked down.

There was no flesh. No skin. No familiar shape to cling to. Just a silhouette—humanoid, yes—but pale white, almost translucent. Energy flickered across his limbs like faint mist. No features. No mouth. No nose. No eyes. Just… the outline of what used to be human.

He felt like he blinked. Or squinted. Or narrowed his eyes. But he had no eyes. No eyelids. Just the sensation of motion tied to memories of having a face.

"What… am I?"

The voice came from nowhere, yet echoed everywhere inside him.

He turned his glowing hand over, slowly. Flexed. It responded, but there was no weight. No pulse. It was like his form was a placeholder—something his existence wore while it tried to remember what being real felt like.

And still the sky shined. And still the wind blew gently. And still, that jagged island floated inside a void that should not exist.

This place wasn't real.

And yet, neither was he.

He stood there for a while, unmoving. Or maybe not still, just… quiet.

None of this made sense.

Not the sky above. Not the ground beneath.

Not the body he no longer had. Not the void surrounding a world that shouldn't exist.

And yet…

This wasn't the strangest thing to happen to him. Not by a long shot.

So, he stood straight. Faceless, formless, yet composed.

And he began to walk.

His steps were soft but deliberate. The grass reacted like it should—bending, shifting, springing back. The sky remained clear, the sun ever-fixed in the same distant place. The warmth followed him, gentle and consistent.

As he moved deeper into the island, the terrain shifted subtly—slopes, dips, natural curves. Then trees. Real trees. Tall, healthy, vibrant. Some bore fruits—bright reds, deep purples, soft yellows. He reached for one and plucked it with ease. It had weight. Texture. Smell. He didn't eat it. He couldn't. But the sensation told him it could be eaten.

Everything was so… complete.

And still, there was no sound beyond the wind. No chirping. No rustling life. No presence but his own.

The further he walked, the more the realization crept in—familiarity.

This island… it felt like something he'd once imagined. Not recently. Not intentionally. But a passing thought from long ago—during one of his countless daydream spirals.

A quiet place. An island in the void. A sky to rest under. A sun that never moved. Wind that never changed.

He had thought of it.

And now—it existed.

Piece by piece, the truth settled over him like fog:

His imagination hadn't stayed in his head.

It had bled into reality.

He sat for a while beneath one of the taller trees, watching the motionless sun hang in its false sky.

The warmth. The endless blue.

It was peaceful… but exhausting.

"Enough sun for now," he thought lazily, almost on impulse.

The change was instant.

The blue sky darkened—not gradually, not like a sunset, but as if someone had flipped the sky inside-out. The air cooled, shadows stretched, and the sun above him dimmed… shifting form.

The glowing orb became pale, silver, cratered—a perfect moon.

And around it, small glowing dots appeared. Not scattered wildly, but placed with eerie precision. Stars. Gentle, artificial, and motionless in the dark dome above.

He stood slowly, looking up.

The grass still whispered underfoot. The wind still moved. The island remained the same… but the sky had obeyed him.

He hadn't built this.

He hadn't wished it out loud.

He had simply thought it.

And reality responded.

It wasn't just imagination anymore.

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