The dragon continued flying through the endless black fog. The deeper he went, the more he felt his consciousness and will being eroded. Every moment spent within the fog weakened him slightly, yet it remained bearable.
He quickly realized why. The black fog wasn’t targeting him directly. Its attention was focused elsewhere, and he was still a living being who had yet to die. The laws of the living world still protected his existence, greatly reducing the fog’s effect on him.
After what felt like an eternity, the pressure suddenly vanished. The dragon found himself outside the sea of black fog, floating high in the sky. He had no idea when he had crossed through it. Slowly, he looked around. This wasn’t Asher’s peaceful consciousness anymore. It was an entirely different world.
Above him stretched an endless crimson sky, its blood-red color giving the entire world an oppressive atmosphere. Looking down, he saw that everything below was crimson as well. The rivers, the land, and what appeared to be endless forests had all been dyed the same deep red. Far on the horizon stood a boundless mountain that seemed to pierce the heavens themselves, so enormous that it dominated the entire world.
The dragon slowly descended, believing this to be the consciousness of one of Asher’s forgotten lives. As he drew closer to the ground, the "forest" gradually became clearer. His pupils suddenly contracted, and his entire body froze.
Those weren’t trees. Every single one of them was a corpse standing upright. Some had been impaled into the earth, while others were fused together into grotesque shapes. Their twisted limbs resembled branches, and torn fragments of flesh hung from them like lifeless leaves, swaying silently beneath the endless crimson sky.
The dragon slowly descended further, and the closer he came to the ground, the more horrifying the truth became.
The land wasn’t naturally crimson.
It had been soaked in so much blood that the earth itself had turned red.
The rivers weren’t ordinary rivers stained with blood either.
They were blood.
Endless rivers of blood flowed across the world as though fed by an infinite source, stretching beyond the horizon with no beginning and no end.
There wasn’t a single trace of life anywhere.
No birds filled the sky, no insects crawled upon the ground, and not even the faintest sound of a living creature could be heard.
The entire world was silent.
After recovering from his initial shock, the dragon began exploring the surroundings.
The further he went, the more corpses he found.
There was nothing else.
Only corpses.
The bodies of humans, beasts, and countless creatures he had never seen before lay scattered across the endless land. Some were so enormous that they resembled mountains, while others possessed forms unlike anything that existed in the current world.
Never in his thousands of years of life had the dragon witnessed a world like this.
His heart couldn’t help but tremble.
Looking across the endless sea of corpses, he muttered in a voice filled with shock and unease,
"Just... what kind of being’s consciousness is this?"
His gaze slowly swept across the endless dead world.
"There is nothing here except corpses..."
A rare trace of fear appeared in his golden eyes.
"Did I make a mistake by coming here?"
The dragon had entered this place out of curiosity. He simply wanted to know what kind of memories the law of Death was trying so desperately to keep buried. But after witnessing this world with his own eyes, he finally understood. There was a reason those memories were never meant to be remembered. A reason even the law of Death was suppressing them.
The dragon immediately tried to withdraw his consciousness. Again and again, he attempted to leave, yet nothing happened. No matter what he did, he couldn’t escape. His consciousness was completely trapped within this world.
A faint chill ran through the dragon’s heart as he realized the truth. The only one capable of letting him leave was the owner of this world—the being whose memories these truly were. And for the first time in thousands of years, the dragon realized there was someone he genuinely did not want to meet.
But the dragon knew that if he truly wanted to escape this place, he would eventually have to meet its owner.
His gaze slowly rose toward the boundless mountain standing on the horizon. The being whose memories these were was most likely waiting at its peak. Yet he was almost certain that it wasn’t a mountain at all. Ever since arriving in this world, nothing had been what it first appeared to be. The forests were made of corpses, the rivers were rivers of blood, and the crimson earth itself had been dyed by countless deaths. So how could that towering "mountain" possibly be an ordinary mountain?
The dragon quietly muttered in a trembling voice, "I suppose I became too arrogant. I thought nothing inside a human’s consciousness could possibly endanger me... I was wrong." He let out a bitter laugh. "And now I’m trapped here with no way out. Curiosity really can get you killed sometimes."
Taking a deep breath, the dragon spread his wings and flew toward the colossal mountain. The closer he drew, the heavier his heart became.
There were even more corpses here. Countless demons lay scattered across the land alongside beings resembling angels, while dragons far larger than himself rested lifeless on the blood-soaked earth.
Some were so enormous that a single corpse stretched farther than an entire mountain range. The deeper he ventured into this dead world, the more insignificant he began to feel.
After what felt like an eternity, the dragon finally reached the colossal mountain. As he had expected, it wasn’t a mountain at all. It was an unimaginably vast pile of corpses stacked upon one another, so enormous that from a distance it had appeared to be a natural mountain. Without stopping, the dragon continued flying upward toward its peak.