The Extra's Transcension-Chapter 60: The Chivalry Attack (4)

Lyrium drifted through the void, an abyss that stretched endlessly in all directions, vast and immeasurable.

He felt weightless, as if adrift in the depths of an ocean without a surface to rise toward or a seabed to anchor him.

Yet, there was no water—only a suffocating darkness, dense and all-encompassing, pressing against him like an unseen force.

The silence was absolute, so profound that even his own thoughts seemed to dissolve into the void, leaving him with an unsettling sense of isolation.

Surrounding him were countless colossal eyes, their luminous purple irises fixed upon him with an eerie, unblinking intensity.

Some were so vast they could eclipse entire mountain ranges, their sclera webbed with delicate veins of abyssal black, pulsating with an otherworldly energy.

Others were smaller, drifting closer, their piercing gazes like invisible needles threading through the very fabric of his soul.

Their silent scrutiny carried an incomprehensible weight, as if they were peeling away the layers of his existence, exposing him to something far beyond mortal understanding.

A suffocating pressure settled over him, heavy and unyielding, as if the very fabric of the void sought to crush him beneath its unseen weight.

His breath hitched, his lungs refusing to expand fully.

His pulse pounded against his ribs like a war drum, each beat a desperate signal of his growing fear.

"What... what is this place?"

Panic clawed at his chest, raw and relentless.

He twisted his body, limbs flailing in a frantic attempt to move—to escape—but the abyss held him in place, an unseen force rendering his struggle meaningless.

No matter how much he thrashed, he remained suspended in the endless expanse of darkness.

There was no ground beneath him, no sky above.

No sense of direction.

Only the unblinking, monstrous eyes, their silent gazes pressing down on him like the judgment of an ancient, unknowable force.

Then—

A whisper.

It slithered through the void, an eerie murmur without sound, a presence without form.

It did not pass through the air, for there was none.

Instead, it wormed its way directly into his mind, threading through his thoughts like a serpent coiling around prey.

"You have entered the threshold... you are no longer bound."

The words carried neither warmth nor malice, only a quiet, inescapable certainty—an immutable truth spoken by something far beyond mortal comprehension.

The words sent a cold shiver down his spine, a chilling sensation that burrowed deep into his bones.

"Whose voice is that?!"

Lyrium shouted, but the void devoured his words the moment they left his lips.

There was no reverberation, no trace of sound—only silence, vast and absolute.

Yet, his own words echoed within his mind, circling like ghosts of a forgotten reality.

No answer came.

His breathing grew ragged, uneven.

The oppressive stillness around him only made it worse, feeding the panic rising in his chest like a wildfire.

He clenched his fists, his nails biting into his palms—a desperate attempt to anchor himself, to ground his thoughts before they unraveled completely.

’Think about it damn it.’

His mind raced.

’What was I doing before I got here?!’

He pressed his fingers against his temples, gritting his teeth as he forced himself to remember.

’I was on the academy grounds...’

The thought barely surfaced before a memory flickered back, hazy at first, then sharp as a blade.

The sky—shattering like fragile glass, cracks spiderwebbing across the heavens.

A deafening rupture, followed by a force stronger than gravity itself, an unseen hand wrenching him upward toward the gaping rift above.

He remembered the surge of mana, raw and unstable, a violent maelstrom tearing through the air.

The world had trembled under its weight.

Then—nothing.

Only darkness.

"I was... pulled inside here?"

The words slipped from his lips, but they felt weightless—hollow, as if they carried no substance, merely an echo swallowed by the vast, suffocating void.

The oppressive silence that followed only deepened the unease curling in his chest.

Where was he?

Was he trapped?

Dead?

Dreaming?

The darkness was more than an absence of light—it was alive.

It coiled around him, constricting, tightening, as though unseen hands wove an inescapable cage.

It did not merely surround him; it consumed him.

And within that abyss, glimmering like distant stars yet far too near, were eyes. Dozens.

No—hundreds.

They blinked in eerie unison, their collective gaze an unrelenting weight pressing upon him.

These were not idle observers.

They were not mere onlookers.

They were studying him.

Then—

A sound.

Not a whisper, nor the dissonant murmurs that had lurked at the edges of his perception before.

This was deeper.

Heavier.

Real.

A low, guttural resonance rumbled from the depths of the abyss, impossibly distant yet vast enough to shake the very void itself.

It was not the growl of a beast, not the call of something that could be named or understood.

No, this was far worse—something primeval, something that could swallow mountains, consume oceans, and erase entire worlds without leaving even a whisper of their existence behind.

Lyrium’s breath hitched.

The void trembled. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

The eyes receded—no, they were retreating.

A terrible realization settled in his gut.

"They’re afraid."

And then—

The darkness moved.

No—something within the darkness moved.

A shape.

A mass.

An overwhelming, formless shadow that slithered and coiled through the abyss, its sheer size incomprehensible.

Lyrium’s instincts screamed at him to run—but there was nowhere to go.

He was trapped in the endless void.

And something—something beyond reason—was waking.

The darkness around him shifted, convulsing as the monstrous presence stirred.

Lyrium tried to move, to summon his mana—but nothing responded.

His body, his very soul, felt as if it was being gripped by invisible hands, held in place by something far beyond mortal comprehension.

The growl deepened.

It resonated through the abyss, a low vibration that rattled his bones.

Then—he saw it.

A sliver of motion in the darkness.

A tendril—vast and formless—began to rise from below. It was not flesh, nor was it mist.

It was something in between, shifting and flickering like a broken mirage, defying the very nature of existence.

Lyrium’s breath caught in his throat.

And then—

A voice.

"You... who have stepped into the threshold..."

It wasn’t sound.

It wasn’t something he heard—it was something he felt, something that scraped against his mind, forcing itself into his consciousness.

Lyrium gritted his teeth, struggling against the pressure invading his thoughts.

"What... are you?"

He forced out, his voice barely above a whisper.

The entity did not answer.

Instead—it opened its eyes.

Not one.

Not ten.

But thousands.

Eyes—endless, infinite—bloomed across its shifting mass, each one a gateway into something unfathomable.

Lyrium felt his mind fracture.

It was like staring into a chasm that had no end.

A depth so vast that it erased all concept of time and space.

Memories that were not his own flickered across his vision—fragments of civilizations lost to oblivion, echoes of voices long forgotten, remnants of gods that once ruled before the world had even begun.

He saw everything.

And then—he saw nothing.

Darkness swallowed him whole.

.

.

.

Lyrium gasped.

Air—air.

He could breathe.

His eyes snapped open, his body drenched in cold sweat.

He was no longer in the abyss.

Instead, he lay sprawled across a stone floor, the jagged texture pressing against his skin.

The world around him was dimly lit, illuminated only by the flickering glow of arcane torches embedded in the walls.

The air was thick with the scent of aged parchment and something ancient, something that smelled of dust and forgotten time.

A chamber.

A ruin.

He pushed himself up, his limbs trembling. His heart was still hammering in his chest, the remnants of that thing lingering in his mind like a stain he could never wash away.

He was alive.

But the question was—where was he?

He turned his gaze upward.

Etched across the towering stone walls were symbols—runes of an unknown language, shifting and rearranging themselves as if alive.

They pulsed with an eerie luminescence, whispering words he could not understand.

Something about this place felt... wrong.

Ancient.

"This isn’t the academy,"

Lyrium muttered, his voice hoarse.

He staggered to his feet, his body still reeling from whatever had happened in the abyss.

Then, a voice echoed from the shadows.

"You are awake."

Lyrium spun around, his instincts flaring.

From the far end of the chamber, a figure emerged.

Draped in robes woven from twilight and adorned with markings that glowed faintly against the dim light, the figure moved with a presence that made the air grow heavy.

Their face was obscured by a hood, but their gaze—sharp and knowing—pierced straight into him.

"Who are you?"

Lyrium demanded, forcing his voice to remain steady.

The figure took a slow step forward, their expression unreadable.

"The one who watches,"

They said, their voice neither male nor female.

"The keeper of the Nameless Threshold."

Lyrium felt his throat tighten.

"The... Nameless Threshold?"

The figure nodded.

"You stand at the boundary of reality and the unknown. Few enter this place and return as they were."

A pause.

Then—

"Tell me, Lyrium Blackwood. What did you see?"

Lyrium stiffened.

They knew his name.

His fingers curled at his sides, his mind racing.

There were too many questions, too many things he didn’t understand.

But one thing was clear.

He wasn’t in the academy anymore.

And whatever force had pulled him here—had dragged him into that abyss—was far from done with him.

And the most unsettling thing?

’I don’t know a single thing about this happening in the novel!’