There was no pain anymore.
No sound of screeching tires. No metallic impact. No crushed bone or screaming lungs.
Just…
Silence.
Not the peaceful kind — the kind that felt wrong. The kind that pressed down on your very soul, suffocating without air, drowning without water.
Then came the feeling.
Weightless. Disconnected. Like being stretched between two realities and fitting into neither.
Ethan Spencer's soul had left his body.
But it hadn't followed the natural cycle of reincarnation — the tunnel of light, the wheel of samsara, the divine gate… none of that came.
Instead, he had fallen.
No direction. No gravity. Just free-fall through something cold, hollow, and endless.
And then — he arrived.
His soul drifted into a place that felt like existence was trying to forget it.
A dark, endless expanse. Like a void between heartbeats. A place without time, where nothing aged and everything simply… existed.
And in that blackness, Ethan — or at least the core essence that had once been Ethan Spencer — floated.
He didn't have a body. Not a face. Just a presence. But he could still see. Still feel. Still think.
His awareness expanded slowly, adjusting to the rules of this place.
Then came the cracks.
He noticed them not with eyes, but with something deeper — a perception tied to his very soul.
Massive rifts hung in the darkness like wounds in reality. Light bled through some of them. Color, motion, even sound echoed through others.
And through those cracks… he saw worlds.
Ethan's soul froze — or it would have, if motion existed here.
"Is that…?"A fragment of a thought drifted through his essence.
Through one crack, he saw titans warring over cities — massive humanoid giants with featureless faces, crashing into buildings.
Another rift pulsed with a golden light. He glimpsed a boy with spiky blond hair, wearing a red-orange jumpsuit, standing on a battlefield surrounded by spiraling energy.
Further to the left, a different rift. A dark one — full of shadowy blades and flickering sakura petals.He saw a white-haired figure flash past, drawing a sword that seemed to scream with power.
Ethan's soul trembled.
"That's... Bleach... Naruto… Attack on Titan…?"
More cracks surrounded him, a thousand universes laid bare before him like shattered glass.Some were vibrant. Others broken. Many… familiar.
A wide rift above him showed a vibrant forest of glowing mushrooms and floating rings — and there, he saw a man with dual pupils wielding blue and red spiritual energy."That's… a donghua? Soul Land?"
Another — a twisted realm of floating palaces, blood-red skies, and a smirking man in black holding a fire lotus.
"Yun Che?"
He turned — or thought he did — and saw something that made his soul shiver.
A dark, endless staircase leading downward into a realm that looked like a giant library, but each book screamed when opened.
He couldn't recognize that one. But somehow, it still felt like it belonged to a fiction he'd read long ago.
Ethan's thoughts flickered.
"Am I dead? Or is this one of those dimensional garbage dumps from fanfics?"
He was half-joking — but the sheer number of known universes here made it feel scripted. Artificial. Like a crossover fanfiction playground.
And yet… it felt too real.
The void responded to none of his questions. It just… watched.
Somewhere, something enormous moved. Ethan didn't see it — he felt it. A ripple. As if something ancient had briefly stirred… and then ignored him.
He realized quickly: this place wasn't made for souls like his.
But somehow… he had ended up here anyway.
He didn't know if he was meant to fall into one of the cracks and be thrown into a universe…
Or if he'd stay here and fade.