Nayi stood up and stepped towards the ever-present gloomy light. She passed through it effortlessly and then stopped. Turning around, she beckoned towards Asura and Xia, calling for them to step over and into the notorious Forbidden Domain - their new home.

Asura gulped and felt a faint feeling of fear manifest in the depths of his heart. "What's this? I'm afraid? Why?". He didn't understand why he was feeling like that, which ignited a faint spark of fear, turning it into a gradually-increasing fire.

He took another step forward, now already very close to the boundary. His senses started getting sharp. He could hear the sound of his heartbeat, the sound of blood flowing in his veins, the pressure exuding from the blood-red light. He even felt as if he could smell the despair and crushed hope in the gloominess contained in the weak red glow.

"Haa... Haaa...."

As he took another step forward, Asura started panting with each breath becoming even heavier than previous. The round pupils in his eyes slowly began branching out into four opposite directions, gradually turning into a shape of a star.

Nayi noticed this taking place and her face gradually filled with worry and doubt. "Could it be that even with my blood, they can't enter here? No, it shouldn't be like that. There's definitely something strange!"

She took a good look at Asura's eyes and noticed a change occurring with his pupils. This is the first time she had seen Asura's pupils change like this and that served to further reinforce her assumption. "Something is definitely wrong! Let's wait and see, if worse comes to worst, I will rescue him."

With that idea in mind, Nayi began secretly channeling the resting energy in her bloodline. Her clothes started slowly fluttering as if they were being filled with hot air, causing them to separate from her skin and stretch out.

Asura had been oblivious to all this ever since his pupils started changing. By the time Nayi prepared for the worst, he was already close enough to the boundary that the next step he took would make him enter the Forbidden Domain. At this point, star-shaped pupils had fully formed and didn't continue changing anymore.

The moment his leg rose once again, Nayi slightly flinched forward, preparing to rush out at any time. Simultaneously, Xia took Asura's slightly trembling hand and took that decisive step together with him.

This strange boy was there for her when she felt scared and weak and even though it wasn't that long since they met, she had this strange feeling of relief when around him.

Seeing him in such a state, Xia felt a need to hold his hand. The scene she recalled in that moment was the one where Asura ruffled her hair and gave her a kiss on her forehead. His words from that time silently spread in her mind.

>>>

"You sometimes feel the need to do this when you care about someone."

"Care?"

"Huh, you don't know what that means?"

*nod*

"Um, that means you love someone and want to be with them, spend time with them, help them up when they fall and just be together."

Xia's eyes had at some point of her reminiscing become vertical slits, yet she only paid attention to two words she recalled from that scene.

'Love' and 'Care'.

As her hand neared infinitely close to Asura's, she spoke the chained words in her heart, the words that had broken free in this very moment. "Asura, Love."

As those words appeared, both of them stepped over the blood-red boundary, making Nayi flinch once more. She had subconsciously transferred her weight forward, ready to leap at any moment.

She waited...

She observed.

Yet, as their feet finally touched the ground in the Forbidden Domain's territory, something completely different from what she expected took place.

What happened was, in fact, that nothing happened. The two children just froze and their eyes lost focus, as if they were awake but their souls weren't present. Like two beautiful dolls, Asura and Xia stood still as chilly breeze waved their long hairs.

While in Nayi's eyes nothing happened, Asura and Xia wouldn't agree with that, which was only natural considering that the moment they stepped inside the Forbidden Domain, their Souls got absorbed in a sort of an illusory world.

The two of them were currently in a world displaying a scene which portrayed the Forbidden Domain from the past.

>>>

The two children couldn't move. They held their hands and observed. In this illusory world, they were merely observers.

The moment they appeared here, Asura's Soul showed a change. Two chains appeared simultaneously around the form of his Soul. At the same time, a pair of voices resounded in Asura's mind.

"Despair."

"Hope."

The two voices were completely opposite to the other. The voice that echoed 'Hope' was warm and pleasant, while the other one was ice-cold and emotionless.

With those two words, the chains around Asura's Soul started moving and invaded his Soul, coiling around his heart. Only when they firmly tightened around Asura's heart, stopping its beating, did the chains stop.

While all this took place, Asura was unable to move a single bit. He could only feel the changes taking place - he couldn't think, analyze nor react. In this state, it wouldn't be wrong even if someone referred to him as a living dead. It would be more than fitting to explain this situation.

The scenery finally started to change. The Forbidden Domain in this scene was a desolate land, full of nothing but endless nothingness. Not a single stalk of grass could be found disrupting this unpleasant desolation. The sky didn't differ from the usual—it was as lively as ever, only this time there was a heavy aura radiating from it as if the world-shaking change was about to happen.

A shooting star flew by, lighting everything up as it passed and left a tail of flame behind. Yet, it didn't seem beautiful as one would normally expect of such a scene—the falling star was heading in the direction of the Forbidden Domain.

With a loud crash, the star fell and made a hundred-meter-wide crater. Even the earth around the impact point was scorched, as if the flames of the star could burn everything in the world. As the aftermath died down, a strong feeling of despair started spreading in the air, covering the area of several kilometers from the impact point.

After a brief period of stillness, the sky lit up again, but this time there were two falling stars—and they fell far off into the distance. Despite not falling in the same place, the heaviness in the sky intensified, as if reacting to the fall of these stars.

Another period of silence resumed, signifying a calm before the storm. Then, the storm came!

The calm night sky lit up with light as thousands of stars came crashing down, falling everywhere. The scene might seem like a beautiful one if observed from the distance, but being in the center of all this happening, Asura and Xia felt as if they would be blasted to nothingness by the falling stars—yet, they couldn't move.

At this point in time, Asura recalled the word from a moment ago. "Hope."

Yes, the only thing he could do in this despairing situation is hope. Hope that everything will turn out well. Hope that they would survive this anguish, this hell. He hadn't noticed, but the chains tightly coiled around his heart started loosening - one link at a time.

The more intense the feeling of despair become with each fallen star, the corresponding feeling of hope increased as well. This was a scene of an important battle. A battle of Hope and Despair. The one which prevailed would determine the outcome of the two poor witnesses here.

Asura didn't want to close his eyes, even though his innermost being screamed that he should. All of his instincts told him he should not continue looking at these events or he would succumb to despair. Yet, he didn't want to trust his instincts this time. Why? Because he was curious!

He wanted to see what happened to this area to be called the Forbidden Domain. Why did it become forbidden? Why does the blood-red light radiate so much sadness and despair? Why does his heart hurt every time he looks at that light, as if looking at the grave of his fellow friends?

Why are so many stars falling from the sky, turning the desolate land into the land brimming with despair?

Why is even sky lamenting the current events, being gloomy and heavy?

What exactly does this represent?

"Hope.", "Despair" - what do these words hide?

He had to see!

He couldn't shy away from reality just because it would make him more comfortable. This is the reality, the world he wanted to come to. Now that he is here, he didn't want to repeat the same mistakes as in the previous life.

"I ran enough. Now it is time to stop and look back. To see where all this running away from everything had brought me."

His thoughts echoed in this world. As if responding to his thoughts, the flames from the nine stars that had fallen in the Forbidden Domain slowly rose from the craters. Each of the flames was of a different color, but each of them had a sort of otherworldly aura - a familiar aura.

Each of the flames started taking shape of a silhouette, forming nine similar silhouettes yet each of them different.

"These are..."

The silhouettes slowly floated towards Asura and Xia, making the clashing feelings of Despair and Hope intensify, even causing the two chains binding Asura to loosen more and more. As the feelings reached their peak, the nine flames were suspended before the two children.

With a dull sound, the two chains coiled around Asura's heart finally lost their grip and rapidly shot out of his Soul. Then, the two chains turned into two souls, fused together and slowly descended on Asura's head.

The nine flames also fused together into a nine-colored Soul and descended on Xia, causing the aura of the world to change, rapidly returning to how it was before the stars fell. At the same time, the scenery before the two violently twisted and their souls finally returned to their bodies.