The void's countless eyes narrowed, as if amused by my fear.
"I can feel your resistance," it whispered. "Your trembling. Your hesitation. But you need not fear, fragment. What I will do to you will not harm you."
"That's easy for you to say," I snapped, though my voice quivered. "You're an eldritch… thing. I'm— I'm just—"
"A piece of me," it said gently. "A shard born soft, but still mine."
The eyes drifted closer, surrounding me like a constellation closing its jaws.
"Let yourself go," it murmured. "Allow me in."
"No."
It came out harsher than I intended. "No, you can't expect me to just, to just open myself to you. I don't even understand what you are."
"If you understood," it said with an echoing hum, "you would break."
A cold pulse shot across the void, brushing my mind. I recoiled instinctively.
"Stop—" I gasped.
"Relax," it crooned, its voice a vibration through my bones. "I am not here to consume you. I am here to complete you."
A tendril of darkness touched the edge of my consciousness like a fingertip tracing water.
I jerked back. "I said stop!"
The void didn't stop, a wave of pressure gentlly and patiently pressed into my mind. My thoughts scattered like leaves in a storm. I tried to focus, tried to dig my nails into the walls of my own awareness, but the darkness poured through every crack.
"Do not fight," it whispered. "Your resistance is futile, I am inevitable."
"No—" My voice broke. I struggled to pull away, but it felt like fighting gravity itself.
Its presence surged and the void around me spun, a whirlpool of darkness and starlight and something inside me tore loose as if wrapped in a great cosmic hand.
I screamed.
Then I felt myself sink, not through the space, but inside myself as if my consciousness collapsed inward, falling deeper and deeper as if sinking in quicksand until there was nothing left.
Nothing, no light, no sound, no sound from my thought. Only complete and utter silence. A silence so absolute it should've scared me, yet I couldn't feel any fear.
Then my eyes opened and I was standing in the cosmos again, but this time… something was floating in front of me.
A planet.
Not round and blue, not vibrant and alive but barren, cracked, and floating in the void like a bloated corpse drifting on still water.
"…Void?" My voice cracked but silence answered me.
"Hey Void!?" I called again, louder but still nothing.
I tried a third time, but the emptiness swallowed my words, my heart pounded.
Fine. If the bastard isn't answering, I'll go find out where I am myself.
I willed my body forward and It obeyed effortlessly. My form glided through space as if the cosmos were water and my will the current. I descended toward the barren world, the yellow sky swirling like a dying sun behind thick smog.
My sandals touched the soil with a dry crunch the ground was warm, and the air if it could be called that, felt charged, humming with some kind of power.
And the moment I inhaled, my mind staggered, as if the very atmosphere carried an oppression so immense that just breathing it felt like a mountain was pressing hard on your brain.
"What is this place…" I whispered.
An explosion answered me. A deafening explosion roared ahead, ripping the ground open. The shockwave slammed into me like a battering ram, throwing me backward across the cracked surface.
I rolled, gasping, then lifted my head, and saw two figures, both blindingly radiant.
They streaked across the sky like living comets, every movement leaving trails of energy that made the world writhe beneath them.
They clashed and the world split. Earth rose in jagged pillars, liquefying into molten rivers. Cyclones of razor wind carved canyons in seconds. Jets of water formed oceans far in the distance that were lifted into spirals of water and ice. Lightning tore the sky into ribbons. Metal ripped itself from the ground and formed spears that shattered against blazing plasma.
They fought with every element the universe offered:
Fire that burned bright blue-white.
Water that flowed softly and cut like blades.
Winds sharp enough to flay mountains, it's streaks even cut away at my toga and some streaks of blood spilled from my cheeks where they passed.
Thunder that cracked mountains leaving molten rock in its wake.
Earth that jutted from crevaves and spewed metal that vibrated in resonant melodies
Light that blinded and singed the edges of darkness
Darkness that swallowed and devoured light greedily.
Each clash made the world tremble, each shockwave shredded the terrain around me.
I barely survived, ducking behind jutting slabs of stone, diving away as molten streaks and shards of frozen lightning tore past me.
Then—
The golden figure blurred forward in a sudden burst of speed, its body shining like a mirror made of sunlight. It slammed its fist into the red figure's chest. The red figure plummeted like a meteor, hitting the ground so hard the earth split for miles.
The golden being descended, raising a spear made of pure lightning. The energy crackled violently, bright enough to burn my eyes.
But before the spear fell, 6 more figures appeared.
Each one a different color, Blue, white, purple, yellow, violet, bronze
all blazing with the same elemental power that saturated the air.
They surrounded the golden figure in a brilliant formation.
An ice spear shot toward the golden figure and it dodged, soaring upward. Then the seven figures unleashed everything they had.
Flames surged into tornadoes, winds howled like wolves. A mountain literally got ripped free from the ground and hurled upward.
Lightning formed webs across the sky waterl blades surged earth with metal jutting around it rained like meteors.
Plasma burst into spirals that distorted the air.
The golden being struggled, deflecting, retaliating, but every second pushed him further and further back.
Then all their attacks collided. A shockwave exploded across the world A pulse of strange energy, not elemental, not even divine emitted and the ground drank it greedily.
The planet itself shuddered, absorbing it like a starving beast. The golden figure staggered. Then seeing himself surrounded, he raised both hands. Desperation burned through his body, and then he detonated.
A blinding explosion ripped the sky apart, shredding clouds, cracking the very fabric of the heavens. The sky split open, revealing a yawning emptiness beyond, the outer void.
Every single figure, golden, red, all six others were obliterated instantly. Turned into drifting wisps of energy, their forms dissolving into glittering particles that floated away like dying fireflies.
Silence followed.
Absolute devastation.
I pushed myself upright on shaking knees, staring at the gaping fissure above. Slowly, impossibly, the sky began knitting itself shut, patching the wound in reality.
Clouds formed and the yellow sky darkened then rain!
Heavy, cold, relentless relentless rain. It poured for seven days straight.
I sat in it, still. I could barely move nor think straight because a flurry ooices were filling my mind. Whispering and pouring knowledge into me like rivers into an ocean.
Knowledge of the elements their laws, their birth, their death. Knowledge of how they intertwined. How to bend them and how to even dominate them. I exhaled shakily as lightning rolled through the clouds.
"What… is happening to me?" I whispered.
The rain answered by falling harder, and my lessons continued.