Erasmus floated.
No floor. No ceiling. No horizon. Just space—pure, black, and endless. An infinity of nothing, so absolute it devoured even the concept of direction. There was no up. No down. Only the eerie stillness of a world without walls, borders, or breath.
This was no stomach in the traditional sense. The Circular Vacuum did not digest—it erased. Not flesh, but essence. Not cells, but context. Its core was not a place of transformation, but of negation. A crucible of anti-being. There was no echo here, no air to carry it. No light to chase the shadows. No death to offer relief. Just absence.
Erasmus had suspected as much before he'd even been swallowed. A being born to consume would never maintain a place for anything to persist. A true vacuum doesn't hold—it hungers. It is a wound in the fabric of reality, and Erasmus now drifted within its open mouth.
And even within this nullity, he could feel it—an invisible pressure that didn't push, didn't pull, but simply was. Not the pressure of mass, but of expectation. Like the universe itself had turned its gaze away and in doing so, made him weightless. Voiceless. Real in the way a forgotten thought was real.
Here, the very meaning of "here" unraveled. There were no stars. No particles. Not even darkness as he once knew it. Erasmus floated in something purer—colorless null, where even the shadows forgot how to cast themselves. Where air had never been invented. Where the silence was so deep it wasn't quiet—it was hungry.
Pressure without presence.
Silence without stillness.
A place where time flinched.
He should've panicked. Should've begged the void for mercy. But instead, a strange comfort slid over him like a shroud. For once in what felt like eternity, there were no eyes watching him. No gods or monsters peering through layers of perception, weighing his soul. No Trial. No distractions.
Just Erasmus.
And the void.
At least here, no one sees me, he mused.
And it felt like truth.
The invisible pressure against his ribs was not oxygen deprivation—it was conceptual suffocation. Yet still, he floated. Unblinking. Listening. Not to sound, but to lack. And within that lack, a realization bloomed like a black flower.
This is what death wishes it could be, he thought. Not a release. Not an end. But the complete abandonment of everything that ever made something matter.
The wounds he carried into the beast—the slashes, the bleeding scrapes—had vanished. Not healed, not repaired. Simply unmade. In this place, damage could not exist, because continuity itself was unwelcome. Even pain had been denied permission to linger.
It was his Creed, perhaps. Or maybe the creature simply rejected impurities. It didn't matter. Because Erasmus felt it creeping now—the offer.
Like lovers pressing lips to his ears, the whispers crawled over him.
Let go. Become unmade.
Fall into the coma of eternity.
Leave change behind. Stay.
He closed his eyes. Didn't respond. Just let the suggestion settle into his veins like a low fever. There was something seductive about this surrender. Peace with teeth. Oblivion with perfume.
When he opened his eyes again, the darkness was tighter.
Closer.
Clutching.
The pressure had escalated. It wasn't just external now—it was infiltrating. He knew he didn't have much longer before even thought would unravel.
But still, he lingered.
Because this wasn't indecision.
It was appreciation.
He had already chosen.
He had simply wanted to feel the moment fully before turning it into something else. To understand the texture of absolute nothing, so that when he reshaped it, he would know the contrast. This place—this perfect erasure—was a rarity. A weapon. And Erasmus knew how to use weapons.
A spiral stirred in the milk-white expanse of his eyes. At first, slow. Barely perceptible.
And then—faster. Sharper. The movement of intention. Of Creed.
"Why," he murmured to the hollow, "should I bow to nothing?"
The spiral twisted faster, and with it, the emptiness began to tremble.
"Nothingness discourages change. But without change—there is no progress. Without progress, there is no meaning. Without meaning, you are dead. This is not peace. This is entropy wearing grace as a mask."
The space shuddered.
And then—it shrunk.
Not collapsed. Not destroyed. Ordered. Erasmus moved not with hands, but with will—compressing the infinite, folding the unfathomable. The endless expanse, the stomach, the vacuum—he crushed it. The creature, vast as a realm, coiled into itself like a dying god curling into fetal position.
Dimensions curled like ribbons. Scale betrayed itself. And what had been larger than a world—
—became held.
Before Erasmus hovered a perfect orb. Smooth. Unblemished. A dark orange so deep it looked almost red. No cracks. No aura. Just a sphere that pulsed gently with restrained silence.
A Vacuum.
Captured.
Finalized.
With steady fingers, Erasmus reached forward. The orb settled into his palm like it had always been waiting for him.
He smiled faintly.
And fainted.
—
Meanwhile…
The tavern stood still.
The pond had calmed, the echoes of screams now lost to silence. The air hung thick with aftermath and exhaustion. The bone-white floor bore no reflection. Only scars. Bodies lay strewn—not lifeless, but finally, mercifully—still.
Then, something stirred.
Not the water.
Not a ripple.
A puncture.
A clean circle tore itself into midair—colorless, silent, perfect. A portal, but wrong. Not glowing. Not humming. Just there, like it had always existed and had simply forgotten to be visible.
From it stepped a figure.
Broad-shouldered. Cloaked in flowing cloth that shimmered like oil caught between stars. A visor concealed their face—silver stitched with lines of radiant silk that pulsed softly with knowledge too ancient to speak aloud.
They scanned the scene, boots tapping lightly on bone tile.
Then they spotted him.
Brin.
Slouched against the pillar. Snoring. Drool barely hanging off the edge of his lip. Sword still sheathed. On watch duty.
The figure let out a low chuckle.
"He's sleeping on watch? Brin truly never learns. Guess I'll have to drill that out of him again next time."
Their voice was airy. Friendly. Too casual for the setting.
Another stepped through the portal. Similar attire. Same alien silhouette, like they belonged to a culture that predates stars.
The second figure frowned. "Can you hurry up? The decision's been made. This group has passed."
The first person didn't move.
They were staring.
Into the pond.
"There," they said softly, pointing. "White hair. Cloak like a blank canvas. No older than sixteen."
The second followed their gaze.
Saw him.
Erasmus.
Unconscious. Floating like a sunken soul.
"What are you thinking?" the second asked. "He wasn't part of the assessment."
The first smiled.
"Say... they wouldn't mind if we brought one more interesting person along, right?"
The portal hummed behind them.
The water began to ripple again.
And somewhere in that abyss, the ember-colored sphere—The Circular Vacuum—pulsed once.
Like a heart that refused to be dead.