The Void Beyond Existence
Endless emptiness.
A place where nothing can be seen, sensed, echoed, or felt. In this boundless void, there exists no space, no time, no sky or earth, and no direction that can be described or comprehended. Pure emptiness—without end, without form, without a single pathway or anchor point. It is not a place. It is the absence of place itself.
No air. No elements. Not even the essence of life or death exists here. The very concept of existence is foreign to this realm.
Here, emptiness rules absolutely over a non-space that should not be called a place. It is like an empty universe stripped of all planets and stars—without even the concept of gravity to hold anything together. The void simply is, eternal and infinite and entirely devoid of meaning.
In this endless nothingness, there are no edges, unlike the universes that float within it. The universes themselves drift inside this greater emptiness, taking shapes that can barely be understood by mortal minds, but compared to this infinite void, even the grandest cosmos is smaller than an ant beneath an elephant's foot. Only universes and cosmic beings can exist within this tier of reality—only they carry the faint signature of creation woven within the nothingness. Only they are large enough to not be completely erased.
And now, Aeren reaches this nothingness.
He cannot see. He cannot sense. He cannot feel. It is as if he does not exist at all—and perhaps he does not. His soul, his consciousness, is so infinitesimally small that even a universe looks insignificant beside this void. A speck within a speck within a speck. Yet Aeren arrives here anyway, swallowed entirely by the endless emptiness, dissolved into it like salt into an infinite ocean.
The Dissolution Cycle
Aeren's soul begins to dissolve into the nothingness the moment he crosses beyond the boundary of the mortal universe. Without seeing anything, without sensing anything, his consciousness simply melts away like ice beneath a merciless sun. There is no pain. No resistance. Only the gradual erasure of being.
And then—in an instant, a new soul forms. Fragmentary. Uncertain. But present.
Only to dissolve again.
It repeats.
Again.
And again.
Aeren keeps recreating his own soul, instinctively forcing himself back into existence every time the void threatens to erase him completely. He does not know why his soul keeps vanishing, only that some core part of him refuses to disappear. Some fundamental aspect of his being rebels against the nothingness, clawing back toward consciousness with each dissolution. He must rebuild himself each time simply to remain aware, to remain something rather than nothing.
After what feels like thousands of cycles—or perhaps millions, time being meaningless in this place—a thought finally forms within him. A dangerous thought. A question that should not be asked in a place built on emptiness:
'Why am I even trying to recreate myself? I know I will only end up disappointed. I know I will only suffer again. Why… why am I still thinking about reviving at all?'
The emptiness presses in from all directions, swallowing all things, consuming all resistance. It whispers without sound. It calls without voice. It simply is, and everything within it is drawn toward dissolution.
'What do I even have left? Nothing. I brought nothing with me into this void. Inside, I am empty. Outside, there is no one left for me to love, to hate, to obsess over… nothing that makes my existence meaningful. Nothing that would justify another moment of consciousness.'
Another dissolution. The soul shatters like glass.
Another rebirth. The fragments reshape themselves.
'Why don't I simply let myself fade completely into this emptiness? Does the fact that I continue to resist mean I am still lingering on something? Does it mean some part of me still clings to existence?'
His soul flickers like a candle flame in an endless wind.
'If so… then what am I lingering for? And why? What thread of desire still binds me to being rather than non-being?'
He searches through every concept he has ever pursued, every philosophy he has tested against reality, every hunger that once defined him:
'Freedom? No.' The word dissolves into the void.
'Reality? No.' It becomes part of the nothingness.
'Truth? No.' It finds no ground to stand upon.
'Meaning? No.' It is swallowed without echo.
'Clarity? No.' It dissipates like smoke.
'Power? No.' It crumbles to dust and dust to nothing.
'Eternal life? No. Strength? No. Love? No. Hatred? No. Purpose? No. Achievement? No. Control? No. Understanding? No.'
Each answer comes instantly, ruthlessly, without hesitation or mercy. Every desire he has ever held, every illusion he has ever chased, every addiction he has ever nurtured—all of it dissolves when held up to the light of this place. All of it proves false. All of it proves meaningless.
No. No. No.
There is nothing he can latch onto. Nothing he longs for anymore. Nothing he clings to with the desperation of living things. Yet he continues recreating his soul. Continues rebuilding himself. Continues refusing the oblivion that surrounds him.
Why?
He knows the truth—A soul cannot keep reviving unless it lingers on something. No being chooses existence without a thread to hold, without an anchor, without a reason. But Aeren has lost all worldly desires. He has lost emotion. He has lost meaning. He has lost the very illusions that kept mortals bound to life and desperately clinging to existence. He has stripped himself down to nothing, layer by layer, desire by desire.
So why? Why does his soul form itself again and again? What keeps pulling him back from the abyss?
Another dissolution. The soul cracks and breaks.
Another rebirth. The fragments coalesce.
Another blank cycle in the endless void, waiting to be broken again.
The Recognition
'If I have nothing to cling to… then what am I trying to find? Am I searching for something to linger on? Am I desperately grasping for a reason to exist? Or am I simply testing whether I can still cling to anything at all? Am I performing a ritual that no longer has meaning?'
And in that moment of questioning, when his soul is most shattered and his consciousness most fragmented, the answer strikes him like lightning through darkness.
He realizes he has not yet fully accepted the nothingness within him.
Or perhaps—and this thought chills him in a way nothing else has—he desires something even deeper than existence itself.
Not freedom. Not truth. Not meaning. Not existence. Not even the comfortable numbness of non-being.
But the opposite of all things.
He wants to become the nothingness itself.
Aeren's soul trembles—not with fear, for he has long ago lost the capacity to fear, not with emotion, for he has burned away all feeling—but with something deeper. With recognition. Finally, in this place beyond all worlds, he knows what he has been trying to become.
Nothingness.
Not the absence of something. Not the void left behind when things are removed. But nothingness as an active force. Nothingness as a state of being. Nothingness as the ultimate goal and the ultimate truth.
Aeren finally realizes what he has been lingering for—but realization alone does not grant him form. He still cannot fully create a soul or body capable of standing within this nothingness without being consumed by it. Every attempt dissolves. Every structure he forms collapses back into the void, returning to what it came from. He tries again. Fails again. Tries once more, fails once more, in an endless cycle of creation and destruction.
He lingers—yet he cannot be.
The Transformation
With each dissolution, he evolves. With each recreated soul, his awareness expands a little farther into the emptiness around him, stretching, reaching, grasping—only to shatter again, because there is nothing here to perceive, nothing to anchor awareness to, nothing to give form to consciousness.
So he dissolves once more.
Every fragment of awareness he possesses is tested and broken, refined and purified:
Awareness of creation—shattered.
Awareness of nothingness—dissolved.
Awareness of truth—erased.
Awareness of pure silence—scattered.
Awareness of fear—burned away.
Awareness of wisdom—crumbled.
Awareness of freedom—dissolved.
Awareness of life—shattered.
Awareness of death—broken.
Awareness of lingering—of meaning—of purpose—all erased.
Awareness of self—fragmented beyond recognition.
Awareness of emptiness—refined into something purer.
Each time his soul forms anew, that awareness is shattered against the void. Each time it dissolves, something purifies within him, something essential burns away. Slowly, through endless cycles of creation and destruction, something changes within him. The pattern shifts. The rhythm transforms.
He stops recreating awareness-of-emptiness, stops trying to comprehend the void as something separate from himself.
And instead begins creating pure emptiness itself.
His soul starts to accept the void, not as an idea to be understood, not as a boundary to be transcended, but as its very core. As itself. With every creation and every shattering, his soul grows less like a traditional soul—less like a being, less like consciousness, less like identity—and more like the emptiness surrounding it. His consciousness expands, not through knowing, not through accumulation, but through erasing. Through accepting. Through becoming.
Piece by piece, fragment by fragment, Aeren's soul becomes something entirely new: A soul that contains nothing. A consciousness built entirely from absence. A being shaped not by awareness of things, but by pure emptiness given subtle form.
He takes all of the versions of himself that have emerged and dissolved, all the iterations that have failed, all the attempts that have shattered. He gathers them together in his emptiness and his soul begins to transform into something impossibly simple yet infinitely profound:
A pure, empty soul.
The Acceptance
Aeren has done everything that could strip him hollow. He creates nothing within himself—again and again—until even the act of erasing becomes part of him, woven into his being like threads through cloth. And as he continues this endless process, the thing he lingers for becomes purer, more refined, reduced down to a single meaning that transcends all others:
Nothingness itself.
A meaning that lingers within nothingness. A meaning that is emptiness. A purpose that is the absence of purpose.
As he begins creating emptiness inside his soul—as he stops resisting and starts embracing—the emptiness begins to respond. The void opens to him. The nothingness acknowledges him.
He starts to sense the void. Not through any faculty or sense organ, but through a deeper perception that has no name. He senses the endlessness of his own emptiness inside this greater emptiness. He perceives the infinity of it, the eternality of it, the absolute completeness of its incompleteness. And that emptiness keeps evolving within him—growing, deepening, refining itself with each moment of acceptance.
As his soul shifts into a pure empty soul, freed from the burden of identity and meaning, he becomes aware of the space around him—the infinite nothing stretching in every direction, the absolute absence of all things, the perfect void that is the foundation of all existence.
That awareness gives birth to something new within him, something that should not exist in a place like this:
Eyes of emptiness.
Not physical eyes made of flesh and blood. Not spiritual eyes made of mana or essence. Just… perception shaped by void itself. Vision built from absence. Sight constructed from nothingness.
Aeren has no shape anymore. No body to anchor him to physicality. No silhouette. No structure left to call his own. No identity carved into his being. But now he can "see" the emptiness. Now he can perceive it. Now it acknowledges his perception.
But there is nothing to see, because there is no sight, no form, no object to observe, no light or darkness to create shadow and contrast—only the endless, absolute absence. The perfect emptiness. The complete void.
He closes these new eyes, because even vision becomes meaningless in a place where there is nothing to be seen.
The Choice
Aeren stops creating his emptiness. Understanding strikes him like a hammer:
If he continues expanding himself inside this void, if he allows his consciousness to grow without limit, he will be trapped forever—caught in an infinite cycle of creating emptiness inside emptiness, an endless recursion with no escape, no boundary, no conclusion. An eternity of dissolution and reformation, forever spiraling deeper into nothing.
If he lets his soul expand into this nothingness without restraint, without choice, without intentional limitation—he will never escape. He will become part of the void itself, indistinguishable from the nothingness, lost forever in the absolute.
So Aeren makes a choice. A final choice. A choice that requires will despite having no will left:
He stops.
He dissolves into the nothingness—but this time, his soul does not vanish. Nothing breaks. Nothing collapses. Nothing erases him. Because his emptiness-soul no longer "exists" as a separate thing fighting against the void. It has become part of the nothingness itself. It has surrendered completely.
His soul continues dissolving, piece by piece, layer by layer, but now the dissolution no longer harms him. It is simply the nature of the void moving through him, the nothingness flowing around him and through him like wind through an open window. Aeren still hasn't opened his eyes. He is focused inward—gathering his emptiness, collecting the scattered pieces of his consciousness, trying to draw the void back into a shape he can understand.
He tries to remember form. Structure. Identity. All things he has destroyed within himself.
He wants a body again. A human form.
Not out of attachment—those threads burned away countless cycles ago—but because human is the only shape he has ever lived in across countless existences and reincarnations. Even if his meaning has been lost, his existence stripped away, even if he has become nothing, the silhouette of a human is the only instinctive structure that remains. It is the only template written into the deepest layers of his being. And now, with nothingness fully accepted, he wants his emptiness to take that familiar outline. He wants to be human-shaped, even if there is nothing human left inside.
So Aeren begins shaping himself.
He draws the emptiness inward, compressing it, refining it, guiding it with intention born from void itself. There is nothing to sculpt with—no matter, no energy, no light, no substance—but he shapes nothing into the idea of form. He sculpts absence into silhouette. He molds emptiness into shape.
Slowly, steadily, the dissolving void around him bends to his will, responding to something deeper than force. Aeren molds his emptiness into the silhouette of a human—a form to anchor him, to keep him from vanishing completely shapeless into the infinite void.
He creates a form not made of flesh, not of spirit, not of power or energy or mana—but of pure nothingness shaped by his Empty will. A body constructed from void itself. A human shape made of the absence of all things.
Aeren pauses for a moment as he opens his eyes once more.
The Revelation
He has returned to a human shape—but that shape is formed entirely of emptiness, still fused seamlessly with the Nothingness around him. There are no clear boundaries between his form and the void. He is both separate and merged, both present and absent.
He observes the void around him with these new eyes. And in that endless silence, in that perfect absence, he finally perceives it:
The true essences of existence itself—Silence, Reality, Freedom, Illusion, Truth, Time, Cause, Effect, Beginning, End.
He perceives them all with crystalline clarity.
Yet each essence dissolves instantly into the void the moment he perceives it, returning to nothing, becoming nothing, as if they never existed at all. As if they were always illusions. As if their existence was always contingent, always temporary, always dependent on something beyond themselves.
Aeren watches this endless cycle of manifestation and dissolution, but there is still nothing to see in the traditional sense—no form, no color, no movement, no light—only pure emptiness. Even so, he perceives everything with absolute clarity. His understanding is complete and perfect.
And that is when he realizes the deepest truth:
Nothingness is the root of every true essence.
The source beneath existence. The foundation beneath all laws and structures. The origin from which every truth emerges—and the inevitable destination where all truths must ultimately collapse and return.
He had suspected this before, in his earlier lives, in his previous understandings. But never had he fully believed it. Now, standing in this void, formed of emptiness, he is certain.
Nothingness holds all true essences within itself, yet remains eternally empty.
It is the paradox at the heart of all being. The contradiction that cannot be resolved. The answer that creates only deeper questions. And it is beautiful in its terrible completeness.
Aeren has finally reached the place beyond all worlds. He has finally become what he always was.
And the journey continues in the void.