Chapter 440: The Void

Elián;

The last time I felt like this was when I fell off that bridge. When I fell into the water.

...When I thought I died.

The last time I felt like this was before I woke up in this world. That darkness...that emptiness. That void... Right now, it feels like I’m reliving it.

All of it.

There’s no floor...and no ceiling above me either. There are no walls, no sign of life, nothing my mind can reach for and call a boundary.

I look around the endless, merciless darkness, and fear fills me. The darkness is so complete it doesn’t even have texture—no cold, no warmth, no air moving against skin I’m not entirely sure I still have.

I try to look down at my hands...But there’s nothing to look at.

Panic should be the first thing I feel. I wait for it, brace for it, the way you brace for a blow you know is coming...but it doesn’t come the way I expect. Instead there’s just a slow, spreading horror in the absence of it.

Horror at the fact that I can think clearly, coherently...my own thoughts still sounding like mine, but there’s not a single physical thing anchoring that thought to anywhere at all.

...Elien.

I reach for him the way I’ve always reached—instinctive, automatic, the way you reach for a hand you’ve held so many times you stop noticing you’re doing it.

But nothing answers.

No warmth, no familiar presence pressed against mine... Not even the murmur I might expect if he were here and irritated by my fear.

There’s just this darkness... Just me. Alone in a way I have never once been alone since the night I woke up gasping in a body that wasn’t originally mine.

My mind drifts to baby, and everything I thought I conjured freezes.

I reach for her too, desperate now, as some hopeless part of me refuses to accept that this emptiness extends that far.

But it does. A whimper escapes me when I realise that even she isn’t here.

They took them both from me. Elien and my baby...My baby...

I don’t know how long I keep reaching. Reaching for the presence I’ve grown so used to. Reach for both of them and continuously find nothing.

However, I don’t stop searching for them. Reaching deep inside of me for even the faintest thread that proves that somehow...We’re still connected.

I have to keep searching. And heartbreaking a. Sit is to keep finding nothing; I can’t stop, because the alternative is accepting that—that I have truly lost them both.

And an even worse truth is the fact that I don’t know...if I’ll ever be reunited with them.

Sorrow sets in deeper, and just as I’m about to give up, voices break through the darkness.

They arrive all at once, from everywhere and no particular direction. It sounds the way noise arrives in a dream instead of through actual ears.

"Elián." The voices call, and I go rigid, even though I have no spine to stiffen with.

"Who’s there?" I ask aloud... or think, or something in between — I’m not sure anymore which of those things still applies to whatever I currently am.

I’m a being without a body. So talking, moving, seeing and...being no longer exist in the sense I used to know...

"We are the ones who called you here." The voices answer, and a shudder runs through me. It sounds like many voices speaking as one.

"We are The Black Sect." The voices add, and I pause.

I don’t think I know that name. Should I...am I meant to know it?

"Where am I?" I demand instead. Because in what felt like forever, this is my first chance at communication, and I would rather use it to get answers.

"Where’s my body? Where’s Elien—"

"Elien remains where you left him." The voices cut me off flatly, and I fall silent. "This is not a place bodies occupy."

"Then what am I—" I begin in confusion, and once again they cut me off like they have no patience for my questions or confusion.

"You are exactly what you’ve always been. A soul. Nothing more, nothing less." They answer, and I stare vainly into the darkness, hoping to see a figure or even just a glint of light.

"It’s simply easier to see that clearly, now that we’ve removed everything you used to hide it behind." They conclude, and I stay still. No response...or reaction.

I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. Understanding feels like it will cost me something I’m not ready to pay.

"What do you want?" I ask instead, and my voice comes out with all the anger and confusion I have not been able to process.

"You," they answer simply. "We have wanted you for a very long time, Elián. Longer than you’ve been aware of your own significance."

"I’m not significant. I’m nobody. I’m some guy who died on a bridge in a world that had no place for me. I’m just a soul who was busy squatting in someone else’s body, so why exactly would I think that I’m signi—"

"You are the Redeemer." They cut me off, and instantly—like an explosion of light–Alana’s words that day on the bridge come back to me.

"A sign that the prophecy is about to come to pass. The prophecy about the one who’d come and bring true unity to the clans. Bring peace to our world."

Beyond that, I remember my reaction to her words. How ridiculous it felt to hear her indirectly refer to me as some prophecy coming to life.

Now...Now, the creatures are calling me...the redeemer?

"What??" I blurt out in a mix of panic and fear, and the voices come again.

"You’re the missing piece." They continue, as if saying these things ought to explain everything to me.

"You’re the reason peace has a chance of happening at all, between kingdoms that have spent centuries carving each other apart. You are the variable no one accounted for. The soul that should never have existed in this world, and yet, by existing, changes everything that follows."

"That’s a lot of pressure to put on a squatting soul! It means nothing—" I rage, but they cut me off once again.

"It tells you everything. You simply don’t yet understand what you’re hearing." The voices say; I want to scream at them. I want to demand plain answers instead of riddles wrapped in more riddles, but some part of me—some quiet, cold, rational part I didn’t know I still had access to— understands that screaming will accomplish nothing here. There’s no one to hear it but them, and they seem entirely unbothered by whatever I might throw at them.

So I wait instead. Wait for them to explain themselves. Because when Goddess Thalyra called me her chance at fixing this world...it didn’t sound this scary.

"With you in this world, the future that unfolds is one of unity. More kingdoms than the four currently beneath BeastHeaven, bound together under a single banner. A stronger empire than the one that exists now. More glorious. More whole." They go on, and I’m unable to find the issue.

"That sounds like a good thing," I note, and something in the absolute silence that follows tells me I’ve missed the point entirely.

"It is a good thing." They agree. But they’re not done.

"It is a good thing for BeastHeaven. For the kingdoms beneath it. For everyone who currently lives under crowns and borders that will, in that future, cease to matter at all. It is not a good thing for us." They explain, and I pause because then it hits me.

With power as dark as theirs and the aura they carry...

"You need chaos," I say slowly, as understanding begins to bleed through whatever’s left of me. "You need the fighting to keep going. The old grudges. The warlocks against BeastHeaven. Beastmen tearing other beastmen apart.... All of it. You want—"

"A united empire has no room for what we intend to become." The voices cut me off, and there’s something almost mournful buried in the certainty of it. Like they’re explaining something inevitable. "We do not need strength consolidated under one crown. Such strength does not fear us. We require division to grow into what we are meant to be. And you, Elián, are the single greatest obstacle standing between the world we do not want and the world we require it to become." They conclude, and the last words settle heavier than all they’ve been saying.

"So you’re going to kill me."

"No." The answer comes so fast it startles me.

"Killing you would be simple. Wasteful, but simple. We have something more useful in mind." They explain, and dread pools somewhere in the space where my chest should be.

"What?"

"Without Elien,you are only half of a whole. A soul severed from the body it borrowed, cut loose from every physical thing that gave it shape and weight in this world." They begin, and something in the way they speak the words hurts. Purely mocking without them seeming to try, and that makes it feel much worse.

"Half a soul is a fragile thing, Elián. Easily contained. Easily... harvested." The add, and this time, I feel my entire being pause.

"Har–vested?" I repeat, and the word hits me like something rotten even without a tongue to taste it with.

"Your powers were gifted to you by Goddess Thalyra," they continue, and I latch onto that—some desperate, flailing hope that maybe this is the part where they admit they can’t touch what a goddess gave me.

"Then you can’t take them," I say quickly. "They’re not just mine to give away. She gave them to me. You can’t just—"

"We do not answer to Thalyra." The voices cut me off with a finality that stops my half-formed argument dead in my throat.

"We operate on magic far older, and far darker, than anything her light has ever touched. Her blessings mean nothing here. Her curses mean less. We do not require her permission to take what we need, and we certainly do not fear whatever punishment she imagines she might levy against us for doing this." The voice explains, and the fear I couldn’t quite feel earlier? I start to feel it now. Raw, merciless, and spreading like a rot.

"You’re lying," I say, though I don’t actually believe that...not really, not with the cold certainty pulsing through every word they’ve spoken so far.

"We have no reason to lie to you." They say. "You cannot stop what comes next regardless of what you believe about it." They add, and I begin to search desperately for something...Anything to say to deter them. To keep them away. To...stop them from hurting me...

"Then tell me," I demand, desperate now, grasping for anything, any thread of information that might give me something to fight with.

"Why? If you can just take it anyway, why explain any of this to me at all?" I demand, and for the first time, there’s something like amusement in the silence that follows.

"Because it matters to us that you understand. We are not simple monsters feeding on whatever crosses our path. And there is a particular satisfaction in watching someone understand exactly what is happening to them, and exactly why, before it happens." The reply, and what I feel next in the growing ball of fear inside me, is anger.

"That’s sadistic."

"Perhaps."

"You plan to trap me. Don’t you? To strip everything out of me and leave me—what? Empty...? Powerless? Stuck here forever?"

"A void within the void," They agree, rather too calmly, and my mind goes blank.

"Harmless... Contained. No longer capable of tipping the scales toward the future we cannot allow. And your power—what Thalyra so generously gave you—will not simply vanish once it leaves you. It will elevate what we already are. A fitting use for something otherwise wasted on a soul who was never meant to exist here at all." They conclude, and my fear worsens.

"No," I breathe, and even without a throat, the word comes out ragged, desperate. "No, you can’t—"

"We can. And we will." They cut me off, and all of a sudden, in the terrifying stillness of the dark, I feel it.

A pulling sensation.

It’s faint at first, tugging at something so deep inside whatever remains of me that I don’t know how to shield myself against it, or stop the pull. This isn’t like the ritual that tore me from Elien. That was violent, sudden... a single catastrophic wrench, over almost before I understood it had happened.

...This is slower. Patient.

Threads of something invisible sink into me from every direction at once, searching, finding, tightening, and beginning—gently, almost too gently, these threads begin to pull.

I try to brace against it, the way I’d brace with my feet if I had feet... the way I’d grit my teeth if I still had teeth, but there’s nothing here to plant myself against, or with. There’s no ground to dig into, no muscle to tense... Just the sensation of something important... a huge chunk of ME starting to loosen, thread by thread, like a knot worked patient and careful by hands that have done this a thousand times before and know exactly which pull will do the least damage on the way to doing the most.

"STOP—" I scream into the void as pain and fear begin a twisted dance inside me.

"You will not feel this for very long." The voices say, almost kind, almost tender in the same horrible way Balinar’s cruelty earlier dressed itself up as tenderness.

"Soon there will be nothing left of you that would feel anything at all." They add, and that worsens my panic.

I fight it.

I don’t know how to fight something with no shape, no weapon, and no body to brace with—but I fight anyway, throwing everything I have left, every scrap of will, every stubborn refusal that’s kept me alive since the night I woke up gasping on an auction block in a world that apparently...was never meant to be mine too.

I think of Koda’s laugh. Of golden fur and a ridiculous dance in a garden full of petals.

I think of Zephan’s arms closing around me the second I stepped off that carriage.

I think of my daughter... the small, steady pulse against my palm that I can’t feel anymore, and might never feel again, or even get to see born if this works the way they intend it to.

I hold onto every single one of the memories I’ve made here. All the people and love...I hold on to them as hard as I can...the way you’d hold your breath underwater, refusing to let even one slip loose.

It isn’t enough.

I can feel more things coming loose inside me. Sliding free thread by thread, and drawn toward the same patient darkness that’s been speaking to me this whole time... and no matter how hard I claw for something, anything, to hold onto, there’s nothing here to grip.

No walls. No floor. No Elien... Nothing.

Just the pulling—endless and unhurried—and the voices, calm, certain and utterly unbothered by my screaming, as they keep murmuring something that sounds almost like a lullaby as they begin to pull strength and my magic, thread by careful thread.

I feel myself shrink with every pull. Not in a way that I can explain, but in a way I can feel.

I feel like a fading light. Slowly being reduced the more they take. And worse of all, I don’t know how to stop them.

Is this...really how it all ends??