She stood like a monolith carved from midnight, composed, yet utterly unreachable. Her robe flowed around her like shadows made liquid, stitched from starlight. It wrapped her not just in darkness, but in command.
Her hair fell like obsidian silk, cascading over her shoulders in perfectly disobedient strands. It clung to no order, curling with an elegant rhythm of gravity.
Her skin was pale, near-luminescent and glowed faintly against the abyss behind her, a canvas of shifting galaxies and silent stars.
The cut of her dress was bold, low across the collarbone and woven in midnight lace, neither modest nor provocative—simply inevitable.
She tilted her head back ever so slightly, exposing the curve of her neck like marble that remembered warmth. Her eyes were closed, not in peace, but in apathy.
Behind her, the void breathed in colors unspoken—pink streaks, indigo wisps, splinters of forgotten dimensions curling around her like dying comets that still followed her orbit.
She thought she remembered something so distant, it nagged her for a while until she looked at Rowel, who had fallen to the ground. Blood trailing from his fingertips from the intensity of the grip to the rocky edge.
Her hand didn't part his, for an extended moment. She kept her hands wrapped around his so gently.
"What happened to your…" Rowel was stunned. His eyes forgot to squint from the pain of his fingers. He only looked at her, but she didn't say much. Her eyes didn't even blink.
She was human.
Or so she looked like one. She didn't know why she had turned her shape into a human form, but somehow this was the only way for her to grasp his hand before the fall, yet again she wondered why she even did it.
Their hands parted, and before her hand left his, a fleeting shadow swirled around both of his hands, cascading his fingers. Just like that, his injuries were gone.
❝Congratulations… you solved the Rubik cube, blindfolded, ❞
His mind was flooded with too many extraordinaries, and his face? Still equipped with a look of shock. He didn't know how he should react. The fact that she saved him? Or the fact that she is now looking too real to be true.
"What Rubik cu- oh…" He remembered that his chances of surviving in her realm were almost impossible. His eyes gleaned upon realising that now he can finally leave.
"Alright! Ready to leave when you want me to! It's been a pleasure lady, I tell you that—"
But not too fast…
❝Leave?❞ She neared him, as her eyes, that resembles a dying star, full of apathy and no concerns, stared into his ❝You still didn't survive the trip into the blackhole.❞
"Lady… what do you mean?!" He panicked as he stood up abruptly.
❝You said you wanted to see what I see. What you've seen here was just a fraction of what it actually is,❞ She then paused before turning away and the next words she uttered, hit him where it shouldn't.
❝You will remain, see, break and break again. For an eternity in another eternity❞
Rowel didn't move, but his face did. His eyes widened just enough to look like they were trying to evacuate his skull in the moment of despair.
His lips parted, halfway to a scream, and the other half to a sarcastic remark that had clearly missed the train.
A single blink passed over his face like.
Windows 7 loading…
"..."
His brain sat down before a screen which displayed his reaction, it stuffed popcorn into its lumps as it watched, before suddenly breaking into laughter.
"HAH! emotional damage!" It remarked inside his boney cavity.
"…Mmh," he finally managed to let out a murmur of disappointment with a dry voice.
Suddenly, space began to change. Not with noise but with a subtle shifting sensation, like space itself had started to rewind.
They were back in the void where they had first met, but it was changed. No longer the oppressive emptiness from before.
The sky above stretched wide and dark, but no longer completely black. Tiny stars that were barely visible, flickered dimly. They were pale, gentle, and distant.
Below them, the ground shimmered into place. No longer an idea, but an actual, sensible surface, like polished moon-ground.
The void wasn't entirely void anymore.
Perhaps it had changed the moment she did.
Her human form remained. No longer shifting tendrils or eyes scattered across her body, just her as he can see her. Standing tall with hands behind her back, with a face that could strike down millions of suitors… She was mysteriously gentle.
She turned her head slightly. Not fully. Just enough for her voice to slip out.
❝I want to show you something else.❞
Rowel exhaled through his nose, slowly. Not in annoyance or worry, he just had to brace himself, now he had a feeling that he would be a bit safer than before.
She raised her hand, as her fingers curled in, then unfurled, and with that, the stars blinked out.
The ground beneath them fractured without sound, as if now moved to another world. Sensible and real.
Fire. Screams. Ash.
They stood on the edge of a battlefield, if it could even be called that. The world here was red. Not painted, but drenched. The ground was no longer beaming with various hues of life, it was covered in pulped remains of cities and people, layered in smoke and blood.
Rowel's foot stepped into something soft. Here realized that the solid beneath his feet was completely soaked in blood.
Buildings in the distance collapsed like paper towers. Explosions rang out as deafening and colorless blasts swallowed sound and vomited out flame. Among the smoke there were shadows of people. They ran, with faces half-lit by gunfire and desperation. Screaming. Fleeing. And some.. were dying.
And in the middle of it all: children. Mothers. The unarmed innocents that had no hand in this war. Neither did they vouch for it to happen, nor took the initiative of the first attack.
They were slumped in the streets, thrown across walls, trampled. Their blood didn't just stain the ground—it had become it. This scene had twisted Rowel's insides, but at some point he had seen it before, or at least one of the memories he collected, actually witnessed a similarly gruesome war.
Rowel's jaw tensed.
She stood beside him without any extra move, watching calmly.
Just... watching.
He glanced toward her. His voice was quiet. "Is this real…?"
She didn't answer. Instead, the scene warped again, according to her will.
They were now in a market. Sunlight, thick with dust and the stink of sweat and metal.
There, Rowel could see a horde of people lined up, naked, shackled all together, with their skins branded or scarred. They stood with their heads bowed, or tilted in agony. Some were children. Some were older.
A man shouted in a tongue Rowel didn't know, dragging a thin girl by the wrist. He slammed her against a wooden post. She didn't scream. She didn't flinch.
Because she knew that she was already gone.
A crowd gathered. Cheers rose. Two men began to fight in a dirt circle, their chains rattling with every blow. One of them was missing an eye. The other had a limp that worsened with each step. A whip cracked behind them to keep the pace going.
Rowel turned his head. He looked visibly ill, as he could see that this was how a slave market looked like. Those were also people and they... were fragile.
Still, he followed. Still, he watched.
Because she hadn't let go of the spell yet. Or perhaps he hadn't let go of the of the idea that he sees something through all of this.
And then…
A third world.
This one was harder to place. No name. No time. No recognizable culture.
They stood atop what looked like a cliff made of rusted bones, strange and bizarre architecture looking as if they came from a surreal painting.
Below was a city, if it could be called that. Structures carved from screaming stone. Towers dripping with blood. Streets filled with people whose limbs bent wrong.
They didn't walk. Instead, they writhed. Their language was a series of sobs and chants, offered to a deity that answered only with silence.
In the center of it all stood a spire made of glass and organs, and atop it: a throne. But it was empty.
Rowel couldn't look for long. He turned to her, then he asked.
"Did you… do all of this?"
Finally, she answered, breaking their silence.
❝No.❞Her eyes did not flinch. ❝These are your worlds. Made by your kind.❞ She continued walking, slow, thoughtful.
❝Sentients. When given freedom and power… its only obvious that these would be their valid reactions.❞
Rowel's voice was hoarse. "Did you ever help? Or offer... refuge? To those who believed in you?"
Her steps paused. The air felt like it had been held in a giant lung for a long time. Then she answered, without turning around.
❝I only watched.❞ The words echoed, not in sound, but in weight. ❝Hundreds. Thousands. I watched them all begin. And I watched them all end.❞ She finally turned to face him.
Her expression didn't change, but her voice… dimmed.
❝Tell me, magician. Who would believe the dark to be their savior?❞ She said as if she didn't wait for an answer.
❝Those who do… are the ones committing these acts. If they reach for me, they don't do it because they want my silence to cover what they've done. They do it to build more screams.❞
Rowel's stomach turned, but suddenly what she said made more sense to him that he didn't want to question it any further. This is what she sees.
He remembered Tin Magi. Remembered what he had become. What he had done. The slaughter, and how he ended up.
Rowel finally understood.
The darker doesn't find the dark. It is the dark that finds the darker.
They stood in the soft quiet.
His hands were no longer trembling. His voice no longer cracked with irony, nor did his mind have more questions. Instead, he stepped forward.
"…Do you have a name?" He didn't ask it like a magician. He asked it like someone who was genuinely curious.
She didn't answer at first, but she did pause. As if the question pulled at a thread she had long forgotten was there. Her name.
Her head tilted, just slightly—not in rejection, but in thought. For a moment she blinked. A subtle contraction in the atmosphere around her took place.
When she finally spoke, her voice was unreadable at first.
❝What benefit is it that you will gain if you knew?❞ She wasn't suspicious or defensive, she was as well as he was. Curious.
Rowel smiled faintly before responding.
"I said I wanted to see what you see… and to know you." He paused, "If you are the void…"
Her eyes widened just slightly upon his next words, "…then the void might as well have a name."
There was a flicker behind her eyes. Something imperceptible.
And then, with the slightest breath of something like amusement—almost too subtle to be called a laugh and too soft to be mocking—she scoffed.
With a single, swift motion, her hand carved through the space between them. No paint. No ink. No spell.
From that motion came fire. Crimson. Alive and swirling, but in silence.
The air between them shimmered, and from the curl of her fingers, red script unfurled like smoke twisted into meaning. Letters inscribed in a language Rowel had never seen, but somehow almost understood, as he could see the outline of a name.
She intended it to be there, lowering the glyph difficulty for his mind to perceive it.
And buried in the chaos of lines and spirals, one word glowed brighter.
Barely readable.
R̸̢̢̫̥̺͙̓́͌͑̄́̾A̷̟̪̭̼͇̣̠͑͐͆̿̿̂̽V̴̫̲̆͌͝͝Ē̵̡̨̧͚̟̖̖̱̻͎̹̝̞̜̔̋̀͐͂͑̓͐̆̄̓͐̈̈́̕͠͝N̷̤̣͖̜̭͈̭̮̙̄̃̎̓̈́͐̃̓̑͒̊́̆͘͝͠͝Ņ̴̘͉̘̪̻͓̺̼̹͙̦͑̓̊̔̍́̊̔̊̏͆̚Ę̷̢̛̙͎̰̯͍̼̙̬̌̐̈́̈́͗̕͠
She didn't read it for him, instead, she watched him.
❝Try. But your mind will hardly be able to grasp it.❞
Rowel stepped closer to the inscription.
The letters pulsed—some fading, others flaring. A language his mind couldn't hold onto for long.
But he didn't look away. The way he reached forward—not to touch, but to clear, made her more curious.
His fingers moved through the illusion, waving aside the unnecessary glyphs, the circling symbols that distracted and twisted the meaning. They burned away at his gesture, retreating like startled birds, until only one line remained.
One word.
Written in red.
Glowing softly.
"Ravenne," he said, aloud.
And the void hummed. Quiet. Almost pleased.