Chapter 2 — Echoes of the Void
The sun never rose properly the next morning.It was there—Aiden could feel it, hidden somewhere behind the smoky clouds—but the light that reached the world was dim, sickly, and trembling. The air smelled of burnt metal and ash.
The System's notifications still hovered faintly in the sky, like holy scripture left to burn.
[System Initialization: 47% Complete.][Entity Integration: 12% of global population assimilated.][Warning: Hostile entities detected.]
"Assimilated…" Aiden muttered under his breath, tightening his grip on the steel pipe he'd scavenged from the ruins of his apartment complex. His arms still ached from the night before—the fights, the running, the shock of watching his world end in a matter of hours.
He didn't know what 'assimilation' meant exactly, but the implication made his stomach turn. The screams that had filled the night—cut short, replaced by static—weren't from monsters alone. Some of them had been human.
He kicked aside the remains of a shattered vending machine, finding a half-melted bottle of water. It smelled faintly of plastic, but he didn't care. He took a cautious sip, keeping his eyes on the flickering buildings around him. Every shadow could hide one of them.
[Skill Activated: Perception Lv.1]
The faint blue haze tinged his vision for a moment. His hearing sharpened. The sound of wind moving through the cracks of broken glass became painfully clear. Somewhere in the distance, a metallic groan echoed — something large was moving.
"Still there…" he whispered. "Good. At least I'm not insane."
The voice of the System had gone silent for hours now, but Aiden could still feel it. Not as words, but as a pressure in his mind — cold, distant, and infinite. The Void Sovereign skill hadn't activated again, yet it lingered like a heartbeat in the back of his head.
He could sense it waiting, coiled and aware.
A low rumble shook the ground beneath his feet. The noise wasn't thunder — it was heavier, deeper. He looked up.
A tear was forming in the sky again.
"Another rift…"
The last one had unleashed those spiderlike horrors that tore through the city's defense grid like it was made of paper. If another one opened here—
[Rift Manifestation Detected.][Recommended Action: Evacuate.]
"Yeah, no kidding," he hissed.
He sprinted toward what used to be Eastwood Avenue, vaulting over a half-collapsed fence. The streets were empty—eerily so. Cars lay overturned. Fires burned where power lines had snapped. A lone billboard flickered: THE FUTURE IS YOURS — EVOLVE BEYOND.
The irony nearly made him laugh.
[System Initialization: 52% Complete.]
He could see the rift now—an open wound bleeding violet light into the clouds. The air shimmered around it, warping, pulsing like a living heart. Then came the sound—a thousand whispering voices murmuring in languages that hurt to hear.
Something pushed through.
The first creature emerged as a shifting silhouette, dripping with oily black fluid. It stood on too many legs, its eyes glowing like dying embers. Then another followed. And another.
Aiden froze.
He was alone. He had no armor, no weapon other than a bent pipe, no party or guild. Just him—and the whispering Void.
He breathed in once. Then, he spoke.
"Activate skill: Void Sovereign."
The world stopped breathing.
Silence fell—thick, suffocating silence. The monsters halted mid-step, their forms flickering. The edges of their bodies began to crumble, dissolving into dust that shimmered like ash.
The air bent around Aiden, distorting. Darkness flowed from his skin like smoke, swallowing the world within a small radius.
[Skill: Void Sovereign — Active.][Sub-Effect: Consumption initiated.][Warning: Cognitive stability at 89%.]
Pain exploded in his head. His thoughts fractured into shards of static, but he held on. He willed the Void outward, imagining it as a tide swallowing everything before him.
The monsters screamed.
Not with mouths—but with their entire beings. Their essence shattered, consumed by the endless black, leaving only their System fragments behind.
[You have consumed a Lesser Riftspawn.][EXP Gained: 120.][Skill Fragments Absorbed.][Warning: Corruption level increased by 1%.]
Aiden dropped to his knees, gasping. His nose bled freely. His vision pulsed in and out.
"God… damn it," he muttered.
He'd done it again. Survived, barely. But every time he used the Void, it felt like something else was watching—peering out from behind that infinite darkness, curious.
And it was growing stronger.
By the time the last echo faded, Aiden found himself surrounded by what used to be living nightmares reduced to drifting dust. The rift above him had closed—temporarily. The sky shimmered, and the System's voice returned, colder than before.
[New Achievement: Rift Solo Clear.][Reward: 500 EXP | Skill Core (Unstable)][Level Up!][Aiden Cross — Lv.2 → Lv.3]
He exhaled shakily. "Level three already… Guess the apocalypse has good grind rates."
He checked his status window.
[Status Window – Aiden Cross]Level: 3Race: Human (Unaligned)Class: NoneUnique Skill: [Void Sovereign] (Sealed – Partial Access)Skills:– Perception Lv.1– Void Manipulation (Dormant)– ???
Attributes:Strength: 8Agility: 10Endurance: 9Intelligence: 12Willpower: 15
Corruption: 4%
His eyes lingered on that last line.
"Corruption… what happens at 100?" he wondered aloud. The System, of course, didn't answer.
He pocketed the glowing Skill Core that appeared near the ground where the rift collapsed. It pulsed faintly with blue light — unstable, like a living thing.
[Item Description: Skill Core (Unstable)]A crystallized fragment of System data. Absorbing it may grant a random skill — or cause mutation.
"Great odds," Aiden muttered. He turned it in his fingers, thinking.Then he clenched his jaw and absorbed it.
Light flared.
[Skill Acquired: Void Pulse Lv.1]Emit a burst of condensed void energy to disrupt physical and metaphysical structures.
"Now that's useful."
For the first time since the world fell apart, he felt something that almost resembled control. Not safety, not peace — but direction.
He moved toward the outskirts of the city, heading for the nearest evacuation beacon. Along the way, he found more signs of humanity—burned vehicles, abandoned checkpoints, a shattered drone still blinking faintly.
The symbol of the Global Defense Network flashed briefly before fading out.
"Guess the army didn't make it either," he muttered.
The beacon was still flickering ahead, casting weak blue light across the cracked highway. He followed it until he heard voices—human ones.
He slowed, keeping his weapon ready.
"—told you, we can't stay here!" a man's voice said, hoarse and angry. "The rift will reopen!"
"And go where?" a woman snapped back. "You saw what those things did to the convoy!"
Aiden stepped into view, raising his hands. "Hey. Not a threat. Just another survivor."
Three figures turned to face him — two men, one woman, all armed. Their clothes were scorched, their eyes haunted. The man in front, probably ex-military, narrowed his eyes.
"You alone?"
"Yeah. For now."
"You cleared the rift back there?"
Aiden hesitated. "…I survived it."
The woman frowned. "Then how are you not dead?"
He didn't answer. The truth — I consumed them with the power of a cosmic void that whispers in my head — didn't sound reassuring.
The older man exhaled. "Name's Captain Jiro Tanaka, Global Defense. We've got a fallback camp five clicks north. You're welcome to tag along, but keep your distance until we confirm you're not… changed."
"Changed?"
Jiro's jaw tightened. "Some people didn't die when the monsters hit them. They… turned. System calls it 'Entity Conversion.' You start glowing, your eyes go black, and then you stop being human."
Aiden said nothing. He thought about the Corruption percentage in his status screen.
"Understood," he said finally.
They moved together in silence. Along the road, they passed shattered drones and bodies that shimmered faintly with System residue. Occasionally, they heard the distant echo of something massive moving beyond the city limits.
At the camp, survivors huddled beneath makeshift tents. A few battered holographic panels displayed partial System data — incomplete, glitching.
[Local Node: Safe Zone Status — Unstable.]
Jiro's soldiers looked exhausted. Supplies were low. But the moment Aiden arrived, something in the air changed. Conversations halted. Eyes turned toward him.
He could feel it — that lingering aura the Void left behind, invisible but felt.
"Who is he?" someone whispered. "I can't sense his level…"
Jiro gave him a cautious look. "Rest. Eat if you can. But stay in sight."
Aiden nodded. He sat near the edge of the camp, staring up at the sky. The rifts glowed faintly in the distance, constellations of apocalypse.
He thought about his parents, gone when the first rift opened over New York. About his sister, lost in the chaos.
The Void pulsed quietly in his chest.
[You are not alone, Host.][The Void hungers. The Void protects.]
He froze. That wasn't the System's voice. It was deeper, older—something behind the System.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
[…We are what remains.][You are the last Ascendant.]
Aiden stared into the fading light of the horizon as the second night of the new world began. The stars above flickered, rearranging themselves into alien constellations that no human eye had ever seen.
The Void within him stirred, and somewhere in the heavens, something stirred back.