Aerin drifted.
There was no ground. No sky. No direction.
Only the void.
It wasn't empty—not truly. It breathed in slow, endless tides, a vast sea of absence threaded with fragments of forgotten realities. Broken stars floated like corpses. Shattered laws spun endlessly, repeating rules that no longer applied.
This was where he had been cast out.
This was where he belonged.
Aerin's body hovered motionless, suspended by tendrils of shadow that seeped from his back and spine, anchoring him to nothing. The wounds Kael had carved through him still glowed faintly, silver scars refusing to close.
He laughed softly.
"So that's what you chose," he murmured. "To hold everything together."
The void answered.
Not with words—but with pressure.
It pressed against him from all sides, testing, tasting, probing the fractures in his soul where rage, ambition, and hunger had fused into something sharper.
You resist collapse, it whispered—not aloud, but inside every thought he had ever buried.Why?
Aerin clenched his fists.
"Because I don't want balance," he said calmly. "I want truth."
The void surged.
Images flooded his mind—memories not his own.
The First Ascendants screaming as their bodies unraveled. Clans carving rules into the world to hide their fear. Systems built not to protect life, but to cage it.
And Kael.
Always Kael.
Standing between paths. Correcting. Stabilizing.
A lock.
Aerin's smile widened.
"You see it too," he said. "He doesn't stop collapse. He delays it."
The void paused.
Then it shifted.
Something ancient stirred—something that had been waiting far longer than the Astral Expanse, longer than clans, longer than ascension itself.
A core formed beneath Aerin, a spiraling singularity of black-violet light.
The Void Heart.
Not a gift.
An offer.
Power consumes, the void warned.Identity fractures. Will dissolves.
Aerin descended toward it without hesitation.
"Good," he replied. "I don't need the old one."
The moment he touched the Void Heart—
Everything broke.
Pain exploded outward, shredding his body into raw sensation as void energy invaded every cell, every thought, every memory. His bones dissolved into shadow and reformed stronger. His blood turned into liquid darkness threaded with starlight fragments stolen from broken worlds.
Aerin screamed—but he did not beg.
He endured.
The void wrapped around him like a cocoon, crushing and rebuilding him again and again. Each cycle stripped something away: doubt, hesitation, attachment.
Until only intent remained.
The cocoon cracked.
Aerin emerged slowly, feet touching nothing, form sharper, denser, more real than before. His eyes burned solid black now, void-light pulsing beneath the surface like a living galaxy collapsing inward.
Silver scars still crossed his body.
Kael's doing.
A reminder.
Aerin touched one with his fingers and felt resistance—correction, still lingering.
He chuckled. "You really are stubborn."
The void rippled, displeased.
The Interstice opposes us.
Aerin's expression hardened.
"No," he corrected. "It completes us."
He spread his arms.
"Kael holds the line so the world doesn't break too early," Aerin said. "That means I can push harder. Grow faster."
Void energy surged into him willingly now, no longer devouring, but obeying.
A system formed around him—not imposed, not inherited.
Chosen.
VOID EVOLUTION: FIRST THRESHOLD CROSSEDDESIGNATION: VOID SOVEREIGN (PROTO-STATE)LIMITATIONS: UNSTABLE – CORRECTION REQUIRED
Aerin felt it immediately.
He was stronger—far stronger than before.
But incomplete.
The void could consume worlds.
But it could not decide.
"That's the flaw," Aerin said softly. "You erase. You don't create."
The void trembled.
A distant ripple passed through the nothingness—faint, silver, infuriatingly familiar.
Kael was stabilizing the Astral Expanse.
Still standing.
Aerin clenched his fist.
"Don't worry," he said. "I won't tear you down yet."
The void twisted, forming a gateway—raw, violent, unfinished.
A path back.
"But next time," Aerin continued, stepping toward it, "I won't come alone."
In the distance, shapes began to stir—things drawn to his presence. Not Wardens. Not beasts.
Failures.
Ascendants who had fallen into the void across forgotten eras, their identities broken but their power intact.
They turned toward Aerin.
He smiled.
"Follow me," he said simply.
They did.
As Aerin stepped through the forming gateway, the void whispered one final truth into his mind:
Correction requires opposition.
Aerin laughed as the darkness closed behind him.
"Good," he said. "Then I'll become something correction can't ignore."
Far away, beneath steady stars and fragile laws, Kael stirred uneasily—
—unaware that the void had just found its king.