Void flew.
Not toward anything. Not away from anything specific. Just... away.
The direction didn't matter. The destination didn't matter. Nothing mattered except putting distance between himself and that ship, that ocean, that man who'd looked at him with tired eyes and said words that still echoed in his skull like shrapnel.
"The only weakling here is you, Void."
"You don't know how to connect with other beings."
"You just want to crush them."
The atmosphere of Aventic tore past him—thin wisps of cloud. He didn't slow down to look.
He broke through the upper stratosphere. The sky faded from red to purple to black.
Space opened around him. Endless. Silent. Perfect.
He didn't need to breathe. Had never needed to breathe. Air was a suggestion his body had learned to simulate for the comfort of others, not a requirement for survival.
He didn't need warmth either—the absolute cold of the void between worlds felt like nothing at all. It was the same temperature as him. The same emptiness. The same absence.
He didn't need anything.
That was the point, wasn't it?
Nothing. He was nothing. Always had been nothing. The scientists at C-Block had known it. The guards had known it.
Everyone who'd ever looked at him—really looked, past the humanoid shape and the glowing eyes—had seen it.
A hole in the world. A void wearing flesh. Something that shouldn't exist.
And they'd been right.
He was nothing.
So why did it hurt?
°°°
One of the moons grew larger ahead.
It was one of the smaller ones—barely a few hundred kilometers across, pockmarked with craters that had formed eons before humans had ever looked up at the sky.
Its surface was gray and desolate and utterly, completely empty.
Void didn't slow down as he approached it.
He crashed into the surface.
The impact was cataclysmic. Debris exploded outward in all directions—chunks of ancient rock that had rested undisturbed since the formation of this world, now scattered across the lunar surface like shrapnel from a bomb.
A crater formed beneath him, deeper than any that had come before. Dust hung in the vacuum, suspended, unable to settle without gravity or air.
He didn't move.
Just lay there. In the center of the crater he'd made.
He stared up at the black sky. At the distant blue sphere of Aventic, so small from here, so fragile.
He could crush Aventic. He'd thought about it before.
He could end the experiments. End the pain. End the endless, grinding war that had consumed everything he'd ever cared about.
But he wouldn't. Because his dad was down there. Because despite everything—despite the words, despite the rejection, despite the way his dad had looked at him like he was a disappointment but Void couldn't stop caring.
That was the cruelest part.
He cared.
He'd been designed not to. Engineered not to.
Subject Zero One was supposed to be a weapon—pure destructive potential without the weakness of emotion. But somewhere in those 347 days of darkness, something had gone wrong. Or right. Depending on who you asked.
Elara had thought it was right.
"You're not a monster," she'd whispered. "You're just different. And different is okay."
She'd been wrong. She'd been right. She'd been both at once, and Void still didn't know which one mattered more.
The words came back.
Namaska's words. From the ship.
"You don't know how to connect with other beings."
Void clenched his fists. The ground beneath him cracked further. New fissures spread from the crater like lightning frozen in stone.
"You don't know how they think about you."
"I know," he whispered. The words didn't carry in the vacuum, but he heard them anyway. "I know how they think. They think I'm a monster. They think I'm a weapon. They think I'm—"
"You just... you just want to crush them."
"I DON'T!"
The scream tore from somewhere deep. Somewhere that did exist, despite everything—a place beneath the void, beneath the emptiness, beneath the weapon they'd tried to make him.
The moon shook.
Craters deepened. New fissures spread across the surface, racing toward the horizon.
But no one heard.
No one ever heard.
°°°
Years Ago. C-Block. A pocket dimension under Sembergo Ocean.
The darkness was complete.
Experimental darkness.
It had been designed. Engineered. Weaponized.
The scientists at C-Block hadn't just found a void—they'd created conditions to study it, to contain it, to understand what made it tick.
The darkness in Subject Zero One's cell wasn't just absence of light. It was active. It pressed against the walls with intention. It watched with eyes that didn't exist. It learned.
A boy floated in it.
Not a boy—not really. A concept given form. A void wearing human shape. An it pretending to be a him. But the scientists didn't know that. Or maybe they did.
"Subject Zero One. Day 347."
A voice. Muffled. Coming from somewhere beyond the darkness—through layers of reinforced walls and dimensional barriers and safeguards that had been designed by people who didn't fully understand what they were containing.
"Vital signs: Stable. Energy output: Fluctuating. Hostility levels: Contained."
Contained. That word. He hated that word. It meant trapped. It meant they thought they had power over him when really they were just borrowing time they didn't own.
"Continue observation. We need to understand how it—"
"—how HE functions."
Another voice. Different. Softer. A woman.
Elara.
"He's not an 'it.' He's a child."
"Dr. Elara, with respect—"
"With respect nothing." Her voice sharpened—a blade wrapped in professionalism.
"Look at him. Really look. Not at the readings. Not at the data. At him. He's scared. He's alone. He's been in this darkness for almost a year with no contact except when we prod him with needles and ask him questions he can't answer. He's not a specimen. He's a child."
Silence. The other scientist—Void never learned his name, never cared to—shifted uncomfortably. The sound of papers rustling. A clipboard being set down.
"The committee won't approve any changes to the protocol."
"Then I'll talk to the committee."
"They won't listen."
"Then I'll make them listen."
Footsteps. Fading. And then—softer now, closer—Elara's voice again, directed at the darkness where Void floated.
"I'll be back. I promise. Just hold on a little longer."
°°°
Void sat up in the crater.
The memory hurt.
Elara. The only one in that place who'd looked at him like he was real. Like he was a person instead of a project.
She'd visited him every day after that first confrontation—found ways around the protocols, sweet-talked guards, forged signatures when she had to.
She'd sit outside his cell for hours, talking to him through the darkness. Telling him about the surface world. About sunlight and oceans and the way grass felt under bare feet.
"You're not a monster," she'd whispered, again and again, until the words became a litany. A prayer.
"You're just different. And different is okay. Different is beautiful. Different is what the world needs more of."
He'd believed her. For a while.
Then she'd disappeared.
"I'll come back. I promise."
She didn't. Not that day. Not the next. Not ever.
Something had happened—he still didn't know what. The records had been destroyed in the chaos that followed. But she was gone. The only person who'd ever looked at him without fear. The only person who'd ever touched him without trying to hurt him. Gone.
And Void had been alone again.
The Chaos. The Portal. The Escape.
He didn't know what happened first.
The alarms, maybe—a sound he'd never heard before, shrill and desperate and completely unlike the usual clinical tones.
Or,
The shaking—the whole facility trembling like something massive had grabbed it and refused to let go.
Or,
The screaming—scientists and guards and subjects all screaming at once, their voices blending into a single note of pure terror.
"DIMENSIONAL MAGNETIC PORTAL UNSTABLE!"
The words meant nothing to him at the time. He didn't know what a portal was. Didn't know what dimensional magnetic meant. Didn't know anything except that the darkness was breaking apart, that the walls were dissolving.
"EVACUATE! EVACUATE NOW!"
"THE SUBJECTS—WE CAN'T—WE CAN'T LEAVE THEM—"
"THERE'S NO TIME! MOVE!"
The pain came next. Not physical—not yet. Something deeper. Something that pulled at the edges of his existence like it was trying to unravel him. The portal. The dying, screaming, unstable portal that had been the source of all their experiments. It was reaching for him. Pulling at him. Trying to take him somewhere else.
The darkness shattered.
Light flooded in—real light, blinding light, light that hurt in ways the experimental darkness never had.
Void floated in the wreckage of his cell, his form flickering, his edges bleeding into the chaos around him. Through walls. Through fire. Through screaming scientists and dying guards.
He didn't mean to hurt them. Didn't mean to do anything. But his existence was unraveling, and everything he touched unraveled with him.
And then—
"There! That one! Grab it!"
Hands. Multiple hands. Grabbing him. Pulling him back. Soldiers in uniforms he didn't recognize, with faces set in grim determination, their eyes full of fear but their grips steady.
"We've got it! Move! MOVE!"
They carried him through fire. Through collapsing walls. Through screaming and chaos and death.
Void didn't understand what was happening. Didn't understand why they were helping him. Didn't understand anything except that someone was holding onto him and refusing to let go.
And then—
Light. Real light. Not the fake glow of C-Block. Not the pulsing darkness of the portal. Sunlight. Golden and warm and alive.
He'd never seen it before.
It hurt. It was beautiful. Both at once.
A man stood in front of him. Tall. Dark hair streaked with gray at the temples. Eyes that held too much—too much pain, too much knowledge, too much of whatever made humans keep fighting even when everything was lost.
He looked at Void like he was seeing something impossible. Something precious. Something that shouldn't exist and yet did.
"You're... alive."
Void stared back. No words. Couldn't form words. Didn't know how. Just... waiting. For the fear. For the disgust. For the running. That was what always came next. That was what everyone did.
But the man didn't run.
He knelt. Right there in the chaos. Right there in the fire and the screaming and the death.
He knelt down to Void's level—Void who was barely more than a child, who'd spent 347 days in darkness, who didn't know what sunlight was or why it hurt so much.
"I'm Namaska. I'm going to get you out of here."
Why? The question didn't leave Void's mouth. Couldn't. But Namaska seemed to hear it anyway.
"Because no one deserves what they did to you."
He held out his hand. Scarred. Calloused.
The hand of a soldier who'd fought for decades.
"Come on, kid. Let's go home."
Void looked at that hand. At the man offering it. At the first person since Elara who didn't flinch when they looked at him.
The first person who'd called him kid instead of subject. The first person who'd offered him something other than pain.
And he took it.
°°°
Now. The Loneliest Moon.
Void looked at his hand.
The same hand that had taken Namaska's all those years ago.
The same hand that had learned to hold things gently—blades, cards, the weight of a father's expectations.
The same hand that had saved him even though he didn't know why.
Why did you save me? The question was old now. He'd never asked it out loud—never found the right moment, the right words, the right configuration of sounds that could possibly express what he meant.
Why did you see something worth saving? What did you see that everyone else missed? Why did you call me your son when I'm not even human?
A tear. Not possible. Voids didn't cry. Voids didn't have tear ducts. Voids didn't have emotions that manifested physically.
But something wet fell from his eye—one of those two points of light that served as his eyes—and landed on the moon's surface.
It sizzled. Steamed. Became nothing. The vacuum of space took it instantly, leaving only a tiny scar in the ancient rock.
Like everything else. Like him. A brief moment of existence, then nothing.
He stood. The crater stretched around him—the scar of his arrival, the evidence of his rage.
He looked at Aventic in the distance. So small from here. So fragile. A blue marble hanging in the void, wrapped in red clouds and smoke and the dying screams of a war that had lasted decades.
Dad was down there. Somewhere on that tiny sphere. Sailing toward land. Broken and bleeding and still fighting.
Elara was gone. Dead, probably. Or trapped somewhere. Or erased.
He'd searched for her after the escape. After Namaska had given him a home. After he'd learned how to exist in a world that wasn't made of darkness.
He'd searched for years and found nothing. No records. No traces. No closure. Just... absence. The same absence he carried inside himself.
And he was here. Alone. On the loneliest moon in the sky.
Like always.
He raised his hand.
He could destroy this moon. This whole moon. Just by wanting to. It would be easy. Easier than easy. He wouldn't even have to try.
Would that make him feel better? Would anything?
He lowered his hand.
No. Destruction wasn't the answer. It never was. He'd learned that. Slowly. Painfully.
Through years of watching Namaska choose mercy over violence, choose connection over isolation, choose to save rather than destroy.
He'd learned that, but he still didn't feel it. Still didn't know how to make the lesson stick.
He didn't know how to connect. Didn't know how to be anything other than what they'd made him.
He screamed again. Not words—just sound. Raw and formless and full of everything he couldn't say.
The moon shook harder this time. Cracks spread across its surface. Debris floated into space, pulled by the scream's force, scattered into the void like tears.
And when the scream ended—silence.
Just him. Just the void.
He sat down. Cross-legged. On the surface of the loneliest moon in the sky.
And waited.
For what? He didn't know. Rescue? Absolution? Someone to come find him the way Namaska had found him all those years ago? He didn't deserve that. Didn't deserve hope. Didn't deserve anything.
But somewhere, deep in that void where feelings shouldn't exist, a tiny voice whispered—persistent, stubborn, refusing to be crushed:
Maybe they'll come for me. Like before. Maybe someone will—
He crushed the thought. Violently.
" I didn't deserve hope. "
" I didn't deserve anything."
Dad was down there. Fighting. Dying, maybe. And Void was up here. Alone. Useless.
Unable to help because he didn't know how to help, didn't know how to be anything other than destruction.
He looked up. At the distant stars. At the endless void.
Dad. I'm sorry. I don't know how to be what you want me to be. I don't know how to connect. I don't know how to do anything except destroy.
But I'm here. I'm still here. And if you need me—if you ever need me—I'll come. I'll always come. Even if I don't know how to say it.
The words didn't reach anyone. Couldn't. The vacuum carried no sound.
But Void said them anyway.
And on the loneliest moon in the sky, surrounded by craters and silence, he waited.
For something. For nothing. For whatever came next.
---