The Void
"How long has it even been?" Neo thought, his face a blank canvas in the dark. "Who even cares… Mom's dead… Oh, Curtis…"
He spoke the words tonelessly. No reaction touched his features.
He finally stood—or at least, assumed the posture of standing. There was no ground to feel beneath him, only a perpetual, weightless suspension.
"Where is this…?"
He took a cautious step forward. Then another. He could see nothing. If not for the chill and the sensation of his own hands moving over his body, he might have believed his eyes were shut. When he brought a finger close to his face, he could almost see its faint outline, but nothing beyond an inch. The rest was absolute, consuming black.
He changed direction every few minutes with his hand reaching out before his steps, walking without a destination, driven by a feeble, stubborn hope that somewhere in this nothingness, there was a 'something'.
---
"Mev, Hepburn, the Temple… Mev, Hepburn, the Temple…"
Like a mantra, Neo repeated the names with each step through the draining, endless dark. His face was a mask of hollow resolve, clinging to those words as he tried not to forget his rage. The purpose that kept him from dissolving into the nothingness around him.
"Hmnn?"
For the first time in what felt like days—weeks, maybe—a pinprick of gold. Not light, but the idea of light, throbbing in the endless black. He froze. A sound accompanied it—a deep, resonant thrum.
Badum. His own heart kicked. Badum. The sound echoed it perfectly. The light pulsed in time. It was calling him. No. It was *matching* him.
He picked up his pace, moving toward it. As he drew closer, he felt something—a sound, deep and resonant, coming from the same direction.
"What's that?"
He listened. It was a heartbeat. But not just any heartbeat. It was in perfect sync with his own. And with every step he took toward the light, the sound grew louder, thrumming inside his chest, echoing in his ears.
Badum. Badum.
Now the source was clear: a cube, floating in the void, flashing with intricate gold symbols that glowed with an eerie, living light.
Sigh.. "Finally, I can see my own skin." Neo thought to himself, with his attention still on the cube.
He tried to read the symbols, but they shifted with each moment. As he drew closer, a sudden realization struck him; he was afraid, and usually the chill would have done its thing already.
"What the hell? Where's the chill?"
He tried to summon it, to force that calming numbness by thinking of his mother's death, of Curtis—but nothing came. The emotional buffer was gone.
He let out a depreciating laugh. "Ran out of battery? Or did you find something actually scary?"
The cube pulled at him—a deep, intimate dread mixed with inexplicable longing. Every instinct told him to stop, but his feet carried him forward, heartbeat thundering in his ears, the golden symbols flashing brighter, faster, as if excited by his approach.
Within arm's reach, he stopped. The cube pulsed, silent and waiting.
"So beautiful…"
His hand rose almost of its own will. His index finger brushed the surface as intense pain hit him from the point of contact.
"Ahhhhhhhh!!!! NO—NO! GET OFF!"
Agony, instant and unbelievable, seared through him. The symbols weren't just on the cube—they were 'crawling'. Onto his hand, up his wrist, burning like molten gold being poured directly into his veins. He tore at his sleeve, revealing his skin. The symbols moved beneath it, glowing through his flesh, slow, deliberate, and excruciating.
His features, so long blank, twisted into a picture of pure suffering. Every nerve was on fire, being carved from the inside out.
"NO! NO! AHHHHHH!!!"
Through tear-blurred eyes, he watched in horror as the trail of symbols crept upward, along his arm, toward his chest—toward his heart.
"Please, no… PLEEEAAASE!" he screamed, raw and desperate, tears streaming freely for the first time since the chill had first taken hold.
He clawed at his own arm, trying to scrape the symbols away, but his fingers left no mark—only a disturbing ripple beneath the skin, as if something alive was moving within him.
Then he felt movement above him.
The cube, now pale and dull, its symbols emptied onto his body, began to drift toward him.
Panic electrified him. Forcing his trembling legs and searing arm to obey, he scrambled backward, crawling away from the approaching object.
Suddenly, his body locked. Frozen. Not by the chill—this was different. The space around him hardened, keeping him in place.
He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Could only watch, his heart hammering against his ribs, as the dull golden cube floated slowly, inevitably, toward his chest.
The cube approached slowly, inevitably, while his body remained locked in place. The burning path of the golden symbols seared toward his heart, and he could do nothing but watch with frantic eyes as the cube drew nearer. In that moment of pure agony and terror, he would have given anything for the cold, numbing embrace of the chill.
"Nghh… Mmmm…" He strained, desperate to scream, to move, to do anything to lessen the pain, but his body was not his own.
BOOM!!
"Aghhhhh—!"
The cube touched his chest. A deafening, internal detonation erupted in his skull. The paralysis broke, but the new wave of pain was catastrophic. His vision whited out, his eyes rolled back, and consciousness fled like a snapped thread.
His body, now unconscious, lay there as the cube and the crawling golden letters continued their work. They merged with him slowly, deliberately, as if assembling something ancient within his flesh.
Thirty minutes passed. The cube was half-absorbed. Where the symbols had traveled—from his right index finger, up his arm, across his shoulder—his skin was now marked with intricate, dark ink-like characters. They resembled ominous tattoos, giving his unconscious form a mysterious and formidable aura.
An hour later, the last fragment of the cube dissolved into his chest. A final, monumental BOOM echoed, not in the void, but from within him—a heartbeat louder than thunder, more profound than anything he had heard while approaching the relic.
The tattoo was complete: a continuous pattern from his fingertip to the left of his chest, where a perfect, drawn cube tattoo now rested, completing the pattern from his right hand.
A minute of stillness passed.
Then, the cube tattoo on his chest ignited in a brilliant, golden light. The glow raced along the tattooed path, from his chest down to his index finger, illuminating the dark symbols like a circuit of power. Then, as suddenly as it came, the light died away.
Meanwhile, Neo remained unconscious.
---
Temple of Light — Zekaa
The golden figure on the throne gazed down at the bowing Zafyrus. "Is this him?"
Zafyrus kept his head lowered. "Yes, my Lord. This is the God Rank relic holder."
The temple was not empty today. To the golden figure's left stood the Temple Enforcer, draped in a pitch-black cloak that seemed to swallow the light, only his piercing eyes visible in the shadow. Kneeling beside Zafyrus, face pressed to the floor, was a trembling Curtis, his snow-white hair a stark contrast to Neo's dark locks.
"Hmm… Come here, child. Let me see you for myself." The golden figure's voice was calm, almost gentle. "I hope you are all that was promised."
Before Curtis could react, a platform of solid light materialized beneath him, lifting him effortlessly into the air and carrying him toward the throne.
"Hmm… The Light element? This is perfect." A note of satisfaction entered the golden figure's voice. "Send my summons to Sera. I need her before my throne. Now."
The cloaked enforcer bowed silently and vanished into a wisp of shadow.
"My child, raise your head."
Curtis, trembling, slowly lifted his face. The radiant armor of the figure before him was dazzling, forcing him to squint.
The golden figure smiled. He softened the light around his armor, allowing Curtis to see him clearly: a youthful face framed by long, white hair, and a gentle, approving smile.
Curtis, disarmed by the gentle tone and kind smile, felt a flicker of calm—until he remembered Zafyrus's warnings just before entering this hall. A fresh tremor ran through him.