The sound of its final fall faded like a jointed silence. I remained standing atop trembling ash, as if the earth itself breathed, afraid of what I had done. The blood on my lips was no display; it was a cold reminder that every victory here is measured by pieces of your soul. I breathed. The first inhalation was harsh; my ribs rocked as if a cord beneath my heart had splintered.
The girl sat trembling behind a shattered rock, her eyes wide as if the universe had suddenly unveiled itself. Her face was young, but gaunt from shards of fear; her hair was cut, her clothes gray and clinging with dust. She looked at me with a gaze full of questions and sickness: "Are you… human?" she asked in a muffled voice—not curiosity, but a question of survival.
I turned to her and tried to arrange words I did not own: "I am… Kim. I pulled you out of here."
Her eyes filled with tears not yet shed, then she said in a sobbing voice, "I didn't think any of us would survive. Thank you…" then she steadied herself and added in a broken tone: "There are others… in the south. Don't stray from the Rift paths."
Kim: This is good — I must go and learn the truth of these beasts and whether there are other humans.
Before I could ask her more, silence fell over the place again, but it was no longer empty: an old tone seemed to whisper nearby, saying what I had done was only the beginning. I gathered my strength and spread a veil of shadow around my feet; each step I took left a dark-gray trace on the ash. The ground rolled under the weight of my strides, and the city that had seemed dead now breathed—laboring and angry.
I headed south as she said. Traveling in the land of the Void is not merely moving from place to place; it is a test of your senses. Everything here tries to deceive you: shadows sway as if they were people, familiar scents rise from stones that do not exist, whispers repeat names of those you lost. I passed buildings half-swallowed by others, a street collapsing into a tunnel of smoke, a fountain whose water had stopped to become thick oil, shining like a black mirror. On the houses' walls, red symbols traced orders I could not understand: lines like ancient letters, circles inked with a gleaming, standing shadow. I stopped before one and touched it; a deep cold shivered through my palm, then passed, as if it had taken a moment of my memory.
The girl trailing me hesitated on a small footprint of mine and whispered with difficulty, "People call it… they remember it as a word that scares." I did not open my mouth; I only exhaled heavy breaths. I wanted to tell her everything, but words here felt heavier than iron. Instead, I guided her to move with me, and with every step I tried to sense the place: would we find an exit or a trap?
Not ten minutes had passed when I heard a roar in the distance, like the cry of searing metal. The ground trembled, then split beneath our feet, forming a wide rift from which a wave of soil rolled out, colored as if it moaned. From the dust emerged creatures—few in number but enormous in form: columnar arms, multiple small heads, bodies armored with glossy scales. They attacked indiscriminately, but their eyes hunted for one thing: the sound of life.
I rushed at them without calculation. The flame in my right hand twisted into bolts, and the shadow from my left hand flooded the ground into ropes binding their fragments. My strikes were fiercer, but something inside me warned of a deeper danger. Each creature that fell did not remain still long; its body dissolved to dust, then another rose—the endless replication. The waking mind of the Void laughed: "Kill them for no gain."
Then it saw us. From the crest of a nearby mound, a vast shadow leaned like a prince on a throne of wreckage. Its eyes glowed a burning violet, and its smile sat as if on the face of one who enjoys a visual game. It did not descend at once; it let the monsters assail us, then walked down calmly, each step punching the ground like a new scar on the place.
It spoke in a clear, cold voice: "You… truly burn as if you think this is victory. You kill shadows so that others may be born. How naive you are!"
The girl behind me whispered: "He… he who manipulates the rubble. I never saw him, but I heard him say—he devours return."
I looked at that shadow and saw an extension of a cruel time: shattered creatures, kingdoms toppled and raised from their ashes, stolen laughs. He advanced slowly across the battlefield. He wore what seemed like a cloak of night; his smile bore no warmth, only greatness ringed with cruelty.
He stood before me and raised his hand as if in royalty—his finger pointed to my chest, then he said:
"Child of flame and shadow… how you love to think that killing makes a king. You are charming in your striving. You have a spark, but you lack the rule: those who forge summits know how to craft the depths. You played your role—the passing storm. But here, life is not something you can pluck and leave. Here, we remake humans… or break them entirely."
His words were a poisonous game, yet he had not struck. He toyed with my mind slowly, spinning a tale I did not want to hear: that every creature I killed had not truly died but its image turned into a substance reused to feed a mysterious machine. Each blow of mine nourished that regrowth process—kill them, and you rebuild them.
I swallowed that truth like a hot iron plate, then laughed—a sharp, bleak laugh—because my aim had always been not to become part of someone's manufacture. My tone dropped into frost: "If you remake people, will you remold us into new slaves? I will shatter your fabrication machine. Today your role ends with a legacy of fire and shadow."
I smiled suddenly—not of fear but of challenge: "Fine. If this is your game, I will play. But I will break the rules."
At that moment, the mist rose like a membrane, and the ground around the shadowed man turned into shifting plates; from each fissure emerged halos like small faces silently screaming. He laughed, his voice growing sterner: "This is only the beginning, Kim. You think you fight for an exit? You fight to undo your life."
I refused to stay in debate. I unleashed a series of focused attacks: my shadow spun with blinding speed, my right-hand flame launched like a cutter of dark fire—