The silver doorway was a cold, silent promise after the cataclysm I had wrought.
Stepping away from the smoldering plain felt like leaving a part of myself behind, the part capable of that absolute, terrifying annihilation.
The air in this new space was different. The oppressive, hateful pressure of the Null was gone, replaced by an unsettling, profound stillness.
It was worse. The silence here wasn't empty; it was waiting.
The floor was a sheet of obsidian, perfectly smooth and impossibly dark, reflecting a distorted version of me with every step.
My footsteps made no sound, yet each one echoed in the vast, lightless chamber.
Ding!
[Stage Six Initiated. Proceed Through the Null.]
No enemy. No directive to survive. Just… proceed. The simplicity was a trap.
I walked. And walked. Time became meaningless, a fluid concept that slipped through my fingers.
Was it minutes? Hours? The Null was eating away at the edges of my sanity, replacing reality with its own hollow truth.
The first sign was a faint scuffing sound, out of sync with my own silent steps.
I glanced over my shoulder. Nothing. Then, shadows flickered at the periphery of my vision in a realm with no light to cast them. Whispers began, so faint they were almost imagined, tickling the back of my mind like spider legs.
I clenched my jaw, forcing myself forward.
Exhaustion. Hallucinations.
"You shouldn't have existed." The voice was a sharp, sibilant hiss, clear as day.
I spun around, my heart hammering. The void was empty.
"Monster." This one came from my left.
"Destroyer." From the right.
Shut up
The reflections beneath my feet began to warp.
The image of a tired man with wild, dark hair and faintly glowing eyes shifted, melted. And then I saw them.
"Mom? Dad?"
Their faces stared up at me from the black mirror of the floor.
But they were blurred, smeared, like a painting left in the rain.
The details were gone, but the shape of them was unmistakable.
"Allen." My mother's voice, but stripped of its warmth, flat and dead.
Then their features twisted, contorting into masks of pure contempt and rage.
The blurriness sharpened into grotesque, angry lines.
"You are a mistake, Allen."
"You should not have been born."
"You should not have existed."
"No." The word was a ragged breath. I backed away, but their images followed me on the floor. "You're not real. This isn't real."
"You are just another monster who deserves to be dead."
A low growl rumbled in my chest.
This was wrong. This was a violation.
It wasn't just attacking my body; it was redefining my very existence, rewriting my reality with a poisoned pen.
"You are just a bastard."
"A mistake."
"You are just nothing."
"Just kill yourself."
I clutched my head, my fingers digging into my scalp.
Stop!
The images didn't fade. They shifted again, the faces of my parents dissolving back into a reflection.
But it wasn't me. It was a grinning, manic version of myself, eyes blazing with chaotic lightning, a rictus of self-loathing etched on its face.
"Right…" I whispered, a hysterical laugh bubbling in my throat.
I dropped to my knees, gripping my head as the grin on the reflection widened, mirroring my own descent.
The voices became a chorus, a cacophony of condemnation from every direction.
"Yes, Yes!"
"You're no human."
"You're a shame."
"You'll never make it out of here, unless..."
"... You just stop existing?"
The reflection's grin became a terrifying slash of white. My own thought, spoken by the Null.
Yes, maybe I should just... stop existing. Just die.
It made perfect sense. It was the only logical conclusion to the new reality the Null has redefined me to be.
Lightning crackled around my fist. I raised my trembling hand to my own temple.
This was fitting. To be erased by the very force that defined me.
"This is truly the most magnificent way to just erase myself."
I unleashed the bolt.
There was no pain. Only a brilliant, all-consuming light.
A sense of immense, final calm. The struggles, the voices, the weight of existence, it all simply… stopped.
It wasn't bad. It was peace.
Is this what it feels like? To be absent?
Then, a sound. Faint, desperate, fighting its way through the nothingness...
"Allen...!"
A voice I remembered very well.
Mom.
And then another, gruff but firm.
"Son, all of that nonsense you heard are all lies. Don't tell me you didn't know."
Lies?
The concept felt foreign in this placid nothingness.
"And don't tell me you want to just give up like that after everything you have passed through."
Dad.
"Remember what you promised us? You would survive no matter what. What happened to that promise, Son?"
But I am gone. Erased.
"You can never be erased until you decide that for yourself..."
The words hit me with the force of a physical blow.
"Now get up!"
My vision cleared with a violent snap. I was on my knees, my fist slamming into the reflective floor.
A pulse of lightning, pure and defiant, erupted from the impact, spider-webbing cracks across the obsidian surface.
The distorted images shattered. The voices vanished.
The silence returned, but now it was just silence. Not a weapon.
I was breathing heavily, sweat cooling on my skin.
I raised a hand to touch my face. It was whole. I was here. I existed.
So, that was the lie. The Null's ultimate attack.
The Voices of the Null.
It didn't try to kill the body; it convinced your absolute existence to kill itself.
And I had almost let it. But my 'will' was a force even the voices couldn't ultimately break.
And my own power couldn't kill me because, at my core, I refused to let it.
I pushed myself to my feet, my legs steady.
"I promise I wouldn't fail you... Myself again," I muttered to the silence, the words a vow.
Ahead, a new doorway swirled into existence, pulsing with a deep, ominous purple light.
It was a reminder that the ordeal wasn't over.
With a deep, steadying breath, I stepped forward.