Location: Inside the Tower of Void.
Time: Time is Irrelevant.
They stepped through the door and ceased to be.
There was no floor. No walls. No ceiling. There was no light, but there was no darkness either. Darkness is the absence of light; this was the absence of concept. It was the white page before the ink touches it.
"Dante?" Valerius's voice didn't travel through air. It vibrated directly into Dante's skull, thin and terrified, like a radio signal bouncing off the ionosphere. "I cannot feel my legs. I cannot feel my sword. Am I dead?"
"You're not dead," Dante replied, his own voice sounding like a stranger's—echoey and distant. "You're just data. Physics doesn't apply here. We are inside the hard drive after it's been wiped."
Dante activated the First Axiom (Prime).
"Prime. Render a UI. Give us a floor. I need something to stand on."
"UNABLE TO COMPLY," Prime boomed, his voice echoing in the non-space. "THERE IS NO MATERIAL TO RENDER. WE ARE IN THE SINGULARITY. THE ONLY THING THAT EXISTS HERE IS THE WILL."
"Then I Will it," Dante growled.
He focused. He didn't use mana. He used imagination.
He imagined a floor. He imagined the Obsidian Enclave. He imagined the smell of sulfur and ash, the grit of sand under his boots.
Slowly, beneath their feet, a path of grey ash materialized. It was faint, flickering like a dying candle, but it was solid enough to stand on.
"Walk," Dante ordered. "Don't let the thought go, or you'll fall forever into the recycle bin."
The Hole in the Universe
They walked for what felt like seconds and centuries simultaneously. The ash path led them toward a singular point in the distance.
It was a sphere. Small, no larger than an apple.
It was black. Not the black of paint or night. It was an aggressive, violent black that hurt the eyes to look at. It pulled at them. Dante felt his coat fluttering toward it, though there was no wind. He felt his memories slipping toward it, as if forgetting was a physical force.
The Seventh Axiom: The Void.
"It is hungry," Valerius whispered, gripping the hilt of his sword so hard his knuckles would have been white, if color existed here. "I feel it eating my name."
"It's the Reset Button," Dante said, stopping ten feet away. "It eats the current reality so the next one can be born. It's the period at the end of the sentence."
"WARNING," Prime interjected. "GRAVITATIONAL PULL EXCEEDS INFINITY. IF YOU TOUCH IT, YOU WILL BE UNMADE. YOUR ATOMS WILL BE SCATTERED ACROSS THE NEXT SEVEN BILLION YEARS."
Dante looked at the sphere. It hummed—a sound like a vacuum cleaner sucking up sand.
"Adam tried to control it," Dante mused. "And he failed. Why?"
"BECAUSE HE WAS FULL," Prime answered. "HE WAS FULL OF IDEALS. FULL OF PERFECTION. FULL OF EGO. YOU CANNOT FILL A CUP THAT IS ALREADY FULL. TO HOLD THE VOID, YOU MUST BE EMPTY."
Dante laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound.
"Empty," Dante said. "That's my specialty. I've been running on empty since Sector 7."
He looked at Valerius.
"Stay back, Chimera. If this goes wrong, I don't want you to get deleted along with me."
"I will not leave," Valerius stated, planting his feet on the ash path. "I am the Witness. If you die, I will carry the story. If you succeed, I will carry the beer."
"Optimist," Dante smirked.
Dante stepped up to the Sphere.
The pull was agonizing. It wasn't just pulling his body; it was pulling his Axioms.
The Library wanted to fly into it to be archived.
The Engine wanted to burn it.
The Light wanted to erase it.
The Forge wanted to encase it.
The Prism wanted to reflect it.
The Axioms were screaming. They were parts of the Origin, and they wanted to go home. They wanted to return to the Void to be reborn.
"Quiet," Dante ordered the gods inside his blood.
He reached out with his Star-Metal Hand.
He touched the Void.
Silence.
Then, Agony.
It wasn't pain. Pain is a signal that damage is occurring. This was the sensation of never having existed. It was the feeling of being forgotten.
Dante watched as his Star-Metal fingers dissolved. The indestructible alloy, forged in the heart of Sector 3, turned to smoke and was sucked into the black apple.
The Void ate his hand. Then his wrist. Then his forearm.
"Dante!" Valerius screamed, lunging forward.
"Don't!" Dante roared, holding him back with a wave of invisible Force.
Dante didn't pull back. He shoved his dissolving arm deeper into the sphere.
"You want to eat?" Dante snarled at the universe. "Then eat!"
He fed the Void.
But he didn't feed it his body. He fed it Entropy.
He channeled his original power—the power of the Scavenger—through the connection.
"I am the Alchemist of Entropy!" Dante shouted, his eyes burning with red and white fire. "My power is to break things down! You want to reduce the world to zero? I'll reduce you to zero! I will rot the Nothing!"
He pumped the concept of Decay into the concept of Nothingness.
It was a paradox. How do you rot a hole? How do you break a vacuum?
By filling it with the one thing it can't handle: Chaos. He flooded the Void with random data, broken variables, and junk code. He DDoSed the Reset Button.
The black sphere vibrated. It turned grey. Then static white. Then a sickly, bruised purple.
The suction stopped.
The Void "choked."
Dante, missing half his arm, grabbed the sphere with his remaining flesh hand.
"I am not Adam!" Dante screamed. "I don't want to start over! I want to keep this mess!"
He crushed the sphere.
CRACK.
The sphere shattered.
It didn't explode outward. It imploded inward, dragging Dante with it.
For a moment, Dante was gone.
Valerius stood alone on the path of ash, staring at the empty space where his friend had been. The silence was absolute.
"Dante?"
Then, a heartbeat.
THUMP.
It shook the non-space.
THUMP.
A figure reformed from the dust. First the skeleton, glowing white. Then the nerves, glowing red. Then the skin. Then the coat.
Dante stood there. His mechanical arm was gone. His flesh arm was gone.
Both arms were now made of pure, shifting Cosmic Space. They looked like the night sky of Sector 0—black void filled with glittering rune-stars. When he flexed his fingers, constellations shifted.
He opened his eyes.
The left eye was Red (The Engine).
The right eye was Blue (The Architect).
And in the center of his forehead, a third eye opened. It was Black.
"SEVENTH AXIOM: INTEGRATED."
"STATUS: ORIGIN RESTORED."
Dante took a breath. He didn't breathe air. He breathed reality.
"I see it," Dante whispered. "I see the code. I see the atoms. I see the timeline like a ribbon."
He looked at Valerius.
"I see you, Valerius. I see the vat you were grown in. I see the mother you never knew. I see the moment you die."
Valerius took a step back, terrified. The presence radiating off Dante wasn't human. It was crushing, like standing next to a star.
"Dante?" Valerius asked. "Are you... you?"
Dante blinked. The third eye on his forehead closed. The cosmic arms solidified, shifting to look like normal Star-Metal, though they still shimmered with an inner starlight.
The Silvergrin returned. It was tired, but it was there.
"I'm me," Dante said, his voice sounding like it was coming from a radio tuned to every station at once. "I'm just... heavier."
Dante looked up at the endless void.
"We have the Seven Keys. We have the Control Panel. But we are missing the ignition."
He raised his hand.
"System Command: Eject."