Staring Into The Void Novels & Stories

My Tempered Heart drummed a steady sixty beat rhythm: the solar enzyme in my blood flaring with a protective heat as it sensed the presence of its ancient enemy. Killian stepped forward: his slate grey muscles corded with a tension that made the obsidian floor beneath his paws groan. He stood beside me: a pillar of strength that had survived the absolute zero: but his silver eyes were wide with a rare and profound awe. "The First Void isn't just feeding: Elara. It’s trying to wear her. It’s trying to turn the source into a weapon of the vacuum.".

I can feel the void forming in the mirror–the portal, but it’s taking everything I am–everything inside of me–to open it. “MAEVE!” Logan screams over the thunderous, throbbing whirl that bursts my eardrums. “DO IT NOW!” Blood trickles from my ears as I restart the section of the spell my scream of pain interrupted. Hear me. Obey me. The book flies out of my hand as the room shatters. We’re sucked into a vacuum of sound. It’s like being trapped in a boom of thunder–so loud I can’t hear my own scream when the room fades into darkness. The sound stops. The movement stops. I feel nothing–like I’m suspended in a void. I open my eyes and see… stars. Yes, stars gliding past me in streaks of gold, p

More patient. The third Void was waking. And this time, the seal might not be enough.

"They call you Null. Zero. Empty space." I grabbed the teenage boy. I handed him the rifle. The weight made his shoulders drop, but he gripped the stock. Static pricked his fingertips. "I am the Void," I told him. I looked into his eyes. "I am the biggest nothing in the world. And I am going to eat their King." I looked back at the army. My heart hammered against my ribs. Pounding. Painful. "Show them that empty space is dangerous. Show them that you are the end of everything."

The third simply refused to continue. But our six passed. Barely. Luna emerged from her final session shaking. "I touched something in there. In the nothing. It felt like Theo, but wrong. Distant. Like hearing someone scream from miles away." "That's what the Void is," Maeve said. "Distance without space. Sound without noise. Existence without being. You'll experience much worse during the actual journey." The farewells nearly destroyed me. Dad pulled me aside the night before launch. We sat in his office, surrounded by memories of Mom. Of Yvonne. Of everyone we'd lost.

A stinging pain lashed across my shoulder, I gasped, stumbling forward into the dirt, Koran had struck me with a training rod, a solidified length of shadow that felt like a whip made of ice. "Too slow, you’re waiting for the danger to find you," his voice whispered from the right, though a second later I felt his presence on my left, "The Void doesn't ask for permission, Vesper, it simply exists, and the universe is forced to fill it, stop being a sponge, become the leak."

I whispered, the word a cold weight in my chest. "The Abyss," the Chronicler confirmed. "But remember... when you stare into the void, the void is already staring into you. And your ex-mate? He’s not just waiting for you in the dark. He’s building a nursery out of your nightmares."

LYRA Pressing my fingertips to James’s temples, I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I am met with incredible darkness. Looking to my left and to my right I cannot see anything. A frown crosses my lips. When I was in the void it was never this dark, I was able to see a few feet in front of me. But this darkness is consuming. It feels alive. Slimy tendrils try to reach into my mind as I wander through the void. I build up walls in my mind to keep my emotions safe.

I find that as I begin explaining, my mind has rewound my memory and I’m reliving the experience. Richard is threatening to kill the women, his reference of ‘you will never see me coming’ before he disappears makes me think. He somehow plans to use the shadows. ‘I must stop him using the void, he will kill them all’, I think to myself. I call to the shadows, once they answer and come to me I step into their midst. And for only the second time in my life, I enter the void. I feel disoriented as I twist and spin, as I fall into nothingness.

The void is everything, exists in everything, hidden in the smallest elements, taking up all the spaces in between. Smiling, I tilt my head to the side and say a single word of intention, my eyes focused not on the dot itself, but on all the spaces between the surrounding spaces. “Shift.” The circle pulses, absorbing the voidstuff directly around it as everything that is not-void is pushed to the sides. “Open.” The gateway widens, spiraling from the center, pushing the solids and blending the liquid darkness of eternity until there is a circle tall enough for a dragon in full bestial form to walk through without effort.