Chapter 194: Black hole 2

He had fighting moments ago. Brin and Jordan by his side. The generals were weaker than he had initially expected, so most of the fighting was left to the siblings.

He had chosen to watch from the sidelines, only did he remember that his system had malfunctioned to the point that it no longer answered his summons.

Elias decided to test it again.

While Jordan was covering for him, he waved his hand. "Screen."

Like he half expected, nothing happened. No reply. No screen. No proof that he had ever gone through the trial at all.

He narrowed his eyes.

In the background, he could see unfamiliar siblings of his, struggling to get a hit in. He stretched his hand in that direction.

"Void erase."

The intruder was instantly hacked away from existence. It should have been a simple save, but all eyes were suddenly turning to him.

One of the generals raised a brow.

"Void?"

The rest exchanged glances. Murmuring rose.

"He used void."

"Does this mean he’s our superior?"

Their steps faltered. They stared at him for a considerable amount of time, then one of them spoke.

It wasn’t a language they understood. It was in odd code. They had expected Elias to give some sort of reply and when they noticed that he had no idea what they were saying, a general gave the order.

"Capture him."

The battlefield exploded into frantic movement. What had been a hunt for the marked ones was now a hunt for Elias.

Elias had barely lowered his hand when the world tilted.

Something struck him, he never saw what. The sound of Brin shouting his name stretched thin, like a voice calling from the far end of a long tunnel, and then it was gone. The ground left his feet. The light left his eyes.

Then there was nothing to be left.

He didn’t fall. Falling needed a direction, and there was none here.

Elias opened his eyes and found no difference between that and keeping them shut. There was no black, either. Black was a color, and color needed light to be measured against. This was the absence of the question. He tried to look down at his hands and realized he could not confirm that he had any.

’Am I standing?’

The thought echoed, and that was the first strange thing. It echoed with no walls to bounce from. It simply repeated inside him, each time a little quieter, until it ran out.

This felt familiar. Just like that time when he had first acquired the ability.

He tried to speak. "Jordan?"

No sound came out. Or maybe sound came out and had nowhere to go. He felt the word leave him, felt the shape of it in his throat, but the void swallowed it before it could become anything. It didn’t feel hostile. It felt indifferent, like shouting into a mouth that had no interest in listening.

"Screen," he tried again, out of habit more than hope.

Nothing answered. But this time, the nothing felt different from before. In the battlefield, the silence of his system had felt like a malfunction, a door jammed shut. Here it felt like a door that had never been built, because there had never been a house.

’Then why did the word "void" work?’

He had no time to think about that, because the void began to change.

It wasn’t light, exactly. It was more like the sense of something noticing him. A pressure settled over his awareness from every side at once. Time lost its grip.

He could not tell if he had been here a heartbeat or a century. His memories slid around loosely, as if they weren’t quite attached to him anymore: Brin’s laugh, Jordan’s shoulder against his back.

Were those his? Or was he only remembering them because the void was holding them up for inspection?

Far away, or perhaps very close, a single point appeared. A wound in the nothing, a place where the emptiness folded in on itself and revealed a deeper emptiness behind it. It pulsed slowly, like something breathing.

Elias felt a pull toward it that had nothing to do with his body. It tugged at every part of him.

And then, a voice that was not a voice arrived in his mind. It spoke in the same odd code the generals had used, strings of meaning that should have been gibberish.

But this time, he understood.

"You have been using it well."

The point of folded darkness widened, slowly, like an eye opening.

"Irue."

He opened his eyes with a startle.

Someone was standing, staring into the nothing. He narrowed his eyes, or at least he thought he did. It didn’t matter.

"Mona."

Mona glanced at him.

"Where are you right now?"

"Where do you think I am?" Mona replied with a question.

He turned to Elias. "You... don’t seem to ask the most important questions."

"But you do know the answer to those important questions."

Mona blinked twice. "Yes?"

"And would you give me an answer if I ask?"

"No."

"Then shut up."

Elias turned back to look at the odd part in this huge space of oddity.

Mona’s eyes followed. "Do you think it’s a hole?"

"Doesn’t matter. I mean, if I think it’s a hole, then it is. Just a matter of mindset."

"Well I think it’s a chicken."

Elias glanced at him. "What’s a chicken?"

"..."

"..."

That’s the point. Mona had no idea either.

"Do you want to... like...jump in?" Mona asked.

"Jump in?"

"Envision it like a lake." Mona waved a vague gesture.

Elias’ eyes were suddenly seeing the space like a lake.

"Okay?"

"Then jump in."

"...why?"

The dragon shrugged. "I don’t know. Jump in."

Elias scratched his head. "I don’t know why we’re having a conversation—"

"How about," Mona interrupted. "You fell in instead."

"Huh?"

He hadn’t begun to grasp the words before the space gave way to a terrifying fall.

He fell for a long time, or for no time at all, Mona’s face disappearing from his eyes.

There was no wind and no floor, only the sense of dropping through something who seemed to receive him with open arms.

He felt his consciousness fading. Not exactly fading, but becoming one with the void.

The drop got faster and faster and faster until the word "fast" lost its meaning.

Then, the void spat him out.

Weight hit first. His feet slammed into solid ground, and his knees almost buckled under a body that was suddenly, painfully his. Then sound crashed in, a roar of wind and shouting, and last came the smell of blood and scorched dirt.

He opened his eyes and saw the valley.

He was standing in the middle of it. Something warm ran down his wrist, and he looked down. His fingers were slick and red. At his feet, in the dirt, lay a heart that had stopped beating.

He didn’t remember doing it, but somehow he felt like he wanted to do it.

He heard sounds and turned his gaze.

No one. Only himself and the enemies before him. Perhaps only half of him was awake.

His energy exploded outward.

He just let it flow.

"Ability activate. Black hole."