Hollow.
That was the only word that fit.
Not empty in the way a room is empty, waiting to be filled again, but hollow like a shell scraped clean and left behind. When I stripped myself of emotion, the absence settled immediately. It simply happened, quietly, as if something fundamental had been removed and the space it left refused to keep quiet.
Only one thing remained.
Reason.
Stripping myself of love had been the hardest part, not because it hurt, but because of what followed. I felt my sense of self peel away, not violently, but thoroughly, like skin lifted from flesh without resistance. There was no agony in it. That would have implied I still cared.
What remained was worse.
I understood, with perfect clarity, that something essential had left me, something that once shaped how I saw the world, but I could not miss it. I could not grieve it, the absence made it hard for me to miss it, I couldn't remember how loss felt like.
It was like knowing ice cream exists without ever having tasted it. How could I long for something I no longer remembered wanting?
I had become a machine.
The irony did not escape me.
The only advantage was that fear and sadness were gone. There was no hesitation now, no weight trailing behind my thoughts. Decisions formed cleanly, without resistance or doubt. Perhaps that was for the best. At least, that was the conclusion reason arrived at.
"How do you feel?" the Void asked.
"Nothing," I replied.
"Obviously, I mean your body. How does it feel?"
"Nothing, I'm fine. Can we stop talking about, feelings?"
"Noted."
Its tone never changed. It never mocked, never reassured. It simply continued like it was business as usual.
"Now that you have six vessels for the elements, you may wake them," the Void said.
"They share your consciousness, but remember this. They only know the emotions they represent, to control them, you must overpower them. Submission is the only language they understand."
I raised my hand.
Six spheres formed in the air before me, drifting in loose formation. Smoke churned inside them, thick and restless, each tinted differently. Red, Blue, Yellow, Pink, Green,Pale blue. They pulsed faintly, like things pretending to sleep.
I touched them one by one.
Just a trace of my divine essence flowed into each, nothing excessive, nothing careless. Still, it was too much.
This time, the essence did not return.
It drained completely, leaving no echo behind. There was no slow depletion, no sense of recovery waiting somewhere beneath the surface. The power was gone, consumed utterly. My heart felt vacant, strength fled my limbs. My hair lost its color, turning ash-grey within moments. My skin tightened, shriveling as if years were forced into me all at once.
I remained standing through sheer will alone.
"All that remains is for them to wake on their own," the Void said. "The process is complete. Congratulations, fragment. You may now begin refining the elements."
I lifted my gaze to the sky.
My voice was weak when I spoke.
"Fire, come to me."
The sky answered.
Red light tore through the clouds as if the heavens themselves had been ripped open. Heat pressed down from all directions at once. The air hissed, moisture vanishing instantly. When the familiar presence of fire gathered inside my heart, strength returned violently, flooding my body without restraint.
My spine straightened. My breath hitched. The toga clinging to me snapped and billowed as hot air surged upward.
"Aaaaaaaaaaarh!"
The sound tore free without permission.
The sky rolled and shifted, clouds breaking apart, dissolving into nothing. The land burned, the earth itself hissing beneath the intensity, then it stabilized. The sky remained red, deep and heavy. Sweat ran down my brow as the power settled into place.
"Let this barren world feel the embrace. The embrace of love, my love"
The red compressed, gathering itself into a massive fireball suspended high above. The heat around melessened, my aura though climbed sharply and stopped where it had been before, mid class, high tier. When the energy stopped boiling inside my heart, the land began to cool.
The underworld's grey expanse brightened. The rays from the makeshift sun brushed against my skin, and for the first time since the stripping, I registered something close to awareness.
"Imps are approaching," the Void said. "Test your power, let us see what you can do now that the others no longer interfere."
I turned toward the pull of chaos.
There they came, crawling from the earth, small twisted things, bodies malformed, eyes burning with crude intent. As more appeared, the pull intensified. Mountains in the distance cracked open, their slopes spilling dark shapes like something had overturned a nest.
I raised my hand, and with a downward finger motion a fireball fell from the sky and struck the ground with a sound that erased everything else. Dust and debris surged outward, flattening the field.
Several imps vanished instantly. Others were thrown aside, limbs snapping as they struck the ground.
When the dust cleared, a massive crater smoked in the earth. The surviving imps stood at its edge, uncertain. Those in front pushed backward, panic rippling through them.
I extended my hand.
Fire spears formed around me, hovering briefly before launching forward with a sharp, tearing sound. Each impact flashed bright, followed by concussive explosions that carved new scars into the land.
Nothing remained where they struck.
More imps emerged.
I observed the pattern. The more i killed the more emerged from their hell hole. The chaos energy from the eliminated things flowed to me, and I could feel my bones cracking slightly as if my body was adjusting itself.
With a smirk, I shaped fire into a spear and hurled it. It punched through bodies, detonating mid flight. I reshaped it again, chains this time, snapping outward and wrapping around screaming forms. With a motion of my wrist, they tightened, ignited, and reduced their captives to drifting ash.
The screams registered as mere data. I could spot inconsistencies with my attack patterns.
I formed a whip and lashed it across the field, each crack erased something alive. I moved efficiently, conserving motion, refining the output.
Still, more of them came.
From the mountains, the numbers multiplied. The slopes darkened, and the ground vibrated.
"Aaaah!"
I spread my hands and fire rose from the earth itself, pillars erupting in lines that erased entire waves. I flattened flames into wide blades that swept the field clean. I compressed fire into dense spheres and flicked them forward, each impact tearing holes through clustered bodies.
The more I killed, the faster I moved.
Then, out of nowhere a laugh, escaped my mouth.
The sound startled me. It burst from my chest without warning, sharp and loud, cutting through the roar of fire and dying things. It did not stop. It grew, echoing across the scorched land.
I did not feel amusement, I did not feel joy, but I laughed anyway.
"What is this?" I asked, even as the sound spilled out of me.
I shaped fire into a massive blade and cleaved through a charging wave, laughing as bodies disintegrated. I twisted flames into hooks and dragged imps screaming into the air before crushing them. The laughter became erratic, breathless, breaking between motions.
"Why am I laughing?"
The fire responded faster now. It bent with less thought. Chains rotated around me, shredding anything that came close. I struck the ground and sent a wave of heat outward, vaporizing dozens.
The sky darkened slightly, then the fire coming out changed.
Green veins crept into the flames, faint at first, then spreading. The heat shifted, unstable, familiar in a way that made something deep inside me tighten.
Chaos.
My laughter faltered, then surged again, harsher now.
The fire in my hands burned green. The imps hesitated, not fleeing, but leaning toward it. The mountains cracked wider, chaos spilling out like breath.
I stared at the flames.
They pulsed eagerly.
And somewhere beneath the noise, beneath the laughter that no longer sounded like mine, reason noted something it could not explain.
The fire was burning hotter, and I could feel chaos starting its corruption of my being in ernest.