Time didn't slow. It crystallized.
The guard' boots scraped on the slick descent, each sound a hammer blow in the cavern's silence. The servant girl, Elara—her name surfaced from Kieran's memory now—remained at the top, a silent sentinel of my betrayal. Her pity was a colder knife than the guard's steel.
My mind, Liam's mind, analyzed the tactical disaster. Enemy: One armed, physically superior adult. Terrain: Confined, with my back to a solid wall. Assets: A dying child's body, a mysterious metal door, and a cosmic horror asleep in my soul that was currently radiating mild irritation.
Not great.
The guard—Corvin, another ghost from Kieran's past, a man whose cruelty was a dull, constant thing—reached the cavern floor. He didn't rush. He had the confidence of a man facing a sick animal.
"Should have just died quietly in your bed, rat," he grunted, twirling the dagger. "Now I have to get dirty. And clean up this mess." His eyes flicked to the dark door behind me with a hint of superstitious unease, then hardened. "Nothing down here but old ice and bad memories. A fine place for a prince to slip and crack his head."
He took a step forward. The pool of black water lay between us, its surface like a sheet of obsidian.
The Star-Eater's pull wasn't just a tug now. It was a demand. A vibration that made my teeth ache. The handprint on the door seemed to pulse in time with my frantic heartbeat. Here. Place it here.
It was insanity. Turning my back on a killer to press my hand against a creepy, ancient door.
But staying here was certain death. The door was the only unknown variable.
"Bad memories," I echoed, my voice a raw scrape. I took a shaky step backward, toward the door. "Is that what my mother was? A bad memory you helped clean up?"
It was a shot in the dark, but the pieces fit. A consort's "wasting sickness." A guard with access and no morals. A prince who needed to follow her.
Corvin's face tightened. A nerve struck. "She asked too many questions. Like you." He began to circle, forcing me to shift, keeping me from the door. "About her food. Her water. Didn't know her place."
Confirmation. Ice filled my veins, colder than the cavern. My rage was no longer cold. It was a focused, white-hot point.
He lunged, not with a stab, but a swift, brutal cut aimed at my face—to maim, to disorient. I flinched back, the blade whiffing past my cheek. My heel caught on an uneven flagstone. I stumbled, arms wheeling, and fell hard on my backside at the very foot of the dark metal door.
The impact drove the breath from my lungs. Corvin loomed over me, a smirk on his face. "Time to join her."
He raised the dagger for a downward thrust.
There was no time to think. Only to act.
I didn't try to roll away. Instead, I slammed my left hand backward, not looking, reaching for the door.
My palm connected with the metal.
It was not cold.
It was void.
A sensation of absolute, hungry nothingness shot up my arm. The spiraling patterns on the door flared with a light that was the opposite of light—a profound, ultraviolet black that hurt to perceive.
And the handprint… it fit. As if the metal had warmed and melted to the exact shape of my childish hand.
A sound filled the cavern. Not a groan of hinges, but a deep, sub-audible release, like a universe sighing. A seam of that anti-light appeared around the edge of the door.
Corvin froze, dagger held high, his smirk vanished, replaced by primal fear. "What witchery is this…?"
He never finished.
From the thin, opening seam, things poured out. Not smoke, not shadow, but fragments of condensed nothingness. They were like living holes in reality, scuttling on too many needle-like legs, their forms shifting and impossible to hold in the eye. They made no sound, but the air screamed around them, growing thin and frigid.
The Star-Eater's whisper was a clear, chilling thought in my head: …the janitors…
The fragments—the Voidants—ignored me completely. They flowed over my legs like a cold, weightless tide and shot toward Corvin.
He screamed. A high, ragged sound of utter terror. He swiped with his dagger. It passed through a fragment harmlessly, the steel emerging rimed with hoarfrost. One of them touched his boot. The leather didn't tear; it simply un-existed in a perfect, silent circle, revealing grey, frostbitten flesh beneath.
He stumbled back toward the chute, batting wildly at the swarm. Another touched his dagger hand. His fingers… vanished. The dagger clattered to the stone, followed by a spray of blood that froze before it hit the ground.
His screams turned into choked, gurgling pleas as the swarm enveloped him. There was no messy consumption. It was a silent, precise erasure. Piece by piece, his form was subtracted from the world. His cries cut off abruptly.
In less than ten seconds, where Corvin had stood, there was nothing. No blood, no body, no clothing. Only a patch of floor that looked slightly smoother, slightly older, as if time itself had been scoured away.
The Voidants streamed back toward the now-cracked door and slithered inside. The door remained ajar, a sliver of infinite dark beckoning.
The anti-light faded. The blue glow of the fungus returned, illuminating an empty, silent cavern.
I was alone. Shaking violently, my left arm numb to the shoulder with a cold that felt permanent. I pulled my hand from the imprint. It came away clean, unmarked, but the skin was pale, almost translucent.
A faint, satisfied hum resonated in my soul. …clean…
I looked up. Elara was gone from the chute opening. She had seen. She had fled.
I pushed myself up, using the door for support. My body was a wreck, but a strange, clear energy was cutting through the poison's fog. Adrenaline, yes. But something more. A trickle of… something… from the door. Not mana. Something older, darker, more fundamental.
I peered through the slit into the space beyond.
It was a small, hexagonal chamber. No treasure. No ancient library. No monster.
In the center, on a pedestal of the same void-metal, sat a single, perfect sphere. It was about the size of a grapefruit, and its surface shifted. One moment it appeared to be obsidian, the next a swirl of nebulae, the next a depthless black that swallowed the light. Around it, the air shimmered with gravitational distortion.
Beneath it, etched into the pedestal, were three lines in a jagged, non-human script. Yet, I understood them. The knowledge was just there, imprinted by the touch of the seal.
The First Truth: All is Consumption.
The Second Truth: The Void is the Only Constant.
The Third Truth: To Hold the Star-Eater is to Balance on the Edge of the End.
This was no power-up. This was a doctrine. A warning.
The sphere was a focus. A tiny, controlled aperture to whatever the Star-Eater was.
A tool. And a leash.
I knew, with instinctive certainty, that if I touched that sphere, nothing would ever be the same. The path of mana and magic was closed to me. But this… this was a different path. A heretical, terrifying one.
Outside, I heard distant shouts. Echoing boots on stone. Elara had raised the alarm. They would come, and they would find a dead guard missing, a forbidden door open, and a prince who should be dead standing amid impossible power.
I had minutes.
I looked at the sphere. I looked at my translucent, numb hand.
To survive the world, I would have to embrace the void.
I stepped through the door, and reached for the shifting sphere.
My fingers closed around it.
The universe screamed.
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