For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the prison around you seemed to change. The bare, icy cold stone trembled with every breath you took.

The void had been asleep for thousands of years. Now it awoke, almost like a creature let off the leash by its owner.

"You are alive.", it slipped from your lips in a whisper.

Maybe it was once again just an illusion your own mind created to remind you of who you were, what you were. And most importantly: where you were. Trapped between living and decay.

Your (H/C) hair danced around your head as if the strands were alive. For so long you had been trapped in this state, weightless and yet as heavy as if your bones were made of stone.

Soft noises seeped through the cracks in the stone.

Was that the wind?

Tears were sticking to your eyelashes. You didn't remember there being wind in this place. Or anything at all.

It was a break in the world, an overlap of emptiness and reality. It was the place where everything and yet nothing existed. The perfect place to turn a boy into a god.

A twitch ran through your body at the memory. An image woke up before your inner eye. Green eyes and hair as black as a raven's feathers.

Fear washed over you. But it wasn't your own. No, in that moment you felt what he had felt. Despair. A choked sound got stuck in your throat.

"Forgive me...", you weren't sure whether you were asking for his forgiveness or your own.

A tremor travelled through the stone. Smoke from black vapours seeped between the cracks in the stone. It lay like a shadow on your arms, kissing your freezing skin. The touch was warm. You were surprised that you could feel.

"The void...", your eyes wandered around the small room you were trapped in. "Is it calling me?"

Your fingers traced the black smoke. It trembled to the touch, alive and yet not. There were so many secrets hidden in this darkness. But what was much more important was the feeling that something was missing.

The void was everything and yet nothing. Magic and illusion. Reality and actual facts. It was hard to explain but what almost everyone knew was that there was a God, he who had once been the boy who had been taken from you.

Since your awakening in this prison of nothing and stone, he had been out of your reach. And yet you had been able to feel his presence. Whenever you had reached for the source of the void with your magic, it was as if he had answered you.

It was like the feeling of being watched from the darkness, not knowing what it was or being able to see it but feeling that it was really there.

Now, when you lifted your fingers to play with the shadows of the void, there wasn't that feeling. All that remained was literally nothing.

"My little echo...", your voice trembled as tears rolled down your cheeks hot as boiling water. "Where have you gone? Have I lost you completely?"

The hole in your chest was torn open wider all at once. Flesh, sinew and bone shattered and all that remained was a pool of blood spilling over the floor. Gasping, you clutched your chest, arching your back.

The pain was unlike anything you had ever had to endure. When you had lost him, it felt like something had been stolen from you. Like a severed arm that was no longer part of your body but still existed. Now it felt like it would crumble to dust and cease to exist.

You would never be able to get it back.

Where had he gone?

When?

And above all, how?

As a God reborn, he was part of the void, one and the same and yet two separate beings. One could exist without the other, but it was untamed, wild.

Once there had been a god of the void who had decayed. Despite his immortality, time had taken everything from him until only a glowing red eye remained. Your little echo had been chosen by the cultists as a worthy successor.

But what happened when a god died, faded like a star that could no longer glow?

You didn't know the answer, but you were afraid of it. If he was gone, really gone, then you were now completely alone in your eternity. Not even the thought that he could still be there in the endlessness gave you any comfort.

Because he was gone.

All at once you felt it as clearly as a hand closing around your neck and squeezing all the air out of your lungs. You were alone. The one thing you had longed for for four long millennia was gone and you would never be reunited with him again.

This realisation produced a pain that a thousand knives could not have produced. Despair constricted your throat while a mocking expression distorted your face.

Had you ever cared so much about a child that had walked into your arms?

You weren't a good woman but you weren't a monster either. They had all fuelled you with their despair and the dark thoughts in their hearts.

But he had been special. You had actually cared for him.

The price you once paid for immortality meant that you could never die. All there was closest to death was to crumble to dust. Nothing would await you, no afterlife, no sweet redemption.

Just emptiness and nothing. Even less than you had now in this prison of stone and darkness. Tears ran down your cheeks. Your (E/C) eyes had been irritated by the salt for centuries.

Where was he now?

Had he found redemption?

In your own ignorance, you hoped so. However, that rotten heart that beat inside your chest wished for him to find you in eternity again.

Just one more time so that you'd never be separated ever again.