Date: 6/23/2001 – Time Unknown
Location: The Great Void – Threshold of Acceptance
Perspective: Amelia (000829)
The world didn't just end. It vanished.
One moment, I was standing on a floor of quartz, my hand inches away from Kaiser's sleeve. The next, the light was swallowed. I looked to my left, where 01 had been standing. He was gone.
I looked to my right for Kaiser…
He was gone, too.
I was standing in a darkness so absolute that my eyes felt strained, searching for a single pixel of color to record. There was nothing. No floor beneath my feet, yet I didn't fall. No air against my skin, yet I could still breathe.
"This is the layer of the unborn," a voice said.
It didn't come from the dark. It came from inside my own thoughts, vibrating against my memories.
"It is the space where the heir lives to write the next tomorrow. It is the beginning of the future."
"Where is Kaiser?"
"That child is partaking in his own trial. He is occupied with his own ending. For you, he is not important. He is irrelevant to your fate."
"He isn't irrelevant," I whispered, my chest tightening. I closed my eyes, summoning the image of him wiping the blood from his face. I could remember every eyelash, every drop of crimson.
"He is the only thing I have that isn't a memory."
"A human life is insignificant," the Void stated.
"The universe does not stop for a single pulse. It expands. It creates infinite possibilities across the stars. It exists because it allows itself to be expanded upon by those with the authority to do so."
"We all exist within the space that was once you," I reasoned.
My mind flashed back to the books I had memorized—astrology, the birth of stars, the way light travels through a vacuum.
"Everything came from the nothingness. If I am here, it's because I have a purpose."
"Observe your purpose, then."
The darkness peeled back like a curtain.
I saw a woman. She was beautiful, tall, and elegant, standing on a balcony that overlooked a forest. She looked like me—the same eyes, the same sharp jawline. But her hair wasn't black like mine. It was a shimmering, pale blond, glowing like moonlight.
"Is that... me?"
"It is the version of you that survives the Foundation. You travel to the Elvian lands. You strive to take the title of the Elvian Queen. You seek a throne to prove you are not a misfit."
I watched the woman in the vision. She was surrounded by others—candidates with noble blood and ancient lineages. They looked at her with such intense loathing that I felt a phantom coldness in my blood. They whispered words like stain, half-breed, and disgrace. They laughed when she spoke. They turned their backs when she walked into a room.
"You are placed in competition with candidates who are supremely superior. You are disgraced. You are hated by the people for the sin of your birth. You are an outsider in your own home."
"Why?"
"I did everything right..."
"Because you are unfit," the Void said.
"You are not perfect. You are a collection of recorded faults with no soul to anchor it. You are unworthy of the crown you seek."
The vision shifted. The silver trees were gone. I saw a room—small, dark, and smelling of old dust. The blond woman was sitting on the floor. Her eyes were hollow. She wasn't recording anything anymore. She looked like she had run out of space to store the pain.
"On December 14, 2021, at 3:14 AM, your insignificant life reaches its conclusion. You will take your own life. No one will stop you. No one will mourn the girl who tried to be a queen."
The date hit me like a physical blow. I had a perfect memory. I could see that date written in my mind, a fixed point in a future I hadn't lived yet. 2021.
I would be an adult, and I would be so broken that I would choose the void over the world.
"No..." I sobbed, my knees finally giving out. I collapsed into the nothingness. "I can... I can change it. I can be better. I'll work harder. I'll memorize more..."
"Precision cannot fix a fundamental flaw. You are a disaster of birth, Child. You are a thread that leads to a knot. Acceptance is your only escape from the shame of your own existence."
The weight of it was too much. The Void wasn't lying; I could feel the truth of it in the way the stars in the distance seemed to turn away from me. I was a mistake. I was a girl who was good at remembering things that didn't matter.
I stayed there for a long time, the silence of the room in 2021 echoing in my ears. I felt like a child who had been told the world was ending, and I had nowhere to hide.
I looked up into the darkness.
"Where is Kaiser?" I whispered again.
It was the only thought I had left that didn't end in a grave.
"He is not in the future you have witnessed."
"He has to be. He's my partner!"
"You have lived past your utility. You are a resource that has been depleted. He is a weapon that continues to refine itself."
"He will abandon you."
"No. He promised. He said he would stay forever. I have the memory. I can play it back right now—every syllable, every vibration of his voice."
"A memory is a static image. A human is an adaptive race. He will find someone more useful. He will find a replacement for the weak."
The darkness rippled.
A new image formed, sharper and more painful than the last. It was Kaiser, but he was older—13, perhaps. He looked taller, his shoulders broader, his blue eyes filled with a cold, terrifying authority. He was walking through a courtyard of white stone.
He wasn't alone.
He was holding hands with a girl. She had long, vibrant pink hair and blue eyes. She wore the same elite academic uniform he did. They moved in perfect synchronization, talking to each other with a smile. She looked back at him and laughed, and he didn't pull away. He didn't look back at the shadow where I was standing.
"He will replace you with someone superior. Someone who is not a failure. Someone who is not unfit. You are nothing. You are replaceable."
"It's a lie. He wouldn't... he wouldn't leave me behind."
"He is moving toward excellence. You are moving toward 2021. You are a weight he must drop to reach the summit. He has already begun to calculate your removal."
I looked at the girl in the vision. She was beautiful. She was perfect.. She was the "Peak" that the Foundation wanted.
My perfect memory replayed the vision over and over, engraving the sight of their joined hands into my mind until it felt like a physical wound.
He broke the promise.
He left me in the dark.
"This outcome is the only one that exists without intervention. You are a victim of a story you did not write. But you can stop it."
"How?"
"Submit."
"Become the heir of the Void. Become the vessel that holds the fate. I will grant you the power of the Quill. You will no longer be a character in a tragedy. You will be the writer."
I looked at the blond version of myself, weeping in the small room. Then I looked at the pink-haired girl who had stolen the only life I ever knew.
"Acceptance allows you to define the future. You can ensure he never leaves. You can write him into your story so deeply that abandonment becomes an impossibility."
"You can bind him to you forever."
I closed my eyes. I reached out for the memory of Kaiser's hand on mine in the Cathedral, but the memory felt cold.
He should have been here.
He should have stopped the voice from saying these things.
But he didn't.
He was off fighting his own war, leaving me to drown in my own insignificance. He was already practicing for the day he would walk away.
"The Quill is waiting. The ink is your loyalty. Submit, and you will never be replaced."
"I... I understand," I whispered. The tears felt like lead on my skin. "If I am the writer, he can't leave. If I am the Void, he has nowhere else to go."
"State the conclusion."
"I submit," I said, my voice flat and hollow. "I will become the vessel. I will take the Quill."
The darkness didn't just fade. It exploded.
A blinding, sterile white light rushed in from every direction, bleaching the memories, the visions, and the pain. I felt my sense of self being stretched, reorganized, and pinned down by a weight that felt like the entire universe pressing against my soul.
I am 000829.
The white light consumed everything.
My eyes snapped open.
Date: 6/23/2001 – 5:12 AMLocation: Foundation Nursery – Recovery Ward
I was awake.
I was lying on a cold, metal table. My heart was beating with a slow, rhythmic precision that didn't feel like mine. I looked at my hands. They were small again.
I sat up and looked around the room. It was empty, save for the hum of the machines and the red pulse of the emergency lights.
"Where is Kaiser?" I asked in silence.
Then I noticed his form inside a test tube crying tears of blood.
Date: 6/23/2001 – Time Unknown
Location: The Great Void – Threshold of Acceptance
Perspective: Designation 000001
The silence here was different from the silence of the Foundation. In the Foundation, silence is the absence of noise. Here, the silence was a presence—a heavy, suffocating weight that pressed against my eardrums like the depths of an ocean.
I stood in the center of the infinite black.
"The end has taken a human form."
The voice didn't echo. It originated from the vacuum itself.
"Meaning?"
"You are the conclusion of every trial. You are the finality of the verse. But my authority surpasses your own. I am the space between the words."
"What do you need?" I asked. I did not look around. There was nothing to see.
"Submit. Become the Heir of the Quill."
"You will receive the capacity to write fate. You will be the creator of the next tomorrow. Every soul, every kingdom, and every ending will be yours to dictate."
"I refuse," I said. My voice was a flat line.
"I have no desire for that power."
The Void fell silent. For a moment, the darkness seemed to hold its breath. Then, the space in front of me shifted.
The blackness peeled back to reveal a kingdom of white spires and golden banners.
The Valerion Kingdom.
I recognized the architecture from the restricted archives. In the center of a lush, private garden, I saw a woman.
She had pale, blond hair that fell like silk over her shoulders, but her eyes were black. She was beautiful, but her beauty was a sharp thing, honed by ambition.
"This is your origin."
"The 5th mistress of King Varonis Valerion. A noble girl chosen for her aesthetic and her ambition. She was meant to be a bridge between the throne and the nobility."
I felt a microscopic twitch in my left hand. I suppressed it.
"She was betrayed."
"Exiled by the very people she sought to lead. Abandoned by Varonis. Ashamed and thrown out of the palace gates like a common thief."
"It was a future orchestrated by the Empress's hand."
The vision zoomed in on the woman's face. She was weeping, her black eyes filled with a cold, jagged hatred.
"You strive to be Number One because you believe the Foundation is a ladder. You think that if you reach the top, they will let you go. You think you can fulfill her vengeance. You are a weapon being forged for a ghost."
"The Foundation is a tool," I stated.
"I will choose my own future."
"You are a failure of that mother's ambition," the Void whispered, the sound crawling into my skull. "You belong in the Foundation because she had nowhere else to hide the evidence of her disgrace."
"I will rewrite the outcome," I said. My poker face remained, but the temperature of my blood was rising.
"You will do nothing."
"On August 19, 2018, at 11:12 PM, your mother will seek the light of her revenge for the last time. She will be assassinated. The Empress's shadow will find her in a room. She will perish, and you will be a prisoner of your own perfection."
The date—2018—hit me like a physical impact. I calculated the time. Seventeen years. I had seventeen years to become something the Empress couldn't kill, and the Void was telling me it was already too late.
A crack formed in my composure. I narrowed my eyes, my gaze boring into the vision of the blond woman.
"You may be the perfect end to every other story."
"But within the realm of fate, you are merely an immortal being taken human form. You are a deity that thinks it can move the story."
"You are going to see your own ending now."
"And it is not the one you have planned."
The vision of Valerion shattered. The white spires turned into black shards that pierced the darkness.
I stood alone, the weight of 2018 settling into my bones.