Rowel sat. Not out of comfort, but honestly, out of existential necessity.
Above him, the glowing countdown ticked like a bored executioner.
09:49
09:48
09:47…
Each second louder than the last. Or maybe that was just the sound of his heart knocking its way out of his chest.
His legs crossed, his face composed—but inside? Chaos. A full-blown one-man orchestra of panic playing the world's most offbeat funeral march.
Think, Rowel. Think. You've tricked liches. Outsmarted sentient tax collectors. You can survive this boy!
Then again, most of those things didn't set timers on his skull.
His mind whirled. His life flashed before his eyes. Not chronologically. Not dramatically. Just flashes. Misfires, random, yet embarrassing moments.
— The time he wore a rabbit suit for a spell gone wrong at a city show.
— The realm where he kissed a fish because he thought it was a princess.
— That one winter he tried conjuring a fireplace and nearly summoned an actual fire demon
How did I even end up here?
How is this even interesting?!
Two questions.
Harmless in the mind, right?
The countdown glitched. Skipped. Dropped.
08:40
07:39
Rowel froze.
Across from him, she sat still inevitability, but her mouth curled. Barely. Like the void itself had smirked.
❝One,❞ she said coolly, ❝to see what is most important for you to know before you either waste or wither.❞
❝Two,❞ she added, almost with a shrug, ❝through a door.❞
The words hit like cold water through hot shame.
❝…Are you kidding me?❞
His voice jumped.
Another minute died.
06:30
He slapped both palms over his mouth, like a man who'd just realized he'd been pouring coffee into a toaster.
He dared not speak.
Traitor brain. Another thought. A real question. Slipped out between neurons before he could leash it.
And she answered. Instantly.
❝Three. No, magician, I'm not.❞
06:28
His expression was twisted. Not in horror. Not even in fear. It was something far worse.
Comical cosmic disbelief.
His eyes went wide—so wide that they looked like they were trying to escape the face entirely.
His mouth held a fragile smile. A single sweat drop rolled down his temple. Dripping on the table, he could feel it so loud in the silence.
He stared up at the countdown. Stared at her. Stared back at the countdown.
Rowel didn't scream.
He didn't cry.
Instead, he calmly reached up… and removed his brain from his own head. Like tweaking out a bunt out lamp.
Held it like it owed him money.
"You useless piece of—!"
And with the grace of a man one tick away from a full breakdown, he yeeted it into the void.
It spun once. Bounced off the darkness. Vanished.
Tap.
A sound echoed. Sharp, slow.
Tap.
He turned.
She had placed a single finger on the table. She tapped again, eyes half-lidded in something between amusement and judgment.
Each tap echoed like a war drum in his skull. One. Second. Per. Tap.
Tap.
She pointed upward without lifting her hand—just flicked her wrist like a bored aristocrat swatting away a fly.
06:15
Rowel's eyes twitched.
"Boy, get back in here." He said, as he adjusted his cloak, opening his head like a box.
Then a skitter sound emerged. His brain reappeared. With legs. Tiny, nervous, apologetic legs.
It waddled back up his coat and jumped into his skull with a wet plop. He didn't even blink.
From across the void, her voice slid over the space like honey spilt on stone.
She didn't shout. She didn't need to. The weight of her words alone pulled his spine back into his body.
❝Better hurry,❞ she added, almost purring, ❝because I can smell the fish on your lips.❞
Rowel's face went blank.
Then horror.
Then realization.
Then regret…
She had read his thoughts. That damn fish realm, not only that but gave him a mocking comment about it.
He tried to look dignified, but dignity had already packed up and left the room.
"Right," he muttered, crossing his legs again. "Right. Thinking now. Just—thinking."
Because if he was going to either vanish or implode, he might as well try to cheat fate first.
He looked up at the ticking clock, then into the unknowable void of her gaze.
The ticking grew louder.
Not because the sound changed, but because Rowel's nerves did.
05:57
He shifted in his chair, one leg bouncing like it had a better idea and wasn't sharing it. His fingers drummed on the velvet armrest, and his thoughts played tag, none of them offering anything useful for a 'first' good question. Except one.
He wondered if he could leave this place intact.
He thought about phrasing it better. Dressing it up. Each question should be phrased in a way that gives him answers that count.
He exhaled.
"What are my chances of leaving this place?"
She tilted her head, so mechanically yet her expression was unreadable.
Not quickly. Like a glacier deciding to notice him. Her finger made a small, idle spiral on the table's surface. The sound that followed wasn't fingernail on wood—it was fingernail on reality.
❝Approximately the same as surviving a passage through the accretion disk of a Class IV black hole… while reciting prime numbers… backwards.❞
Rowel blinked.
"Wow. So basically, that's the human way of saying impossible huh,"
"or if I'm the punchline of the universe's best joke." He muttered in his thoughts, still forgetting the fact that she can read them.
She said nothing. But there was a glint behind her eyes—like the kind one sees before something explodes.
He leaned back, adjusting his hat. His face was unreadable. The way a magician hides the card before he even shuffles the deck.
It was time to play with fate. While thinking of proper questions to ask, he joggled through a dozen ways to outsmart the situation. His thoughts were a chaotic typhoon, but somehow he managed to think straight. It was like multi-task-thinking.
"Great. Now we know I'll become something less comical." He said.
Silence slipped between them again. Not awkward. Not peaceful. Just wide.
Then it struck him. A low memory hum.
That sound again.
The one he had followed throughout every realm—across doors that didn't want to open, across skies that whispered in sleep.
That hum. It had always been ahead. Always leading. Like a voice he never learned the words to. Every time he visited a realm or a foreign land, collecting the memories of souls that he respected before they slipped out of this world, making them a part of his being.
And now it was quiet.
No. Not quiet. Muted. Like it had reached its destination and shut the door.
His throat tightened.
"The hum I followed… what is it?"
She didn't react—not in the way humans did. Her stillness deepened, somehow. The shadows behind her pulled inward.
❝That…❞ she said, softer than before, voice drawn thinner. ❝I cannot answer.❞
She wasn't lying.
Worse—she meant it.
A heavy weight dropped in Rowel's gut like a trapdoor flung open beneath his stomach.
"Huh?! I thought we had a deal!" He felt a bit enraged, feeling that it wasn't fair that a question he asked wouldn't be answered.
He blinked then again but harder—like that would somehow change the rules.
She didn't move but instead, the pressure of the dark void cascading around them grew. Like it was creeping up to Rowel.
She turned her head slightly, her eyes half-lidded, as though regarding a candle that had just tried to threaten the sun. Then she spoke. Not loud. Not harsh. But with a tone that dug in like a whispered unwanted truth.
❝Magician… you really thought you could make a deal with the void?❞
Her voice this time wasn't mocking, or cold, but in disappointment.
Rowel's spine locked in place. He didn't even remember tensing.
She tilted her head further, too slowly. It looked like she was breathing, but the air never moved. Not in. Not out. A mimicry of life. Nothing more.
Her tone shifted—flattened. It dipped into something deeper. Something Older, hardly translated.
❝Your brain really is rotting away.❞
Then, in the same breath that wasn't considered breath at all, her voice twisted into a near-whisper. A kind of horrible softness people only use right before a blade goes in.
❝Sorry to break it down to you... but I really can't answer that one.❞ She tilted her head back to center and blinked, not sincere in the slightest. Like she played with expressions, acting them for his fragile mind to understand, not that she needed them on her face. For she was not human.
Rowel sat there, finally feeling very much like the punchline. Not to the universe but to the void.
He looked down. Yet even the floor was more of an idea than a surface, and now even ideas were shaking.
He sat straighter. There was no magic to play with now. Only math. One question after the other. Five now three. He thought, but didn't really want to look at the countdown above his head no more, for in his mind he could feel the seconds pass and could calculate every second while thinking.
He chose the next one like a man picking which bone he wanted broken. "What happens to me when the countdown ends?"
She smiled. Slowly. A rehearsed expression, like she'd done this before.
❝Do you want the best-case scenario… or the worst?❞
"The worst." He said it too fast. No hesitation, yet he was still curious on what could be even worse than fading out.
She leaned in just enough to make space bend.
❝Then… You A body-less fragment,❞ She let that sit in his mind for a moment before she continued, ❝You won't move. You won't die. You'll simply… persist. A flesh of a hat, or a card. With all of your insides on the outside. No more. Only to be left on a shelf somewhere no shelf should be.❞
She tapped the table again, once. No sound. Just pressure.
Rowel blinked slowly. He tried to speak. Only a small wheeze came out.
"…So. Eternal furniture. Got it."
❝No,❞ She paused before she adjusted her position with the kind of grace the seemed elegantly bizarre. She uncrossed one leg only to re-cross it toward the other side of the table.
Then, with a tilt of her spine too fluid to be human, she rested her chin against the back of her hand—forehead nestled into curled fingers with her elbow propped.
It should've looked ridiculous.
But it didn't.
It looked… designed.
❝Much lesser than furniture,❞
Two questions left.
He swallowed, slowly. It felt like he was drinking nails, his saliva was too hard to gulp down.
He stared at her. Not as a performer. Not as a trickster. But as someone who had one coin left in a game. His voice didn't tremble as he spoke firmly.
"What are you?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she shifted. Slowly. Like the void itself had to rearrange to let her speak.
Her eyes, or the semblance of them, narrowed—not threateningly, but as if amused by how small the question was… and how heavy it would be for his mind to handle. So she spoke in a language he could understand.
❝I am what forms when silence folds in on itself. I was not born. I am where born things end. Think of it like an endless tunnel that gets darker as you walk until there is no more light.❞
She lifted her hand and waved it lazily toward the edges of the realm.
❝I am the space behind endings. The memory between disappearances.❞
And then—softly:
❝Some would call me 'what comes after meaning.'❞ when she saw him fold his arms, tilting his head while trying to understand. She spoke again with a sigh, ❝You can think of me as the eldrich void itself.❞
His eyes lit up, as if he was so amused by her last lines.
"Damn lovecraft, you were right!" His mind screamed in excitement that shouldn't be there at that time.
Hopeless magician…
That was his ninth question. With him finally understanding a piece of the unknown that perched elegantly before him. Rowel was attracted to mystery, and this kind of mystery had his mind wrapped up.
Only one remained. Not that any of his feelings matters anyways, since he was bound to cease either way.
Rowel didn't speak. Not yet, as something stopped him.
His breath caught—not from fear—but from a flood. A flood of things forgot he carried all this time, the moment he stepped into the void.
He remembered. Not his memories. But theirs. The small ones. The faint ones.
The child in the battlefield, whose laugh still echoed in the bloodied grass. Forgotten and lost.
The madman who managed to make amends for their actions before they ceased to be.
The girl with one poem left unwritten.
The boy who saw constellations in everything except himself.
The rabbit actor, who despite being shunned by his kin for having black fur—found solace only on the stage where he performed and played with roles like a toymaker plays with marionettes.
More and more flooded his being. Memories not stored, but felt.
Because every open door he ever conjured let something pass into him too.
He blinked, and it was like every soul he'd brushed against reached out, quietly pressing their foreheads to his, hugging even his heart.
They should've had more time.
And now, neither did he.
Before his voice broke through, he smiled. The kind of smile that could only be on the face of someone who achieved his life purpose, but the question he was about to ask made him anxiously hoping for the best for them.
"What will happen to all of those memories when I'm gone?"
Her expression didn't shift, but something beneath it… did.
Not sorrow or empathy for she didn't find need for them. At first it was just a movement as if the void blinked. She regarded him with something unreadable.
❝Selfless magician… now you think of memories, but not knowledge?❞
He shrugged. Not carelessly. Just… lightly. As if the weight had passed.
"What's the point of acquiring knowledge I know too well I won't use when I'm turned into a voiceless abomination of a hat?" He spoke knowing too well he was right to be convinced wrong. Rowel knew better than to perform a trick he wouldn't succeed in. This was not a trick, and fate cannot be toyed with.
He took off his hat, placed it on the table. Marking the conclusion to his timer in his mind, with only a few seconds left.
"…Also I'm kinda craving cereal."
It wasn't a joke when he said it. For there is one thing Rowel had always loved to eat, even if it was going to be his meal for an eternity—which in some sense it actually was, regarding how long he lived—he would still savor it like it's his first time eating it.
He picked up the silver spoon. And took one bite after another, as the flakes floated on the bowl, rattling and hitting against the ceramic bowl.
She closed her eyes, and smiled a smile that didn't belong anywhere. Not here. Not in any dimension and definitely not on the void itself.
❝All of those memories will cease.❞ she said. ❝None will be bound to you. None will scream with your unraveling.❞
He nodded. Finally feeling relief, as he gulped down the flakes-mixed milk. The weight of these memories now went off his chest, it was time to enjoy… the holy bowl of cereal.
He didn't look at the clock. I didn't need to until she spoke.
❝You still have one more minute.❞
His spoon paused. Mid-air.
She raised a single finger, once again, pointing at the timer.
01:20
❝Since you didn't get to know what the hum is, your question still remains.❞ She squinted her eyes, as if waiting for him to utter just one thing she wants to hear until the end.
❝What is it that you wish to see now Rowel?❞
And just when he was going to scoff and say this wouldn't help—he thought about how she said 'see' instead of 'know.'
Rowel didn't move. And his spoon hovered mid-air. His eyes didn't move at first, only his mind did.
Tunneling backward. Rewinding to the moment he first stepped through the door that wasn't a door. Her voice had been the first to greet him. Velvet and stone.
He remembered the words.
"It's the eye that lies, not the form. Look long enough, and you'll understand."
He repeated them aloud, but not to her. He said them the way someone would say a spell they'd just realized it meant something.
"It's the eye that lies… not the form." And then—slowly—like ink spreading through parchment, a smile carved its way across his lips, and his hair slid over his face.
He turned to her, with intent on his grin. He wasn't trying to escape any more, but to understand what others ran from. A smile carved by clarity, not confidence.
He looked up. Straight into where her eyes would be, if eyes ever stayed still on her form.
Her head moved—just slightly. A gesture so small it could've been instinct, but she didn't blink.
He spoke again, with a low but steady voice.
"What if I choose to see more?"
The words didn't echo. They sank.
"If eyes lie, then I might as well not believe them."
"What if I stay longer in the void… to see more?"
He tilted his head just slightly, and his smile stretched like a magician pulling one last trick from a rigged deck.
"To know you."
He didn't raise his hand, but metaphorically—he'd just laid the card down..
The ace of spades.
The void didn't stir. But something behind her, beneath her and inside her…
It noticed, and time halted at a pause.
00:09