The year was 3022.
Life on Earth was never as great as the nations claimed it to be. Humanity never truly learned to coexist. Each person lived their lives based on a series of fragile ideals such as unity, peace, and progress. Nothing more than a bedtime story the nations told them while building borders, destroying forests, polluting Oceans, and breaking promises. That was until the soil cracked, and the skies folded inward. According to Scientists, the planet held on longer than it should have. But in the end, it wasn't just a world that was lost. It was THE world—the Humans' first and only valid home. The fall of planet Earth caused something deeper to break.
No mind, not Human, Alien, Machine, nor divine, would have been capable of predicting what happened next. Some call it Divine retribution. Others, an error in the fabric of what was. Few speak of a collapse in the very grammar of existence, a punctuation mark too final for understanding. But explanations no longer matter. What followed can never be repaired.
That was the birth of the endless realm known only as the Voidlands. Where once stretched an entire universe, infinite in scope and seething with shining Stars, vast Planets, extraordinary Life, and subtle Consequences. Now, only a single island remains. A patch of green and soil, gently cradled upon the back of a slow, drifting cloud, afloat in a breathable, boundless sky. No sun guides it. No stars watch from above. There is no sky, nor ground, nor up nor down. Only singing wind, empty air, and weightless silence.
Only two beings of unrealized power remain in the void.
One is a force of creative divinity; she is as radiant as the sun. Her figure is constantly shifting, forever dreaming of worlds that refuse to solidify. She desires everything yet nothing simultaneously. She is capable of creating without having the ability to touch truly. She does not walk. Yet she arrives. Where she moves, the air warms. Not with heat, but with the ache of a forgotten embrace. She has no face, yet if one were to gaze upon her, they would swear they have seen a mother. A lover. A storm at dawn. A sunrise that never came. What they see is not her, but themselves, echoing through her. And yet, no one remains to look. She does not create by choice, but by yearning. Each movement leaves behind a miracle:
A garden of fruit-bearing trees.
A staircase spiraling into a crescent moon.
A beast with no eyes that sings enchanting melodies before fading into the wind.
She never reacts. Perhaps she cannot finish what she begins. Or maybe she dares not, knowing that to finish is to end. Some may say she is the void that the island floats upon because it remains upon it. Others whisper she is imprisoned, not by walls, but by laws erased from memory. Even the Temple denies her. Its doors stay sealed when she draws near. Sometimes, when the wind hushes and even the stars seem to hold their breath, one might hear her think. It sounds like a wordless hymn. A resonance inside the bones. Those who listen to it forget something sacred. However, they were unaware that it had occurred. Legends say she dreams the Voidlands into being, and that when she wakes, it will all be gone. There are whispers that her opposite, the Severant, was once her companion. Or her creation. Or her undoing. But she does not answer. She watches. She is not a god. She is not a being. She is the light between what was and what could have been. And she is waiting.
The other is a force of destructive justice. He is cold, devastatingly precise, and constantly dissolving all that dares persist for too long. He is stillness without peace. Where he moves, sound folds inward. Not silence, but absence. The breath before the scream. The hush before the judgment. He wears shape like a curse: a figure draped in layers of ash and rusted armor, faceless but for a single slit of red flame where his eyes might once have been. His presence carves the air, as though reality itself makes way for him in fear. He does not build. He erases. Not in rage, but in precision and purpose. With a hand that does not tremble. With a love so cold, it no longer resembles mercy.
He believes in justice. But not the kind mortals begged for. To him, all things must reach their proper end. And if they do not, he brings it to them. Where the Keeper dreams, the Severant remembers. And memory, he knows, is a wound that must be burned shut. With a motion, he can unmake anything matter, thought, cause, or effect. It will be stripped away without a fire, without violence. Just… gone. His voice, seldom heard, is a blade of truth. Lies die beneath it. Minds fracture in its presence. And when he marks something, be it a being, a building, a feeling, it fades slowly and irreversibly.
He watches the Keeper always, not with anger, but with sorrow. Or perhaps remorse. They do not speak. They do not strike. But they revolve around one another like dead suns, bound in orbit, waiting to fall. He, too, is barred from the Temple. Not because he lacks power. But because he remembers what waits within. And even he would not survive it.
Some say he was once a guardian, a cosmic judge tasked with order. But the universe collapsed, and he endured. Others claim he is the echo of an ancient war, the weapon that outlived its wielder. Upon the Temple's sealed threshold is carved a single phrase, in a language none remember:
He ended what he could not bear to continue. He preserved nothing and in doing so, saved everything."
He is not evil. He is not merciful. He is the answer to a question no longer spoken.
And he is waiting, too.
Not to build the Voidlands…
…but to erase them, if the time comes.
And between them stands the Temple. A monolith of forgotten design from a lost age, built by hands no longer remembered. It holds every memory, every name, every wound ever carried. But neither of the two may enter. Neither recalls why.
Time has splintered.
Now it is Year Zero.
There is no light.
There is only air.
There is only a void.