Alatar drifted in silence long after Ulfrimir vanished into the cavern's maw, his form swallowed by frost and shadow. The Hoary King's words lingered in the air like frostbite on the skin—sharp, cold, impossible to forget.
He turned them over in his mind again and again.
A light that blinds when seen… a light that feeds when unseen… seek not with sight, but with the wound that weeps within you.
Alatar touched his forehead unconsciously, fingertips brushing the faint slit where the eye had appeared. The skin there still felt raw, tingling as though it were waiting—hungering—to open again. Was Ulfrimir speaking of this? Of that alien eye and the pain that birthed it? Or was it something else—some hidden law of this frozen world?
The questions circled without answer, weaving frustration into his chest. He wanted to believe the riddle held meaning, but right now it seemed like cruel poetry—another enigma laid upon his already fractured existence.
With a long breath, he steadied himself. "It has to be tied to the light," he muttered. "And… to that eye."
Resolute, he stepped out of the cave's mouth, the frozen winds clawing at him as he floated forward once more. The distant glow on the horizon called to him, unwavering, a beacon that felt at once like salvation and doom. He fixed his gaze upon it—ready, determined.
Then, without warning, the world convulsed.
A pressure seized him, not physical but deeper, more primal. It was as though the land itself had risen against him, rejecting his presence. His body locked, veins burning, while the mountains groaned in low, rumbling dissonance. His vision flickered, snow and stone unraveling into streaks of darkness.
Alatar gasped, a wordless cry forced from his lungs. Am I being cast out?
The world shattered.
Everything collapsed into black.
And when Alatar's eyes opened again, he was no longer in the frozen tundra. The mountains, the beasts, the endless cold—all were gone.
He floated once more in the Void.
The same place where this had begun.
The same emptiness where he had devoured the blue light.
The silence pressed in on him, vast and endless, as if mocking the fragile illusion of the world he had just left behind.
Alatar clenched his fists, the memory of the tundra and Ulfrimir's riddle still raw in his mind. He was back at the beginning… or perhaps not.
Something had changed.
Alatar staggered—if such a thing could be done in the Void—his very essence quivering under the weight of what had just transpired. The frozen winds, the beasts, the riddle, the pain of that alien eye… all gone, erased as though it had never been. Yet his body still ached with phantom sensations, reminding him that what he had witnessed was no illusion.
He looked down at himself and froze.
For the first time, he was not just a drifting soul, a flickering flame adrift in nothingness. He stood—or rather existed—in full physical form, clothed in the shape of flesh and bone. His hands trembled before his eyes, pale and human-like but undeniably real. He flexed his fingers and felt tendons pull, muscles coil. The sensation sent a shiver through him, a reminder of what he once was.
"I… I have a body," he whispered, awe and fear mingling. "Here, in the Void…"
But as quickly as the wonder bloomed, it withered. His form wavered, edges flickering as if made of smoke. His chest tightened with strain, every second heavier, harder to maintain. It was like trying to hold a breath for too long—unnatural, unsustainable.
He understood then.
The Void rejected permanence. To walk it in flesh was like forcing himself into a mold that did not belong. Only by shedding the burden of form could he traverse it freely.
With a reluctant exhale, Alatar released his body.
It unraveled, breaking apart into motes of darkness, until once again he floated in his soul-state. But this time… it was different.
His essence glimmered not with the faint, fading light of a lost human soul, but with something darker, heavier, more alien. Obsidian black swirled through him like molten stone. Streaks of blood-dark red pulsed with a slow rhythm, as though echoing a heart no longer bound to flesh. And threaded between them, veins of shifting gray patterns glowed faintly, like cracks in an ancient monolith.
He hovered in silence, staring at his own form, a hollow weight pressing into his mind. This was no longer human. Not entirely.
Drawing deeper, he looked within.
There it was—faint, distant, like a half-closed door: the frozen world. Polaris Prime. He could still feel it, still sense the mountains, the beasts, the chill of the winds. But it remained locked to him, blurred and unreachable, as though sealed away.
"A… cooldown," he muttered, tasting the strange word in his mind. It was the closest thing to what he felt. The connection had not been severed, only withheld. The world waited, but not yet.
Not until he was ready.
Or perhaps… not until it was.
The realization gnawed at him. If Polaris Prime was a fragment of something greater—a trial, a crucible—then what of this Void? What of the light he had devoured that took him there? Was he walking through illusions, or birthing them from himself?
Alatar clenched his obsidian-red hand, watching the gray veins pulse faintly like living script. Whatever he was becoming, it was no longer simple.
And deep within the silence, the memory of Ulfrimir's riddle stirred again, like an ember refusing to die.
Drifting once more into the endless dark, Alatar forced his mind to focus. He could not linger on the pain, or on the slit that throbbed faintly on his forehead, or on the riddle Ulfrimir had cast like a shadow across his thoughts. He needed something familiar. Something that would anchor him.
Devour.
That had been his first instinct when he began wandering this abyss, and it would serve him now. He set a simple goal for himself: to find and consume more souls. Perhaps, if nothing else, he would gain understanding through repetition.
The Void answered.
It always did.
Before him, like faint sparks in a sea of nothing, four orbs shimmered. They drifted slowly, aimlessly, unaware—or unwilling—to resist his approach.
Three of them were golden, glowing faintly with a soft warmth. They reminded him instantly of Jason—the first soul he had taken. A strange melancholy struck him as he gazed at them, but hunger dulled it quickly.
One after another, he drew them in. Their memories spilled into him, fragments of lives lived on strange yet eerily familiar worlds. Cities of glass and steel. Endless wars for fleeting causes. Families that rose and broke apart like waves on a shore. And always, always the same weakness—mortality.
The flood of memories left him with faces, names, places… but nothing useful. No strength. No new abilities. Just echoes of normality.
Useless.
And yet… a truth dawned.
These worlds were not one, but many. Vastly similar to Earth, yet distinct. Countless reflections cast into the void. Each golden soul tethered to its own version of a mortal realm.
Perhaps this is what they are, he thought grimly, his obsidian-red form pulsing with dull hunger. Golden souls are just… ordinary. The dead drifting here, carrying only their pasts. Food with no nourishment.
But the fourth orb—
The fourth was not gold.
It drifted apart from the others, dimmer yet sharper, as though it carved its place in the dark rather than merely floated. Its glow was not the pale blue of the first great light he devoured, nor the soft warmth of the golden souls. This was something else entirely—something foreign. Its colors shifted faintly, like oil sliding across black water, never settling into one shape.
Alatar's grin twisted across his face before he realized it, eerie and wide. His hunger stirred—not merely of the body, but of curiosity, of the need to know.
"What… are you?" he whispered, voice low, reverent, and dangerous.
The orb pulsed once, as though it had heard.
And Alatar's grin only widened.