Exile is not merely the loss of place. It is the stripping away of meaning. The Autarch, once crowned in light and authority, was cast beyond the borders of her realm into a silence so vast that even memory seemed to wither.
The Void stretched without end, a sea of nothingness that pressed against her being. No sun marked the passage of time, no stars offered direction. She drifted through this abyss, untethered, weightless, nameless. Her crown was gone, her throne shattered, her people lost. In the silence, she could hear only the echo of her own thoughts, and even those seemed to fade with each passing moment.
Many rulers before her, stripped of such grandeur, would have surrendered to despair. The Void devours easily, and it whispers promises of release to those who would yield. Yet the Autarch was not so fragile. She bore her ruin as she had once borne her crown — with unbending resolve. Though the empire was lost, her will remained unbroken.
Days, years, perhaps centuries — time was meaningless in the black expanse. Yet she endured, her form drifting like a lone ember in an ocean of dark. Every breath, every heartbeat, became an act of defiance. The Void wished to erase her, but she clung to herself, refusing to be unmade.
And in that unending silence, she began to listen. Beyond the suffocating emptiness, she sensed faint echoes — fragments of sorrow, whispers of forgotten dreams, remnants of emotions cast adrift from countless souls. They called to her, faint but unrelenting, like sparks in the dark.
It was then that she understood: though her crown was shattered, though her empire was ash, there was still power to be found. Not in land, nor in armies, nor in thrones — but in these fragments of life itself.
The Void had sought to undo her. Instead, it became the crucible of her transformation.