The Void was endless, yet within its silence, the Autarch began to see what others could not. For where most would see only emptiness, she saw fragments — faint flickers of light adrift in the abyss, like dying stars refusing to fade. They were not flames of the cosmos, but sparks of something deeper: the remnants of emotion, fragments of thought, echoes of dreams abandoned.
At first, they drifted past her unnoticed, like dust on a forgotten breeze. But as she lingered, she felt their pull. Each spark carried weight, a resonance that stirred something within her. When one brushed against her form, she felt sorrow — raw, aching sorrow — belonging to a life extinguished long ago. Another brought with it joy, bright and fleeting, like laughter echoing in an empty hall. She realized then that these fragments were the remnants of countless lives, scattered across eternity, lost to the silence of the Void.
Most would have dismissed them as meaningless, the debris of existence. But the Autarch, stripped of all else, recognized their value. These sparks were not refuse — they were essence. The true treasures of being. For what is an empire compared to the weight of a single dream? What is a crown beside the final whisper of a soul's hope?
She reached out, gathering the fragments to her. They clung to her hands, to her cloak, to her very essence, and as they did, she felt her own strength return. They filled the hollows left by betrayal and exile, weaving new threads into her being.
The Void, once suffocating, now seemed alive with possibilities. The Autarch had been cast into exile to be unmade. Instead, she discovered something her betrayers could never grasp — a new kind of dominion, one not of borders and banners, but of the immortal sparks left behind by all who had ever lived.
It was in that moment the embers of her rebirth truly ignited. The Void had not broken her. It had given her a new foundation upon which to rise.