The morning after the breach, Almagh looked even more lifeless than before.
The mist that usually hovered above the city had turned pale — not gray, not white, just... empty.
Color itself seemed to have fled.
Lian walked through the narrow streets, her hood drawn low. Every corner felt heavier than it should, as though the air itself remembered something she had forgotten.
The people who still lingered in Almagh avoided her gaze. Their souls — or what remained of them — flickered weakly behind hollow eyes.
Something inside her was changing.
She could no longer see the faint colors that once pulsed around living beings.
Only outlines remained — ghostly traces of what used to be vibrant.
> "You're losing it," the Void whispered inside her.
"Your sight, your sense, your color."
"I know," she murmured. "But I can still hear them."
The Void chuckled softly — a sound like dry wind moving through stone.
---
She reached the marketplace — or what was left of it.
Crumbling stalls, shards of cracked crystal, and the stale scent of old incense filled the air.
Beneath the dust, the symbols of the old Guardians still lingered on the broken walls — faint sigils carved by hands that once believed in light.
Lian traced one with her gloved finger. The stone pulsed faintly beneath her touch.
A vision flashed through her mind — fragments of memory not her own.
Guards in white armor chanting.
A sudden flare of light.
Screams swallowed by brilliance.
Then, silence.
She pulled her hand back, trembling.
"Light… it devoured them," she whispered.
> "Light always hungers," said the Void.
"Just as I do. But the one who wields it — he isn't mine."
Lian frowned. "What do you mean?"
> "Something else grows in this city. A mind that bends not to darkness, but to brilliance. It feeds differently… on desire, not despair."
Her heart skipped. A being that consumed through light, not void?
---
She moved on, deeper into the lower districts — where the ruins met the tunnels.
Here, the air was thicker. Every sound came back as an echo, warped and slower, as if the world itself struggled to remember how to breathe.
In one forgotten workshop, she found torn papers scattered across a rusted table. The writing was elegant but frantic, pressed deep into the page as if each word was carved in desperation.
> "The resonance must evolve beyond emotion."
"Color is limitation. True power lies in unification."
"Light that absorbs, not reflects."
She frowned, tracing the edge of a half-burned note.
Whoever wrote this had been trying to merge all colors — all souls, all resonance — into one form.
At the bottom of the page, one final line was underlined in blood:
> "Subject D-03 achieved partial color collapse. No resonance detected. Physical form intact. Possible path to ascension."
Her pulse quickened.
"Color collapse…" she whispered. "Someone erased their own soul and survived."
---
A noise behind her made her freeze.
Paper shifted on its own. A shadow moved across the far wall — faint, human-shaped, but flickering like a dying flame.
"Who's there?"
No answer.
Only the hum of resonance deep in the walls.
Then the shadow stepped forward. For a single, breathless moment, it looked right at her — empty eyes, mouth open in silence — and dissolved into the stone.
Not fading. Not fleeing. Absorbed.
Lian staggered back, hand on her dagger.
That wasn't Void corruption. Void consumed and left absence — but this, this rewrote what existed.
> "You shouldn't be here," the Void hissed.
"This isn't my doing. This is his."
"Whose?" she demanded.
Silence stretched — until the Void finally whispered:
> "The one who tried to become everything."
---
When she left the workshop, the city's mist had thickened into a dull, colorless fog.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a shattered window — her once-violet eyes now pale gray, her aura barely visible.
> "You're becoming colorless," the Void murmured, almost gently.
"But in the silence between shades… lies the truth."
Lian looked down at her hands — faintly glowing, fading at the edges.
She clenched them, forcing herself to breathe.
Somewhere beyond the fog, the faint echo of chanting drifted through the air. Not the Guardians — something older, sharper.
And among the whispers, one phrase repeated like a warning:
> "The Light consumes. The Light perfects."
Lian closed her eyes. For the first time, she wondered what would end Zeharra first:
the hunger of the Void,
or the brilliance of a man who wished to be a god.