The Sucking Void is a place of dislocation where the laws of matter and spirit bent in strange, insidious ways.
Through that void, a figure moved. He carried a wooden cart that was surprisingly sturdy despite the surrounding nothingness. Its wheels kept clicking faintly against some invisible plane. The man was whistling an almost carefree melody that felt impossibly at odds with the desolation surrounding him.
"Oh the sun may fade and the rivers dry,
But a spark remains where the brave hearts lie,
Through the shadowed vale and the endless night,
We find our way by the faintest light..."
As he walked, humming the tune between verses, his cart rolled quietly behind him. The contents were hidden under a simple cloth.
"Hush now, wanderer, don't cry or moan,
Even in darkness, you're not alone..."
Then, without warning, he bumped into something, or rather, someone. The collision was slight but in the void, even small disturbances carried weight. He looked down and found a body lying there. He knelt carefully beside the figure, one hand pressing against the chest as if to gauge the faintest pulse.
He had no pulse. Or rather, he didn't have a heart.
"Huh… you're dead but the soul's… not leaving?"
His eyes flicked to the body's markings. There were Runes etched faintly into the flesh, faintly glowing with residual power.
Preservation Runes.
"Figures. Didn't expect to meet an Aeterium here… not that I've seen one in a long, long time."
He ran his hand over the arms of the body, observing the shattered structure. One arm had been destroyed almost completely. The other was mangled. The energy was drained so brutally that neither could function. He shook his head lightly, muttering.
"How can a Divine of such magnitude come to the Sucking Void without any preparations? Even the strongest deities would shiver in this place."
Despite the catastrophic damage, the legs were miraculously intact but it would take more than natural healing to restore the rest. He examined the runes again, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
"Hmm… Preservation runes. Clever. That explains why the soul hasn't left. But they weren't enough to stop this place from eating him alive."
He gave a small sigh and waved his hand. The body lifted gently from the ground. Carefully, he placed the form onto his wooden cart.
"Alright, old friend, let's see what we can do for you. It's been a while since I've had company."
The cart's wheels clicked over the invisible plane, moving with surprising ease. Then, he began walking again. His song continued as he moved through the endless realm:
"Though the night is cruel and the winds may moan,
We carry the lost to a hearth of our own,
Shattered and broken, yet not undone,
For even in darkness, a new dawn comes..."
As he hummed and sang, a faint glow began emanating from the cart as energy seeped back into the body beneath it. The void seemed to recoil and bend around him. He glanced down at the figure again.
"It has been millennia since I've had a new creation to work on. And here you are, strong as the day you should have been… though beaten nearly to nothing. Don't worry. We'll fix you. You'll walk again. You'll rise again. You're not done yet."
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The man finally reached his workshop. The place was suspended in the emptiness of the Sucking Void, as if he had carved a tiny island of reality from the void itself. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary house, quaint in design, with smoke curling lazily from chimneys that should not have existed in this nothingness. But stepping through the door revealed a different truth entirely. The interior was a sprawling workshop. The walls were lined with tools and implements that defied explanation. Shelves were stacked with jars of glowing powders, intricately crafted devices and tomes that hummed faintly with residual power.
The man guided the body onto a massive flat table wide enough to hold the enormous form of the Divine before him. The cart's wheels clicked one final time against the floo, leaving the injured figure completely at his mercy. He clapped his hands.and instantly, white flames erupted from the torches along the walls that illuminated every inch of the workshop.
He cracked his knuckles with a sharp snap that echoed unnaturally. Summoning his white energy, he lowered his hands to the shattered legs of the fallen man. Bones and flesh shifted under his touch. Cracks ran along the limbs as the bones knit themselves back together. The man exhaled audibly once the legs were fully healed.
"At least the legs are intact. For someone as handsome as him, losing his legs would have been catastrophic. Truly a tragedy I won't allow to happen."
He turned his gaze to the soul of the broken figure and saw immediately that it was incomplete. The right arm was missing entirely.
"Ah, a sacrifice, I see. He must have given part of himself to gain the strength he needed… or to save someone else. A dangerous game, but I can fix this. Fortunately, I am very good at recreating artificial souls."
The man then took a moment to summarize the damages, stepping back and running a hand through his hair as though reciting a mental checklist.
"Pseudo-cores shattered. Both arms lost. Non-existent heart. One Tether resisting the Sucking Void's influence. Ascending to the Fourth Enlightenment stage under maximum duress. Advancing to the Ninth Star of Magecraft from the Seventh. Marriage bond broken. Connection with an Omniscient severed. And his four Divinities modified to operate together. He's a Frankenstein's nightmare of a Divine, yet somehow, here he is. How did he survive this? How cruel is his Destiny?"
He shook his head slowly, as though pitying the broken man lying before him.
"The sheer amount of suffering, the relentless torment… anyone else would have been committed suicide long ago. Normally, I'd kill someone like this. Truly, he's far too incomplete to deserve life. But… he's married. His beloved must be in grief. And I will not, under any circumstances, allow that person to cry over him."
His fingers brushed against the faint, shimmering threads of the marriage bond that still clung weakly to the ruined soul. White energy coursed from him into the bonds, knitting them back together with the precision of a master craftsman. Threads of light twisted, reconnected and finally glowed.
"There. That's done. Now we fix the broken, incomplete, suffering man who dared to experiment with his own body."
He knelt beside the table with his fingertips tracing the shattered pseudo-cores. Light pulsed under his touch, flowing into the cores and stitching them together piece by piece. With each pulse, the cracks in the Divine's body seemed to breathe again. The man hummed softly as be began to fix the injured man.
"This will take time. But I have time. And someone still waits for you. And I won't let you fail them. Not while I'm here. I did promise her after all. So don't worry, young man. This is nothing but a temporary setback. Soon, all of this pain and suffering will be erased and what remains will be a man strong enough to survive anything."