Chapter 41: The Void of Non-Existence
The transition to the Tenth Gate was the most violent of all. It wasn't a movement through space, but a sudden deletion of it. As Cyan and his goddesses stepped off the ruins of the holy cathedral, the bridge of light—Lyra's final essence—shuddered and vanished. They were left floating in a world that wasn't a world.
This was Sunya: The Gate of the Void.
There was no up, no down, no air, and no sound. The only thing that existed was the dark-violet glow of Cyan's aura and the fading emerald light of Isabella. Everything else was a flat, infinite nothingness.
[System Notification: Entering the Tenth Gate - Sunya.]
[Domain Rule: 'Non-Existence'. Physical forms are being erased at a rate of 1% per second.]
[Status: The Laws of Physics, Magic, and Logic have been suspended.]
"Master... I can't feel my hands," Elara whispered. Her shadow-form was literally transparent, the edges of her being fraying into the grey mist of the void. "I'm... I'm disappearing."
Cyan's eyes flared. He could feel it too. His skin was turning into stardust, his memories leaking out into the vacuum. The Architects were no longer trying to fight him; they were trying to Un-write him.
"Don't panic!" Cyan roared, his voice vibrating through their souls since there was no air to carry sound. "Isabella, Clara, Azrael, Elara—link your souls to mine! Now!"
The four Goddesses reached out, their fading forms clinging to Cyan's central pillar of mana.
[Skill Activated: Architect's Silence.]
Cyan didn't try to create matter; he used his new skill to "Mute" the Void. He commanded the nothingness to stop being nothing. Around them, a small bubble of reality—barely ten feet wide—solidified. It was a pocket of existence held together by nothing but Cyan's sheer, stubborn will.
"You think 'Nothing' is your ally?" Cyan spoke into the emptiness, his dual-colored eyes piercing the grey mist. "I was born in the Abyss! I have lived in the void of betrayal for years! Your silence is a lullaby to me!"
From the grey depths of Sunya, the "Guardians of the Void" appeared. They were not creatures; they were "Erasers"—featureless, white humanoid shapes that moved without motion. Where they touched, reality simply ceased to be.
"Protect the core!" Cyan commanded.
The battle was a nightmare of metaphysics. Azrael swung his blade, but it passed through the Erasers as if they were smoke. Clara's spear shattered when it touched their skin, not because they were hard, but because the spear "forgot" how to be solid.
"They aren't fighting us!" Isabella screamed, her face pale. "They are eating our 'Existence'!"
Cyan stepped out of his protective bubble. He let the void touch his skin. He let his arm dissolve into grey ash.
"Master, no!" the Goddesses cried out.
But Cyan was smiling. A cold, terrifying smile.
"If this world is made of Nothing," Cyan whispered, "then I am the one who defines what 'Something' is."
[Skill Combined: Truth-Eater + Sovereign's Remorse.]
Cyan reached into the void and did the impossible: he Gave the Void a Memory. He forced the nothingness to remember the weight of the worlds he had conquered, the heat of the magma from Elementum, and the cold iron of Aethelgard.
Suddenly, the Erasers began to scream—a sound of static and feedback. They were being filled with "Data" they weren't designed to hold. They were becoming "Real," and in a world of non-existence, being "Real" is a death sentence.
The white humanoid shapes began to take on horrific features—the faces of the people Cyan had killed, the textures of rusted metal, the smell of blood. They became heavy, falling into the very void that once birthed them.
"You wanted to erase me?" Cyan walked toward the center of the gate, where a single, black sphere—the Singularity Core—was pulsing. "I am the Sin that even the Void cannot swallow!"
Cyan grabbed the Singularity Core. The moment his hand touched it, the entire dimension began to collapse inward. The grey mist turned into a violent vortex of purple and black.
[System Notification: The Tenth Gate - COLLAPSED.]
[Singularity Core Acquired.]
[New Skill Unlocked: 'Void-Call' - You can now erase any object or enemy from existence at the cost of your own mana.]
The vacuum exploded outward, and for a split second, Cyan saw it—the Eleventh Gate. It was a bridge of pure, crystalline thought leading to a throne of light.
They landed on a solid platform of obsidian. The void was gone. They were breathing again. But they were exhausted. Elara and Azrael were barely conscious, their bodies scarred by the "Erasure."
Cyan stood up, his body flickering like a dying candle, but his eyes were brighter than ever. He looked at the Eleventh Gate: The Gate of the Creator.
"Ten down," Cyan whispered, his voice raspy. "Two left. The Creator is waiting for us. He's the one who wrote the first line of my suffering."
He looked at his charred, half-transparent hand. He was no longer quite human, and no longer quite a god. He was a Paradox—the King of a world that didn't want to exist.
"One more gate," Cyan said to his goddesses, "and we reach the Source. Rest now. Because the next fight... isn't against a system. It's against the man who invented the System."