Chapter 1: Red-drifts Voidman
With my black hair flowing freely around, I distantly sat within an abyss
It really does pains me to say this, but I found myself trapped in the core of a jet-black abyss.
Yeah, you heard that correctly—a magical, dark void. If I couldn't sense and feel my own body, I might have concluded that this was my afterlife.
When I first landed in this place, it was unnerving. Time soon passed, as it does. And...
Within that torture chamber, I went mad, even madder than I had been on Earth.
That insanity turned into acceptance, and that acceptance formed into utter despondency.
I had become a being whose will had fractured to such a point that he had temporarily given up. I, someone who had been fighting and winning his entire life, had thrown in the towel.
Imagine this: no light, no activity. Just one critical individual.
Varcel Denion.
I was alive. But... If I'm being completely honest, what I was experiencing was not "living."
Everywhere I gazed, met nothing but a darkening, hopeless void.
-Vrammm...
I flicked my head up.
Suddenly, I clearly heard a vociferous creak. In the absolute silence I was accustomed to, a disruption was forged.
Hope had begun coursing through my veins.
?!
As if the very fabric of space were groaning under the dismal weight of Its crushing eternity; there, I, a shirtless man with a scratchy beard, found a moment of respite.
Thinking...
'How long has it been...?'
'Am I dreaming again?'
'Who has joined me in this ceaseless solitary...?'
I've raised such questions multiple times, just wandering in the wasteland called the...
Dreamland.
I couldn't tell you how long I was in that darkness, but what I can say is that it felt like an eternity. With each passing second, my thoughts raced faster and faster until time seemed to slow down, as if each minute stretched into hours, days... years even?
Keeping track of time was a fruitless effort, I quickly learned. Within such a blinding abyss, I was imprisoned, with not a soul to interact with.
Well, except myself.
This is funny... really, really funny. So, you know those conniving pests that followed me around on Earth—my hallucinations?
Get this.
With their cowardly backs turned, they fled from this loneliness.
Just as I was... we were afraid.
Difference with me was, I couldn't run.
I was the sacrificial gem.
Hearing this sudden noise, which sounded like a spinning vortex, I listened for a few seconds, trying to capture every vibration.
Then, it suddenly stopped.
And... to my unbelievable surprise, a man began speaking.
"Hello, inpatient Voidman... We've been watching you, and we have to say... You've intrigued us." He went on to proclaim, where I in response, twisted my head in a goofy motion, wrapping my palm against my left ear.
Hearing that sentence, I displayed a delayed reaction:
'I haven't heard another series of words... in so long...'
In response, the rash entity began a loud chuckle that slowly but surely faded away into that rotting death magnet. As each laugh echoed, I could feel an unfamiliar energy approaching.
An energy, no. That's not the word. A destructive magic, that's what it was.
With a face showing an acceptance rivaling that of a suicidal man, I showcased a will that...
Wanted to live.
"No matter..."
"What."
I lost my mind, I'll admit it.
I was falsely placed in that silent purgatory.
Like any man, I conjured some wild notions.
For instance, what if, in another universe, I were part of a fictional story?
Or, my that my life was a lie. No, my ego couldn't allow that.
Breathing heavily, I prepared myself for the worst as the pain intensified.
Flexing every muscled in my body, I screamed in irritation from a radiating energy—some kind of obscure magic, I could only guess. Whenever this pain struck, I could sense and feel myself being enveloped by the void... It was uncomfortable. I hated it. It was hell, but after a few minutes passed, I got used to it.
Feeling a hundred needles pierce the deepest parts of my heart, I halted the scream, took a breath, and...
Stared bleakly.
I was perplexed as to why this being projected such pain onto me... But... I could not care for these answers.
I had better things to divert my brain power to.
With a desperate, crackly voice from the physical anguish, I spoke...
"Do you know of as how to how long I've been here? Where the hell have you been? Watching me? For what purpose? Why...?"
"Look at yourself... what mind goes this far, to attain a shred of nothing?" He spoke with mock... in which I gave no reaction to, realizing a few key things.
"Nothing? I'm here, aren't I?" I responded, relaxing my muscles as I noticed the strange magic had dissipated.
I was able to move around freely, without pain—physically, that is.
As I took a breath of relief, he resumed his preaching.
"You've been chosen to live once again. Know this, Varcel, you are not special. Your resilience has shocked us, that is all." His words were slurred with grog... Yet, finally, he was, like I had never heard before, truly enigmatic.
"Best of luck on your journey to Redrift, we all wonder what path you'll walk. Do not disappoint us, or do. We don't care."
His invisible form blended into the shadows, his final words resonating through this boundless expanse, suffused with a loneliness so profound it threatened to destroy everything in its path—inflicting a series of imperious attacks that would gruesomely slaughter the defender's mind, its nature utterly aloof.
But only, of course, if they allowed it to do so.
The entity slowly approached me. Puzzling my eyes, he began taking the form of a white sparkle: the only light visible in this... true darkness.
Standing just a few feet away, he hovered.
He was so bright that I could see my lean body once again, wearing nothing but black shorts.
"Still as muscular as ever... he... he..." I boasted with excitement, giggling in the face of this being.
I was shocked that my muscles hadn't decayed. But I guess logic doesn't apply in such a magical space. After all, I hadn't eaten or drunk anything in that time.
I would've withered away from starvation, suffered fatal fates of natural causes... But I didn't.
I... recall never feeling physically hungry or thirsty.
That doesn't mean my mind didn't scream for a burger, or a freezable sausage egg biscuit.
The light stood tall, waiting for me to stand with serenity.
He was calm, showing that if I were to retaliate, he could do nothing for my soon-to-be destiny.
I stood up, facing the entity.
I... finally, after so long, I was reverting back to a natural state of mind.
I could be a...
Human.
Confidently staring across from this strange form of energy, he recited a series of questions.
"Firstly..." he said, each word a beacon illuminating the darkness, like the steady pulse of a spacecraft, casting light upon the cosmos with its living glow.
As for how the light operated, It was like a hand sensor. The brighter the gleam, the louder his voice; the dimmer the shine, the softer his tone.
"Who are you?" The entity asked.
With a maniacally wide smile, I answered.
"Varcel... In the flesh."
'Light, I saw a light...' I licked my lips. 'Finally getting out of this shithole.'
'How I've missed you, humanity...' I inwardly continued.
"Earth. What was this place like?" The entity persisted.
"That's a complex question." I responded, turning blank-faced.
"But can you answer it?"
As my long black hair moved with the backward tilt of my head, I opened my dried lips for a brief moment.
But no words escaped.
With a joyless expression and a hesitant tongue, I began to answer his question, each word a weightless stone falling into that crestfallen abyss.
"One cell devised to fool everybody."
Instinctually, I put my left hand to a... bright blue sky, shielding my eyes from...
Light?
"The scenery is recasting itself..."
"Liberation... again, you greet me." I went on.
"I've missed you." Those final words I spoke, followed a singular tear.
That droplet landed not in a magical void, but in a grassy field, where a blue sky was above... and in that sky was a sun.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone