#the void tm

It was a truth universally acknowledged, that there did not exist a single, lone dimension, that was not in want of a soul.

Where the realms of living and dead existed parallel, another came into being between them. Where life and death chafed, rubbing alongside each other as it ran in counter-clock strokes, the Void came to be. A great nothing preserving all of life and death and the endless ways each could occur in turn.

But neither life nor death were starved for beings. Countless souls filtered in and out endlessly. The void was both the living and dead, and the hereafter. What it pulled towards itself it could only maintain as a shadow’s wish.

And thus, the Void watched. It learned and waited. It took note of the way new lives rose in the living, across the cosmos, wailing their first breaths. It watched as those same breaths became submerged, pulled away into the after. A flip of a coin. A turn of a page.

Circumstances pulled at each. What gave life, what took it. But what suited them, could not suit the Void. The Void was neither side of a coin, but the thin margin that it spun on, warping in air on a spindle for outcome.

So the Void watched. The Void waited. Then the cosmos, the universe, all primal powers rattling at the great barriers between them shook.. One, twice, thrice, a great force slammed amongst the worlds. It curled in on itself, feeling the gaping nothing of it's existence become eager with anticipation.

Here, the universes seemed to yell. Here!

And there, the coin stopped. Teetered on it’s rim, the Void could see where their one perfect soul was headed. Everything was laid bare in its endless consciousness. The lives he would save, and destroy, most of which, would be his own. The countless universes he existed in, but the Void could see the one where it had all gone wrong. Where fate had been wrong.  Where the cosmos were fighting to make it right. Countless souls were flying backwards from death, after all.

The coin began to fall when the Void reached out its creeping hands for the boy. A breath was rising in his cold, empty lungs. It threatened to expand in the gaps of quickly reversing flesh and sinew. At the heels, life sprung forth. It was willing into the boy and racing up in red rivers, once blocked, now raging with purpose. Angry splotches and snaps followed, twisting his body under long battered wounds. The heart beat once. The boy’s eyes bobbed under his lids, ready to dawn into wakefulness. The Void grabbed hold, sinking its walking claws into the gaps still in his shoulder bones and pulled.

Before the boy could even fully utter his first scream, the Void folded him into itself. It cradled him in its vastness, its emptiness – its endlessness. It took from him his fear and his longing. His eyes. It showed him the thousandfold pathways laid out before everything and everyone. It took name from him, and gave back so much more.

His coffin may not be bare, but now neither was the Void. The body laying there was a statue -- screaming his first frozen breath, hands bound over the encased heart underneath. The humans could keep it. The Void had gained much more.

This one, this Outsider belonged to the Void now. And it would keep him.

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AN: The first half is inspired deliberately by pride & prejudice. Just for jason. As for the Void wanting someone to represent it: https://dishonored.fandom.com/wiki/Dishonored_Wiki?file=Dishonored+mythos01.png

Taken from the wikia. 

Realizing my mistake bc i forgot about DOTO. The Outsider needed his real name whispered to be freed.