Chapter 100 Breaking Point
LUCA
We expanded our reality bubble, using it like a vehicle to move through the void. Mordecai floated alongside, apparently able to navigate the nothing without needing our reality to sustain him.
“You’re adapted to this place,” Arya observed. “You’ve become part of the void.”
“Had to. Otherwise I’d have dissolved centuries ago.” He moved through the nothing like a fish through water. “It’s not pleasant. You lose pieces of yourself. Become less… real. But it beats non-existence.”
“Is there anything left of who you were? Before the void?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because you’re family. Distant, terrible family. But family.” She looked at him sadly. “Did the void take everything? Or is there some part of the man you were still in there?”
Mordecai was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t remember. The void makes memory difficult. I know I wanted power. I know I killed for it. But why? What drove me to such extremes?” He shook his head. “I’ve had eight hundred years to ask myself that question. Still don’t have an answer.”
“Then maybe—”
“Don’t.” His voice was sharp. “Don’t try to redeem me. I don’t want redemption. I want OUT. That’s all that matters.”
We traveled through the void for what felt like hours but might have been minutes. Time was meaningless here.
Finally, Mordecai stopped. “There. The first anchor.”
I saw it. A knot of something in the nothing. It looked dismantled and made my eyes hurt. Like my brain couldn’t process what it was seeing.
“How do we destroy it?” Arya asked.
“You don’t. I do. Only the one who created the prison can unmake its anchors.” Mordecai moved toward the knot. “This is going to destabilize things. Be ready.”
He reached into the nothing and grabbed the anchor. Then, with a gesture that seemed to pull at reality itself, he unraveled it.
The void screamed.
It was a sound that shouldn’t exist. The absence crying out in pain as its structure was dismantled. Our reality bubble shook, threatening to collapse.
“Hold it together!” I shouted to Arya.
She poured more power into the crystal. The bubble stabilized. And the anchor dissolved into nothing.
“One down,” Mordecai said. “Four to go. The next is easier, well, relatively speaking.”
We continued through the void, destroying anchors. Each one was harder than the last. The void fought back, trying to collapse our reality bubble, trying to separate us, trying to dissolve Arya back into nothing.
But we held firm. Together, we were stronger than the absence.
The fourth anchor nearly killed us. When Mordecai destroyed it, the void retaliated with a wave of pure nothing that crashed into our bubble like a tsunami. Our reality cracked.
“Luca!” Arya screamed as the nothing poured through.
I threw myself into the breach, using my immortality as a plug. The void ate at me, trying to unmake me, but I held with everything in me.
“Seal it!” I gasped. “Now!”
Arya channeled everything she had into the crystal. The crack sealed. Our bubble held.
“That was close,” Mordecai observed. “The last anchor will be worse. The void saves its strongest defenses for the final containment point.”
“Then we’d better be ready.” I pulled Arya close. “Together?”
We found the fifth anchor at what Mordecai called the “void’s heart”. It was the deepest point of the prison. Here, the nothing was so dense it felt like trying to breathe concrete.
The anchor was massive. A knot the size of a building, pulsing with dark energy.
“This one is different,” Arya said. “It feels… alive.”
“Because it is. Sort of.” Mordecai approached cautiously. “The final anchor is semi-sentient. It’s what keeps the void from escaping. Destroy it, and the void will fight back with everything it has.”
“So we’ll have seconds to seal the breach before reality starts unraveling?”
“If you’re lucky. Could be less.”
“Fantastic.” I looked at Arya. “Ready?”
“No. But let’s do it anyway.”
Mordecai reached for the anchor. “When this breaks, channel all your power into sealing the void. All of it. Don’t hold anything back. If you’re even slightly too slow—”
“We get it. Reality ends. No pressure.” I gripped Arya’s hand. “Do it.”
He grabbed the anchor and pulled.
The void exploded.
Everything happened at once. The anchor shattered. The prison spell unraveled. The void began to tear itself apart, trying to claw its way into reality.
And we were at the center of it all.
“NOW!” I roared.
Arya and I channeled everything into the reality anchor.
The crystal blazed with light. Not the soft glow from before. This was like staring into the sun.
We used it like a torch, burning away the void. Creating reality where there was none. Forcing existence into absence.
The void screamed again, but this time the sound was fading.
Our bubble of reality expanded. Faster and faster. Consuming the void, replacing nothing with something.
“It’s working!” Arya gasped.
The void collapsed in on itself. Sealed. Contained. Reality rushed in to fill the space, and suddenly we were standing in the temple at the Moonborne lands. Solid ground beneath our feet. Real air in our lungs. Reality, glorious and substantial and REAL.
We’d done it.
Mordecai materialized beside us, looking disoriented. “We’re… out?”
“We’re out.” I couldn’t believe it. “We actually made it.”
Shouting erupted around us. People rushing forward. Bardon, Caspian, Sage, Ryker, and everyone who’d been waiting.
“You did it!” Bardon’s voice was awed. “You sealed the void and escaped! That’s impossible!”
“Apparently not,” I said, then collapsed.
The strain of maintaining my immortality, of fighting the void, of channeling all that power, it all hit me at once. Darkness swallowed me whole.
The last thing I felt was Arya’s hand in mine. And I suddenly didn’t care about anything else, the knowledge that she was right here beside me made everything fine. Knowing my mate was back in my arms.