The Beginning Of An End

Chapter 35

Loki and I walked through the door, and the moment we crossed the threshold, the dam broke.

I felt everything. The very essence of who I had been shattered, disintegrating into nothingness. The fire that once burned through my veins was snuffed out in an instant, leaving behind an emptiness so vast I thought I might cease to exist altogether.

I reached for Loki's hand as the world around us began to collapse, as if an earthquake were tearing reality apart. But my fingers never found his. The ground vanished, and we were falling—plunging at impossible speed through endless darkness.

For what felt like an eternity, I fell.

There was nothing to see, nothing to grasp, until I finally struck something that felt like ground, though it looked nothing like it. And as I landed, the truth settled in with quiet certainty.

The will-o'-wisp from Alfheim had been right.

There was no beginning. No end.

Only the void.

It wasn't the darkness that unsettled me, but the absence. No sky to anchor the heavens. No ground to steady my steps. The void stretched infinitely in every direction, pressing in on me with a suffocating weight. Time didn't move here—it unraveled, slipping through my grasp like sand scattered by a storm.

I looked around and noticed Loki sitting not far from me, though distance meant nothing in this place. His form was a faint outline against the nothingness, shifting like smoke stirred by a breeze that didn't exist. He had been silent for an eternity—or perhaps only seconds.

I couldn't tell how much time had passed. It had been forever. It had been a moment. The void made such distinctions meaningless.

But one thing was certain. Loki had found me. Even here, at the center of a boundless nothing, he had managed to track me down just to bother me. I couldn't help but smile.

"Well, Loki," I said, "nice to see you again."

He turned instantly, his face lighting up with pure relief and joy. Without a word, he got to his feet and ran toward me, crashing into me as his arms wrapped tightly around my body.

I fell back under his weight, laughing as I hugged him in return. A profound calm spread through me, deeper than anything I had felt before. Peace. Because now that he was here, I knew I would be okay.

"I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!" he shouted, pulling back just enough to look at me. "I was here for an eternity!" he added, whining.

"Time's weird here, isn't it?" I said lightly. His expression softened, the tension easing as he realized he wasn't alone in feeling that way. "I missed you too," I added quietly. "I'm so glad I found you again."

"I told you you'd never escape me," he chuckled, finally calming. He leaned in and pulled me into a deep kiss, and I relaxed even further—somehow more than I already had.

Only then did I realize it.

In Astral, Loki had been chaos incarnate. Here, in the void, he was the only peace I had ever known.

Eventually, he pulled back and with a big sigh of relief, he sat next to me and I quickly joined him. Suddenly, sitting in the void for an enormously long time didn't seem like such a chore.

"Ugh, I've been here for so long I memorized every miserable detail of this... whatever this is." He gestured vaguely at the void, though his hand dissolved into shadow as he moved

"That long? I've managed to do the same after only being here for about a second." I shrugged, chuckling. Loki looked at me, a bit confused.

"How are you so... jolly? We are in the void." He frowned lightly.