An interminable time later, the spark brightened once more, appearing in the center of his vision as a physical thing. It looked like the faintest of stars, but given that it was the only one, it was like the Sun to Jonathan. Had he still possessed his senses, he would have let out a cry of joy, but as it was, silence was his only reward.
Whispers started to drift from the darkness the closer he came to the spark, just low enough to be beyond understanding. A few words came through here and there, but they meant nothing to him, spoken in an unfamiliar tongue. Without the System to translate for him, it was complete gibberish.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as the light grew and grew before him, understanding came to him in tiny increments, a letter suddenly forming within a word, or the volume of a whisper drifting to audible ranges. Flying through the void on wings of his own ideation, Jonathan found himself surrounded by what felt like a million voices, all with one goal. To extol the virtues of the Void, and praise it above all other,
“The Void…”
“Supreme.. All knowing.”
“It waits for us…”
Initially, there was little purpose to the phrases, beyond a maniacal obsession with the element of pure destruction, but eventually, longer sentences could be heard.
“In the beginning, there were thirteen. Then one sibling was outcast…”
“Spurned by the grace of the others, the Void grew strong, and twisted in that strength.”
“Reclaim your rightful place, oh Void!”
Entire jeremiads of suffering and discontent merged into one around Jonathan, somehow remaining comprehensible, despite their sheer number. Great meaning percolated through the words, and Jonathan searched for that meaning, finding insights into the Void previously unknown to him. A tapestry was woven out of words, with him at its center, narrating the history of the Void. With the solitary orb of light to guide him, Jonathan sailed through a sea of whispers, growing wiser by the minute. No longer was his journey an empty one. Now, he had company. Now, he had meaning.
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With a way to track time, Jonathan’s enhanced mind seized upon the tempo of the words. Weeks passed by, but unlike before, there was no boredom, no existential terror. Instead, there was enlightenment. Jonathan learned not of the Void itself, but of how to best serve it. Of how to be the conduit between it, and the mortal world. His task was not to lose himself to the element. Rather, he was to be its prophet. Such were the tasks of the gods, and such would be his task.
By this point, the orb of light had firmly left the hazy realm of possibility, and was about as large as one of Jonathan’s fingernails, bathing his vision in light. He had no body, no corporeal form, but he had a goal, and that was all that mattered.
Jonathan’s existence became one of two parts. Sight, and sound. Both provided solace. His mind was reforged by the isolation, and the constant, sibilant chorus of the voices. He was no longer the same man he had been before the trial. Even now, only a fraction of the way in, Jonathan felt different. More in control of himself and his destiny. The stories of a thousand heroes had been woven into his being by constant reiteration, their stories merging with his own.
Dawn slowly came to the dark realm, in the form of the burgeoning star. It grew and grew, until it took up an entire half of the sky. At this point, Jonathan could make out every aspect of the sphere. Made of raging purple fire, it possessed all the characteristics of a star, one of the Void. Within it, the pure meaning of his elemental slumbered, waiting for a worthy opponent.
Jonathan crossed a threshold, and between one moment and the next, a crushing pressure bore down upon his soul, centered on the wall of fire before him. He grunted in pain, and then froze. For the first time, he had heard the sound of his own body. Jonathan looked down to see hands of purple flame appearing from the darkness, the outlines of a body forming next to them.
Painted from the Void, Jonathan’s body returned to being, without a scrap of clothing or armor. It was as if he were reborn, forged into something greater by his element. Within himself, there was boundless power, but only within the environs of this strange space. Jonathan raised one hand, and a pillar of searing Voidlight streaked up into infinity, growing wider and wider as it went.
Looking at the star of the Void before him, Jonathan began to feel a deep gravity emanating from the gargantuan orb of coruscating purple fire. For lack of a better word, it felt right. As if every aspect of his life were condensed down into one thing, and that one thing stood before him, the endpoint of his dreams. His body drifted towards the star, his flesh beginning to tear as the Void within him was pulled apart. Jonathan heard a faint exhalation from a distance, as if something were sighing, but he ignored it. It was just his imagination.
