The whole web of virtual hallways began to collapse from where that golden hand struck down. Harsh screaming blared from its mouth like it was some sort of demented siren.

  I didn't realize it was alive and going to destroy this place if it didn’t get its way. How crazy was its power?

  Everything was violently rumbling and falling down into a void of nothing below. When something landed inside of it, it vaporized into a virtual haze of dust and numbers. It was likely if I dropped into that void too, I’d be erased forever. Not good!

  Above me wasn’t much of a better situation. Those diode stars were raining down on us like a glittery storm, causing massive explosions to further destabilize the situation.

  Oh man, oh man oh man oh man! I had to get us out of here, but I didn’t much of an idea on how to do that.

  I tried manually disconnecting myself from the link to the tower, but that wasn’t working.

  Wait, how long had I been here? My timer was telling me it had been five minutes. Uncle said he would shut down the link at the seven minute mark, which was coming up. So if I waited for him, then we’d be able to leave.

  *BOOM!*

  But we didn’t have that kinda’ time!

  The floor panels under my feet were falling down one by one. I kept having to leapfrog across big gaps in the ground, barely escaping a gnarly drop.

  Each time I landed on a new floor panel, it would unlodged and fall too. I just had to keep going, keeping momentum.

  Finally I got out of the core and reached a hallway that wasn’t falling into the void and getting deleted. Luckily, all the veils were gone, so we had an opprotunity to get past the doorways. But those stars were still raining down chaos around me, so it was just one problem after another.

  *BOOM!*

  I just had to kept going, dodging explosions.

  One star hit a really bad spot ahead of me, and the hallways started to list into the void, I was sliding down the floor, screaming the whole time.

  I latched onto a hole in the ground, holding on for dear life.

  Bits of metal were sliding down the floor. They were coming right at me. I kept having to wiggle around to avoid getting hit.

  “Oh man! What should I do?!”

  Time was creeping by. It had only been a few seconds since I looked last.

  “What the heck, time! Go faster, darn it!”

  If I ever meet that Father Time guy, I’d give him a good talking to! He makes good times fly by, and bad times slog!

  Gravity started to pull heavy on everything. Larger, more stable sections of walkway were finally falling into the void, leaving little of the whole virtual computer structure left.

  Uh-oh! Those evil hands were back, and they were reaching out of the void! This time they were pitch black with gold nails. What's worse, they were heading for me!

  One grabbed my foot and was tugging me down.

  “Ahhh!” I screamed, trying to kick the thing off. But other hands came and grabbed my other leg too.

  I couldn’t hold on any longer. My fingers slipped and I let go of the ledge.

  My crystal heart skipped a beat and my mind went completely blank as I let go. There was nothing I could do to stop myself from falling down into the dark void.

  The moment lasted forever. My short life flashed before my eyes, showing me how little I'd actually accomplished. Was I really this much of a waste?

  Like hitting a thick pool of tar, I plunged into the void waters.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Everything was pure darkness, empty beyond belief. It was so black that my eyes hurt from the lightless ocean.

  I took back what I said before. Sadness was pleasure compared to this. Emptiness was worse than death. I was nothing, just suspended in nothing, doing absolutely nothing.

  I couldn’t breathe, even my eyes weren’t moving. Was I even awake? How long had I been here? It felt like I was just hovering around, without life.

  What a terrible coma of nothingness. A true hell.

  I let the emptiness cradle me in its arms. It was all I had now.

  “Sleep.”

  How did I hear those words? How smooth to my ethereal ears they were.

  “Sleep forever here. It is your home. It is your respite.”

  Yes. This void was my home. My body and soul had given in, my spirit was next for the voids all consuming hunger to devour.

  Darkness began to spiral around my core, I was ready to die to it.

  “Let darkness take you so you may be like me.”

  -NO. LET THERE BE LIGHT-

  My crystal heart started beating fast, glowing with sparkling white energy. The warmth I felt when I first used stardust was back, but ten fold.

  All the power of my crystal heart traveled across my skin, making it glow a heavenly white aura. The light from my flesh pierced through the darkness like a holy spear. The void tried to overtake the light, but it couldn’t.

  There was a halo over my head, glowing brightly, just like me. It had a half circle at the bottom, a plus sign in the middle that stretched across the whole thing, and a triangle sitting on the vertical line of the plus sign.

  I gracefully hovered out of the pits of nothing, all the void had been forced far away from me. It was pushed so far that I couldn’t even see it off in the distance.

  The artificial night theme here had turned to day. Blue skies and fluffy white clouds all over. There wasn’t a sun anywhere, but my aura was bright enough to light up everything.

  A platform of crystal stardust appeared under my feet, then I landed on it.

  I turned all around to see the world. There was no more void, it was banished from here. All I could see was sky, beautiful earth and ocean as far as the east was from the west. It was so wonderful that I was crying. This was no longer a virtual world, it felt real.

  Even a blink was too much time away from this, so I tried my best not to. But soon a natural instinct to shut my eyes took over, and I was pulled from this place back to reality.

  ~☆☆☆~

  My systems were coming back online. I'm wasn't sure what saved me inside of the computer, but I woke up to malfunctioning senses. All I could do was sit there and wait for them to reboot and give me sight and hearing again.

  Maybe my head needed a second to process everything anyways, so I let myself stay still for a moment.

  The STAR icon on my toolbar was blinking, I opened it up and saw a skill was unlocked in the list.

  -Stardust Nova : Using all remaining stardust reserves, unleash a powerful wave of solar energy to disintegrated any threat in the blast radius-

  -Caution! May only be used if it does not violate any of the Three Commandments-

  -Obtained (515 / 9 / 5)-

  This must have been unlocked since I was going to be deleted by the void. I guess a crisis situation had a chance of unlocking different abilities. I hoped they all didn't involve almost dying...

  But one thing I couldn't wrap my head around was that I swore I'd heard a voice just before the ability was used. There were two voices actually, I didn't remember what either said though. It sounded like the second voice was really mad at the first, but that's about all I could recall.

  -Optical, Auditory and tactile sensors restored-

  My eyes finally started to turn back on, and my first view was of Uncle holding me in his arms, while sitting on the floor.

  “Young Mistress, are you alright?”

  It was hard to focus my eyes on him. Maybe it was my tears, or it was the grogginess, but things were so blurry for a minute.

  As I finally was able to focus, I was so happy to see him that I raced up and wrapped my arms around him and cried loudly.

  “Uncle! Uncle, it was so scary!”

  “I was worried that…”

  “There was a void, and hands were pulling me into it! But then I started glowing and it all went away!”

  He had a wide eyed shock on his face. His mouth was gaping open. He tried to speak a few times, but it was just stunned grunts and soft squeals.

  His hand brushed over my hair, steady and careful, like he was worried he might break me if he brushed too hard.

  “You defeated it?” He asked.

  I nodded, wiping away my tears.

  He smiled. A tear fell down his face too. I didn’t even know he could cry.

  “That’s good,” he spoke softly. “That’s very good. There’s still hope, then.”

  Hope? How did that give him hope? I didn't even mention how I saved the TCC, now called Anima. Maybe that had something to do with me one day saving humanity from darkness or something…

  I couldn’t figure it out right now. My head was hurting and I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I tried my best to fight the sleepiness, but it was overpowering me.

  “Uncle, there’s always hope,” I said, just as I fell asleep.

  Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please support me, Taylor The Writer, here on Royal Road! :)