A slow, rhythmic chuckle filled the empty void.
It took several minutes for the voice to finally stop.
When it did, it addressed Alaric with a hint of amusement. "You humans are truly bizarre... I envy you."
Glaring at his stitched arm, Alaric replied, "I envy you."
Alaric felt the voice circling him, yet he could neither sense its exact position nor see its form.
The voice murmured, "I just love the smell of Singularity."
"Singularity?" Alaric asked, his eyes still fixed on his stitched arm.
The voice chuckled again. "We don't have time for that... because it's time for the second task."
The dull, wet echo of the clap faded, leaving Alaric suspended in a silence that felt heavier than before.
The blood dripping from his freshly pierced palm and stitched shoulder didn't fall it pooled in the weightless air, dark and stagnant.
He kept his gaze locked on the crude, lifeless limb sewn to his torso, every nerve ending in his upper body screaming with a delayed, agonizing throb.
"What is the second task?" Alaric rasped. His throat felt as though it were coated in the ash of the burned dashboard, but he forced the words out.
The anticipation of more pain turned the blood in his veins to ice.
He had just forcefully driven splintered wood into his own flesh and stitched a dead arm to his shoulder with his teeth.
His mind, already pushed to its absolute limit, braced for whatever sickening, impossible feat the entity would demand next.
"The second task," the voice murmured, the sound vibrating directly behind Alaric's ear before shifting to the empty space above him, "is not a test of your flesh. It is more like a trade. A transaction."
Alaric didn't move.
A businessman understood transactions, but a transaction with the Void carried a price that couldn't be measured in gold credits.
"I will give you back what was taken," the voice continued, its tone dropping its mocking edge, turning clinical and precise.
"A real, functional, proper hand. Both of your limbs, restored to exactly how they were before you met the edge of the cliff. And in exchange, I want your heart."
Alaric's breathing hitched.
"Do not mistake my intent," the voice added with a soft chuckle. "I do not wish to kill you. Your heart will become a fully realized conduit the very source and anchor of your power as an arcanist. It will beat with the rhythm of the void itself. But I believe in transparency, Alaric. I will be real with you about the cost."
The air in the immediate space grew suffocatingly cold, drawing tight around Alaric's chest.
"Every single time you 'properly' invoke your conduit powers every time you reach into the source to alter reality you must cut that very same hand from your body. You must sever the gift to use it. Don't worry..."
The voice materialized a fraction of an inch from Alaric's nose, a freezing, invisible weight pressing against his forehead. "...it will always regrow later. So, Mr. Xyle... do we have a deal?"
Alaric let out a shaky, rattling breath that hung in the frozen air.
The businessman in him, buried deep beneath layers of agony and dirt, stubbornly forced its way back to the surface.
He looked at his crudely stitched left limb and the splintered wooden spikes protruding from his right palm.
A trade.
His heart for a conduit source, and his limbs restored. But the fine print of the contract was brutal.
He ran the numbers through his fractured mind, looking for the catch.
To use the power, he had to destroy the tool a continuous cycle of severing and regrowing.
The sheer memory of the pain made his chest tighten, but logic dictated that a dead merchant had no use for a heart anyway. Still, one glaring tactical flaw remained in the terms.
"A transaction relies on leverage," Alaric rasped, his eyes narrowing into the empty dark before him.
"If I accept this trade... if I invoke this power and must immediately cut off my own hand to make it work, then what happens next? If I am in a fight, am I forced to defend myself with only one arm while the other regrows?"
The concept of standing before someone like Volt, missing a limb all over again in the middle of a battle, felt less like a power and more like a delayed suicide clause.
A low, rhythmic ripple vibrated through the weightless expanse as the voice chuckled, clearly amused by the merchant's stubborn calculation.
"You really never stop looking at the ledger, do you, Mr. Xyle?" the voice murmured, its presence shifting slightly to the left.
"No. You miscalculate the nature of the gift. You will not be left helpless."
The invisible weight pressing against Alaric's forehead eased just enough for him to draw a freezing breath.
"When you step into conflict, when you reach into the core of your new heart to fight, you will not be using a fragile instrument of flesh," the voice explained, its tone dripping with a dark, proud satisfaction.
"The moment you sever it, that hand will not simply fall away like useless meat. It will transform. It will turn into a true conduit hand a limb forged entirely from the essence of the void itself to wield your power. You will fight with both hands, Alaric. One of bone, and one of the void."
The terms of the contract were clear, laid bare in the unyielding darkness. A limb of bone and a limb of the abyss.
It was an absurd, terrifying equation, but it was a path forward. It was a weapon against the aristocracy.
Alaric closed his eyes, the image of Volt's mocking silhouette burning behind his lids for one final, motivating second.
"I agree," Alaric said, his voice dropping all hesitation. "We have a deal."
The moment the words left his lips, the void shattered its clinical silence. The voice erupted into a wild, echoing laugh a mad, deafening roar that vibrated through the weightless expanse like a physical shockwave.
It wasn't the chuckle of a businessman anymore it was the unhinged, triumphant cackling of an ancient entity that had just secured exactly what it wanted.
The laughter rippled through Alaric's non-existent chest, shaking his very sanity until, just as abruptly as it began, it died down into a low, rumbled echo.
"Excellent," the voice purred, its presence pressing tightly against the front of Alaric's face again. "Now... for the third task."
"Wait," Alaric interrupted, his brow furrowing as he looked down at his torso. His stitched, lifeless left arm still hung limply by the coarse thread.
The five wooden splinters remained brutally embedded in his right palm, caked in dark, stagnant blood.
"What about the second task? Nothing changed. Where is the hand? Where is the conduit?"
A slow, rhythmic chuckle filled the space, vibrating with a mocking patience.
"Do not be so impatient, Mr. Xyle," the voice replied, shifting slightly above him. "The third task is adjacent to the second.They are bound together. Without the completion of the third task, the trade can never truly happen. The ledger cannot be balanced halfway."
The invisible air grew heavier, pressing Alaric down into the weightless nothingness.
"You will get everything," the voice promised, its tone dripping with a dark, absolute certainty.
"Your proper hand, your restored limbs, and the beating core of the conduit. But it will only manifest once you are back in your world and you only go back once the third task is finished."
Alaric's ear went numb. "Tell me, what's the third and final task?"
The voice sighed. "It's pretty simple. Stab yourself in the heart."
Almost immediately, Alaric lost it. "What do you mean?! Stab myself in the heart like it's child's play, huh? First that absurd clap, then a damn trade, and now a stab to the heart? Why don't you just replace my heart with whatever your conduit heart is!"
The voice answered in a slightly lowered tone, "How can I? First, I am a mere voice who doesn't even have a physical form, and second... that's not my problem."
"It is your problem if your transaction fails!" Alaric spat, the phantom heat of his rage flaring against the freezing vacuum.
"You want a trade? A businessman doesn't destroy the asset before the deal is finalized! If I stab my own heart, I die. There is no world to go back to, no conduit to wield. It's bad business."
"The ledger of the Void doesn't follow the laws of the Western Sector, Mr. Xyle," the voice murmured, shifting directly above his head.
"To anchor the void, the flesh must first make a vacancy. The old heart must stop before the source can take its place. There is no negotiation on this term."
"Then find another way!" Alaric growled, his mind desperately racing, trying to find a loophole, a piece of leverage, anything to avoid driving metal into his own chest.
"Use the wreckage. Use the blue coal power floating right there. Channel it through the stitches. Why does it have to be a blade to the chest?"
"Because the sacrifice must be conscious. It must be yours," the voice replied, its tone dropping any remaining hint of amusement, becoming as cold and absolute as a stone wall.
"I do not negotiate the price of eternity. You either strike the blow, or you stay here forever a dead body that breathes, floating in a ledger that will never close."
Alaric opened his mouth to argue, to scream another counter-offer into the dark, but the words died in his throat.
The weightless expanse grew perfectly still. Alaric looked around at the floating shards of his reality the lifeless, stitched meat of his left arm the splintered wooden claws violently piercing his right palm the cold smell of the crushed obsidian dashboard.
He remembered the lurch of the car mid-air. He remembered the shattering crunch against the cliff face, the blinding blue fire of the explosion, and the agony that had torn his voice to shreds on the rocky valley floor.
He remembered Volt's silhouette by the window the calm, aristocratic face that had looked down on him like a pig slated for slaughter.
Every single scream, every ounce of dust caked in his blood, and every second of humiliating terror rushed back, hardening into a cold, unbreakable resolve.
He was already broken. He had already crawled through his own hell.
If a stab to the heart was the toll to drag himself out of this grave and tear the aristocracy down, he would pay it.
"Give me a blade," Alaric said, his voice dropping into a deadly, hollow whisper.
The Void did not hesitate.
A faint ripple tore through the weightless dark in front of him.
There was no iron or steel instead, a perfect, colorless blade forged from raw conduit energy materialized, humming with a low, vibrating frequency that mirrored the subterranean pulse of the meat forest from his nightmare.
It had no reflection, no metallic gleam just a dangerous, crystalline edge that seemed to slice through the very vacuum of the void.
Alaric didn't let himself think for another second.
He gripped the colorless hilt with his right hand, the splintered wooden sticks grinding against the energy weapon.
He aimed the point directly at the center of his chest.
Gritting his teeth against the memory of everything he had lost, he drove the blade straight into his heart.