Chapter 154: To Feel or Not to Feel

The festival exploded into life as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Lanterns cast warm light across Hollowtown’s square, transforming the beige buildings into something almost magical. Music filled the air. Nothing professional, but earnest. A trio of villagers had found instruments somewhere and were making enthusiastic noise that resembled melody if you were generous.

Grace stood at the edge of the square, watching suppressed emotions burst free. A couple spun past, laughing at their own clumsy footwork. Children raced between dancers’ legs, shrieking with the pure joy of being allowed to shriek.

[This might actually work.]

“Grace!” Alia, one of the two biggest reasons this happened, materialized at her elbow, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. “Stop lurking and dance!”

“I’m not lurking. I’m observing.”

“That’s literally lurking with extra words.” Alia grabbed her hand. “Come on!”

Before Grace could protest, she was dragged into the crowd. The music swelled, someone had found a drum, and bodies pressed close in the chaotic rhythm of people remembering how to celebrate.

“I don’t know the steps!” Grace shouted over the noise.

“Neither does anyone else!”

True enough. The dancing resembled a cheerful riot more than choreography. Grace let herself be swept along, spinning when others spun, jumping when the drum demanded it.

Then she felt it.

A pressure at the edge of her awareness. Cold seeping through the warmth. The lanterns flickered.

[Wait,] Grace’s eyes widened. [Is… Is the Void coming out?]

“Uh, keep dancing!” Grace yelled, pushing through the crowd toward the sensation. “Keep dancing!!!”

The cave mouth loomed at the square’s edge. Darkness spilled from it, spreading across the ground like oil. Where it touched, grass withered. Stone cracked.

The Void emerged slowly. Not walking, but rather manifesting. First an outline against the black, then gaining substance with each forward motion. Its white eyes fixed on the celebration with an expression Grace could only describe as cosmic offense.

“WHAT IS THIS NOISE?”

The voice made Grace’s bones shake. The music stuttered. The dancers stumbled.

“Don’t stop!” Grace stepped between the Void and the festival. “Come on, keep going!”

Mara’s voice rose above the panic.

“You heard her! Musicians, play! Everyone else, dance like your lives depend on it!”

[Because they probably do.]

The music resumed, shaky but determined. The Void’s form rippled.

“You dare?” It moved closer, each step draining color from the world. “You fill my domain with this… this…”

“Joy?” Grace suggested. “Happiness? Basic human emotion?”

“Poison.” The Void’s shape twisted, gaining height. “I offer peace. Silence. Freedom from the pain of feeling.”

“Nobody asked for that!”

Behind her, Alia had started a conga line. Because of course she had. Zephyr was making out with someone against a wall, divine energy sparking where they touched. The combined life force of the festival pushed against the Void’s emptiness.

The Void screamed. Not producing sound, but rather draining sound, leaving behind a silence so complete it hurt.

But the music played on.

“You wanted to understand,” Grace said, stepping forward. “This is what you’re missing. What you’ve always been missing.”

“I miss NOTHING. I am nothing. I need nothing. I feel nothing!”

“Liar!” The word hung between them. The Void went still. “You’re already feeling something.”

“Silence. I offer only—”

“You’re feeling scared, aren’t you?”

The Void’s form wavered.

Grace glanced back at the festival. Alia now had half the town in her conga line. Zephyr had moved on to a different partner. Mara conducted the musicians with gentle authority. Life and joy and connection, messy and imperfect and real, all began to coalesce in this cramped, damp space.

“You’re scared, but that’s okay,” Grace said. “Here, I’m going to show you what you’re missing.”

She lunged forward before the Void could respond. Her hands found purchase on shoulders that weren’t quite solid, weren’t quite not. The Void tried to pull away, but Grace held on.

“What are you—”

[Aura Cleanse, don’t fail me now!]

With that thought, Grace pushed.

Not physically, but with everything inside her. All the divine energy she’d gathered, all the warmth from the festival, all the connections she’d made and witnessed Alia and Zephyr make. She opened herself up and let it flow.

The Void screamed again. This time with actual sound.

Grace inhaled and exhaled.

[Purifying a Pillar won’t be as easy as purifying a regular human, but I’m gonna have to try. No better time than now!]

Memories flooded between them.

Not Grace’s, though. Older. Ancient. The moment of the Void’s creation.

Grace saw Eternia standing in absolute nothingness, divine power crackling around her hands. She was molding reality itself, crafting a vessel from pure potential.

“I need something to hold my emptiness,” Eternia muttered, shaping the darkness. “The hollow moments. The times when I feel nothing at all.”

The Void took form under her hands. Not human, not angel, but aware. A consciousness built to contain absence.

“You exist to hold what I cannot,” Eternia said, pressing her hands against the newly-formed being. “The void inside me. The moments when I feel… nothing.”

The transfer was instant. All of Eternia’s emptiness, her moments of spiritual numbness, her times of feeling disconnected from everything she’d created—it all poured into the Void.

“I’ll return for this someday,” Eternia promised. “When I figure out what to do with it.”

But she never came back. And the emptiness grew. And grew. Until there was nothing left but the absence of everything that could have mattered.

Grace gasped, jerking back to the present. The Void stood frozen, form flickering between shadow and something almost human.

“She made me empty,” it whispered. “Created me to be hollow. Do you know what it’s like? To exist only as a container for nothing?”

“No.” Grace kept her hands on the Void’s shoulders. “But I know what it’s like to feel forgotten.”

The festival raged behind them. Music and laughter and life, pressing against the darkness.

“I can’t,” the Void whispered. “It hurts. Feeling hurts.”

“Yeah.” Grace smiled sadly. “It does. But it’s worth it.”

She pushed again. Gentler this time. Not forcing joy into the emptiness, but offering it. A hand extended across the gap between nothing and something.

The Void shuddered. Its form began to shift, the black silhouette with white outline inverting. Now it appeared as a white figure outlined in black. She still looked absolutely ethereal, still otherworldly, but no longer a hungry absence.

“Is this…” The Void looked around. “Is this what it feels like to actually exist?”

The oppressive darkness around them lightened. The cave mouth looked normal again. The withered grass began to green.

The Void looked at the festival, at people spinning and laughing and living. For the first time, its form seemed solid. Real.

“I… have been making people feel this same hollowness I’ve been feeling? That I didn’t understand until now?”

Grace nodded.

“You have, yes.”

That affirmation made the Void instantly react. Suddenly, the suffocating darkness of the cavern pulled toward her. It was still dim, of course, but before, there’d been a magical aspect to the dark. Now, it was natural.

“I… I will retreat. I cannot continue putting them through this, this… pain I did not know I was enduring.”

Grace smiled a little.

“That sounds good.”

The Void then looked up at Grace with black eyes.

“You will leave?”

“… I will, yeah.”

[As soon as I know you won’t be bothering these people.]

The Void nodded.

“You will come back?”

The hopeful tone to her voice surprised Grace.

[Right… In her eyes, I just showed her how to feel. She’s still scared.]

“I will.” Grace nodded back. “I promise.”

The Void began to fade, not disappearing but retreating.

“Thank you, then. For showing me there’s more than emptiness.”

“Thank you for letting me help.”

—

Dawn found them at the cave mouth. The festival had wound down hours ago, leaving behind a town that remembered how to feel joy. The oppressive weight that had pressed down on Hollowtown for years was gone.

Grace stood at the cave entrance, looking down into darkness that no longer felt hungry.

“Think it’ll be okay?” Alia asked.

“Yeah. The Void isn’t angry anymore. Just… existing. Doing its job without hurting anyone.”

“And the town?”

Mara smiled.

“They’ll be fine. Better than fine. They remember how to live now.”

Grace felt the familiar chime of a completed quest.

[Quest Complete!]

[Reward: Ethereal Circlet]

[Effect: Prevents mental manipulation and energy drain]

And suddenly, a circlet materialized in Grace’s hands.

“Are you kidding me?” Grace stared at the notification. “NOW I get mind protection? After the Void already scrambled my brain?”

“What?” Alia peered at her. “You’re making the face again.”

“I. DO. NOT. HAVE. A. FACE!”

The girls looked at her like she was crazy.

“Whatever,” Grace pouted. “I hate it here.”

Mara laughed.

“Come on. Let’s get breakfast before we head back. I think we’ve earned it.”

“Ooh, nice circlet!” Alia noted. Grace didn’t even say anything back.

They walked back to town together. The sun painted everything gold, and for once, Hollowtown’s buildings didn’t look beige. They looked like home.

[Six Pillars down. One more to go.]

Grace touched the circlet. At least the next one wouldn’t be able to mess with her head.

[Probably.]

Knowing her luck, Eternia had seven more ways to make her life complicated.

But that was tomorrow’s problem. Today, she had breakfast with friends and a town learning to live again.

That was enough.

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