She wakes up screaming.
The sound doesn't echo.
It's swallowed.
By the void.
Her throat burns. Her muscles spasm. A convulsion of instinct tells her to fight, to kill, to move—but gravity has her pinned like a specimen under glass. She's naked, suspended in a vertical coffin of pulsing black metal. It hums with something… ancient.
Not machines.
Memory.
She doesn't know who she is.
She doesn't know where this place is.
But the hum beneath her skin knows her.
And it hates her.
> "Containment breached. Sector: Obsidian Rift. Subject: anomaly. Designation: Unknown."
The voice isn't human. It scrapes like metal grinding against thought. Lights flicker above her, strobing pale green through the gel-filled coffin. The fluid drains with a hiss, and she falls, limbs crashing against the cold floor like a marionette with its strings cut.
She coughs. Vomits clear fluid. Breathes like she's never done it before. Then she lifts her head.
And the void greets her.
A massive circular chamber. Dark walls crawling with code, holograms flickering overhead. No doors. No people. Just her—and it.
Something is standing across the room.
No, not standing. Floating. Watching.
A warden?
A machine?
She squints. It wears a robe made of light, and its face is a blank oval of glass, pulsing faintly with red sigils. It raises an arm. A weapon unfolds from its wrist—razor-like, humming, aimed at her heart.
> "Anomaly will be neutralized."
Move.
Her body doesn't ask.
It obeys.
She rolls left, the floor cracking where the beam hits. White-hot plasma sears past her cheek, and she's already running, legs raw and clumsy but fast. Too fast. She's moving faster than humanly possible, feet slamming into the ground like thunder.
Another blast. She slides beneath it, shoulder bleeding from the burn.
There's no cover. No weapons. Nothing but a metal floor and death.
Except—
A ripple.
In the air.
Like gravity's been bent.
She feels it deep inside, where words don't reach. A pull, like something asleep just twitched behind her ribs.
She doesn't know what she's doing.
She just reaches out—and tears the air.
The void screams.
A jagged rift opens in front of her, a hole in reality itself. The blast hits the rift and vanishes into it like water down a drain.
The machine freezes.
So does she.
> What... was that?
The red glow in its faceplate flares. It's recalculating. Adapting.
She doesn't wait.
She dives through the rift she created.
---
The other side is colder.
She lands in darkness—no walls, no ceiling. A hallway made of shifting light and shadow, with writing etched in the air. Symbols she doesn't recognize. Yet… she understands them.
> "LEVEL ONE: THE TRIAL BEGINS."
The walls shimmer, revealing a corridor lined with doors. Blood stains the metal. Screams echo faintly. Something drips. Something hisses.
She's not alone here.
Her mark pulses—bright on her forearm now, glowing faintly violet like a star just born.
> "Who am I?"
She whispers it aloud, voice hoarse and dry.
Nothing answers. But the mark responds—glowing brighter, burning into her skin until her vision whites out.
---
A flash.
Not a memory.
A war.
A woman standing on a mountain of corpses—her. Her hands raised, the sky torn in half. Stars collapsing into her eyes. Galaxies folding like paper around her outstretched fingers.
Then—
Silence.
Oblivion.
---
She stumbles. Falls to her knees.
Breathing hard.
The memory is gone. But it left something behind.
Power.
Fear.
> "You should not exist," says a voice behind her.
She spins, hand raised.
Another figure.
Not a warden. Not a machine.
A man. Pale skin. Silver eyes. Dressed in a torn uniform with the sigil of the Crucible stitched over his heart.
He's holding a spear made of bone and fire. It vibrates with hunger.
> "You're the one they sealed away," he says. "I thought you were a myth."
She doesn't answer. Her head throbs. Her body aches. But her mark pulses again, and she stands.
> "You're not supposed to be awake yet," he says, taking a step forward. "You're dangerous. You'll tear this place apart."
> "I already did once," she says, surprising herself.
His eyes widen.
He attacks.
---
He's fast. Trained. Every movement honed.
But she's something else.
She dodges, and space warps around her. His spear misses by inches, hitting a wall that dissolves under its force. She grabs his wrist, and the void responds. Shadows spiral from her fingers, wrapping around his weapon and devouring it.
> "What—what are you—?"
She doesn't know.
She just presses her palm to his chest, and something inside him shatters.
He crumples. Not dead—but broken. A shell.
She steps over him.
---
A screen flickers on the far wall.
It shows her face.
Not as she is now—bleeding, shaking, naked.
But as a goddess of war. Crown of light. Eyes like singularities.
> "Designation: VOIDBORN_01"
"Status: Escaped anomaly."
"Kill-on-sight."
A dozen doors unlock across the corridor. Footsteps echo. Weapons charge.
Her mark burns like fire.
And she smiles.