There are many things that connect certain people. Naturally, they are the basic needs of every human - food, water, air, and sleep. Yet if you take away all of that, humanity as a whole becomes disconnected. There would be some who enjoy sleeping, and so they would do so out of the comfort of it, not out of the need. Others might enjoy the limitless energy and would never even bother owning a bed anymore. Like this, it would be with everything. Yet even when stripped of such primitive requirements for living, there would still be one main connection that binds us all - fear. People will always fear something. Whether you are an immortal god or a tiny bug that only lives for a few days, fear will always find its way into your heart. You may fear that your life will be meaningless, or that your death will be a painful one. Or perhaps it is far simpler, like being afraid of heights or spiders. I too had my fears. I feared that no matter what I'd create, it would never match the popularity of my first novel, my only true bestseller. I feared that my readers will eventually get tired of me producing only "good" stories and if a "great" or even a "perfect" one wouldn't appear soon, they would all leave me. I feared that without them and the fame they granted me... she would leave me too.

Yet my eyes have been opened like never before. Now I know that the fears of simple humans are nothing. Death? All it means is the afterlife for you. Heights and spiders? Well, in the worst case, they can kill you. Meaningless life? At least you had one. And the absence of fame and love? At least you live in a world where they exist. No, these fears are nothing but nonsense. A meaningless paranoia created by mortals whose lives are too good to be true, so they subconsciously taint them with their own concerns and worries. But there is only one thing they should truly fear. One thing so immensely terrible and horrifying, that it makes all the other fears and phobias look like play-pretend. There is nothing to fear, but the Void.

I was surrounded by nothing but total darkness, yet I could see myself and Shade perfectly as if our bodies were shining just enough light for us to be clearly visible. For a while, I listened to his rants. I shed tears in such volume my body would shrivel up and die if I wasn't already dead. But eventually, after breaking apart for long enough, I finally snapped. I rushed at Shade with all my emotions turned to wrath. We started fighting, and one punch was quickly traded for another. There was no pain. Neither of us suffered and neither of us got tired. After all, when you're dead, you don't exactly play by the rules of the mortal realm anymore. And so we brawled and shouted at each other everything we had on our minds. In a sense, this was me fighting myself, screaming at the mirror and punching my own reflection. But even rage is not an eternal emotion. Nothing is. So when we both got tired of fighting, I made a different proposal. One that Jack told me about back then when... How long has it been anyway? It didn't matter. I remembered what he told me, and since I had nothing to lose, Shade and I started talking. First, we used it to just insult one another. I think I went through the entire English vocabulary just to come up with the best passive-aggressive strikes against him, and he did the same to me. But as we ran out of words, the rivalry between us slowly faded. Instead of just plain insults, we started telling each other exactly what we hated about one another. Then we always tried our best to justify the behaviour, but my excuses always fell short when Shade pulled the "I'm actually just you" card. The worst part was that he was right. He was just me. Me and nobody else. The part of me that I hated the most, made real with the power of Divine Creativity.

I wish to say that all this talking solved our problems. But truth be told, that wasn't it in the slightest. He despised me and I despised him. A bizarre cycle of self-hatred. Yet after some time, we got so tired of talking to each other, we just decided to give ourselves some alone time for a while and turned our backs on one another. Only when I had the time to think did I start to wonder how long have we actually been here. The answer to that is impossible to obtain. The Void does not know the concept of time. It doesn't move here, nor does it stay here. It simply doesn't exist. And if a person is stripped of fatigue, hunger, thirst, and similar needs that would demand to be periodically satisfied, they lose the whole concept of time whatsoever. There was no sun that we could use to count the days spent here. No seasons, not even a single visual change in the surroundings. We could've been talking and fighting with each other for millennia, and none of us would even notice it. That is the curse of the timeless ones.

Yet naturally, we grew annoyed by each other's presence. Shade could not get too far from me. Apparently, that was physically impossible for him. To this day, I'm pretty sure he lied and just wanted to irritate me further by always staying nearby. And with nothing to look at but endless darkness? Well... I guess you can imagine that fun wasn't actually something we'd experience in such a place. After a while, we decided to do something different for a change. We'd go for a walk and continue talking once on our feet, just to change things up a bit. Like this, we exchanged many opinions filled with frustration and anger. Little did we know what we were walking towards. Because the Void is vast. So vast that none of you can even imagine. Your universe? Everything that you know about it? It's nothing but a tiny marble. And the Void? That is the sea. And just like in the sea, even here, one can find life.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"You know what really sucks about you?" Shade started our most likely millionth argument.

"No?"

"You can just never say hi to a person in a single way. You just keep changing it! Sometimes you say hello, sometimes hi, hey, sup, heyo, and so on. It's driving me nuts! Why not just find one greeting that suits your liking, like any other normal person, and just stick with it?"

"Oh yeah, and whose fault is that?!"

"Huh?? You want to blame me for something like that?"

"And who else? It's your voice that keeps appearing in my head, saying that this greeting sounds ridiculous, and that time I didn't say it loud enough, or I didn't smile enough, or too much, so I looked like a serial killer."

"I'm just trying to protect you."

"Protect me?! From what?!"

"From yourself! I don't want you to make a fool of yourself."

"So you make me miserable because of it? And then blame me for it?"

"And who else should I blame? We are the same person! So it's actually you who hates your own inconsistency in greetings."

"Ugh! You are so insufferable! How many times do you plan on using this argument? Look we may be the same..."

I wanted to keep talking. There were so many things on my mind that I still wanted to tell Shade, but I couldn't. What happened in that instant was so mind-breaking that a single word couldn't leave my mouth, even though I desperately tried to push them out.

Up until now, we used to walk in total darkness. There was not a single object in sight except for me and Shade. We were walking on solid ground, yet we didn't even know which way was up. It was a strange feeling. But what happened back then simply cannot be described. It was as if our whole scenery changed. In a single moment, we were in the complete absence of everything, and in the next, we were somewhere else. We found ourselves standing on a metal bridge. Or at least I thought it was made of metal. Nobody really knows what the material inside the Void is actually made of. It is everywhere and can be both hard and soft, depending on where exactly you find it. The bridge seemed to be extremely long, leading up to a small... building? I can't quite remember it clearly anymore. It was as if a child built a cube out of mismatched metal bricks. Some parts of it were sticking out while others created gaps. From that structure, similar bridges went in every direction, including up and down. Eventually, they connected to another such building with the exact same imperfections and the exact same set of six bridges. Then, somewhere further away, there was an even bigger building, yet constructed in a similar manner. I assumed that must've been the most important place in this area, because nowhere else could we find anything even remotely comparable in size. Wherever we looked, we saw nothing but the ever-repeating pattern of boxes and bridges. They were in every direction. I even carefully peeked over the edge of the bridge and saw only the same constructs going down endlessly. And the sky... The sky around us looked like a slightly cyan starry night. As if we were standing on a space station of massive proportions.

We stood there and simply looked around, terrified of what just happened. I am not sure how much time had passed. We could've been standing there frozen like that for many decades before Shade finally found the courage to speak.

"Where the fuck are we? This is not the Void, right? It's so..."

"Not empty?" I finished his sentence.

"Yeah, exactly. These things look like man-made constructs. But... where did they come from?"

"Maybe someone brought us here via something like a spell?"

"You just have to explain everything with magic, huh?"

"Hey! Don't blame me for it. You've seen magic yourself back in my... our worlds. It exists!"

"But out here?"

"Who knows. It's not like any encyclopedia had a Void chapter in it."

We both had mountains of questions, yet nobody was around to answer them. But finally, after all this time surrounded by nothingness, we finally had something that even remotely looked like scenery. Therefore, the next course of our action was clear - go to the nearest of the metal buildings and look around for other people. And so we set out on a new journey. At that point, I remember feeling confident and even slightly happy. Imagine exploring an unknown and mysterious world after your own death. There is nothing more for you to lose. No risk of pain, suffering, or anything. Even if I was to fall off one of those bridges, nothing bad would happen to me.

I look back at my naivety from that time and I laugh. Pain? Death? Those are such insignificant things.

We walked for a while. Neither of us could say how long it actually took, but I remember growing so bored that I started counting steps. The exact number has long since left my mind, but I vaguely recall something over 73 000. Out here, it's nothing. In the mortal realm, such an exercise would kill me. Yet despite covering such a distance, it didn't seem like we would be getting any closer to the metal building.

Then it happened again. The scenery shifted right before my eyes, changing in every aspect imaginable. This feeling... I struggle to put it into words. As the bridges and cubes disappeared, they were replaced by a giant golden ball, standing right in front of us. Everywhere around, there was a web of massive metal pipes. There were so many of them that the place suddenly looked like a cave. The sky could not be seen anymore. Although... was it even a sky?

But the feeling of the transportation was the worst. I can only describe it as everything falling apart. The feeling was unlike anything Shade could ever do to me. Like everything I love, loved, and will ever love started to painfully melt right in front of my eyes. I remember seeing everything. Like a cube of massive proportions, only to find out I am an atom. No, not even that. I was so insignificant that even an atom would be a deity to me. I was nothing. My mind was nothing. Everything I represented was nothing. I remember myself screaming, begging for it to stop and spare me such a sight. Then, I saw a flash of light and after it, total darkness.