Dim lightning covered the corridor, its source an unnatural one. Tangerine colored orbs laid upon steel bars, emitting a feeble yet sufficient light. Echo travelled across the cobblestone tiles, the tenuous clinking of metal, as a figure walked in the once bolstering passages. An old man, adorned by a plethora of trinkets, took joy in the silence. He was getting ready for what was going to occur.

The tower had been deserted; he had given the order. Only he remained in his magnum opus. The dream of every wizard, a fully enchanted tower of their own. Once an institution of magic, a center of knowledge; now it would become his tomb.

With the slowness typical of someone weighed by the years, the man took his time to reach the center point of the building, not before passing through hundreds of corridors, trying to remember the glory of yore once breathing in this place. It seemed an endless way, courtesy of the space-defying properties of the tower. But in the end, he reached his destination.

Colloquially known as the Nexus, the tower’s utmost center point was the command center of the living building. Only accessible to him, the tower master, and seen by few people along the centuries.

The room was cylindrical, only a few meters of radius, yet tens upon tens of height. At the zenith the tower’s core could be found. A modified dungeon core built from scratch after centuries of investigation and decades of crafting. But now, it paled against his newest discovery.

A black orb levitated in the middle of the Nexus, measly centimeters above the ground. It wasn’t that big, especially compared to the colossal tower, yet the two-meter radius sphere was enough for the old man to fit in it.

He sat on a violet velvet armchair as he inspected the supreme display of runecraft and enchanting that was the floating object. It was made from deep ebony, the least ether-conductive material in the known world. Though he knew better, the Existence was too big to comfort itself by an imperfect conductor. Or at least his age told him so and experience told him so.

Vast amounts of mana were needed to even lift the anti-magical artifact, let alone display it in constant levitation. Only possible by the fact that the tower was founded on a Mana Mark. But one shouldn’t be fooled by the infinite black sphere’s aspect: it was only a decorative box.

The true masterwork rested inside.

Multiple anti-gravity and anti-magic fields were used in tandem with a perfectly sealed cage in a vacuum, so the true treasure didn’t shed its eldritch power upon the world. Lest of giving freedom to the corruption, yet its presence still lingered in the atmosphere.

As the old man rested before the final moments, he felt the calling of the void. The null touch of the anti-material dimension was constant, unable to increase its intensity. The ever-consuming corruption of the void was incapable of penetrating his ultimate defense system. Though that didn’t really matter to him.

With a tired sigh, the old human pressed his ring-laden hand in order to get up. The multiple golden and turquoise pendants clicked in a metallic charring. Whilst he slowly approached the perfectly black orb, which image seemed more of a two-dimensional object, a door opened forcefully with a bang.

“Is it true?” A woman’s voice shouted at him in distress.  “Tell me!”

The tower was supposed to be evacuated, core. Why is she here? He telepathically communicated to his creation, which it only responded with a happy glimmer, mischievous as a fairy. They even let her enter his sanctum, his Nexus.

The old man drifted his head towards the woman. An enchanting beauty, worthy of wars between kings to take her hand. The perfect casus belli, as everyone would be disposed to die for her. Yet now, the mystical and perfect beauty was tainted by sadness. That hurt his ancient heart.

“Respond to me!” The elven woman grew impatient as the old human stayed in place without gesticulating a word. That wasn’t anger in her voice, but wariness. Another prick was felt in his heart.

His throat felt dry, he didn’t want to have this conversation. That’s why he had evacuated the tower and waited until she was far away. In the sincerest way he could act, he talked. “Yes.” No more words were needed. The message was passed.

“Why?” A tear trickled down the woman’s visage as she sobbed. “Why do you want to die so badly?”

You wouldn’t understand. That’s what he didn’t tell. It was physiologically impossible for her to understand what he was going through thanks to her elven nature, and he was aware of the fact. “I’m tired.” His voice was rough and tired. It wasn’t an act, but the pure, unadulterated reflection of his body’s status.

“But you’re immortal!” Although the long-eared lady was thousands of years old, she threw a tantrum as if she was a child.

“Indeed I am.” He affirmed, caressing the nuclear white and crimson red ring in his right index finger. “Albeit on life support.”

He wasn’t a true immortal; he wasn’t really immortal as a matter of fact. He didn’t possess unlimited longevity of the high elf, nor the endless vitality of the undead lords, nor the true immortality of the divinities and incarnations.

He was a mortal human.

The enchanter had reached far in life with his crafts. He was able to make the Tenet of Immortality once he was one hundred and thirteen years old, yet after millennia, he remained with the same decrepit looks as time ago. And a great price was paid to craft such incomplete masterwork.

“I have achieved far too many things in life,” the mage continued, “I have drunk with kings, I travelled every uncharted corner of the world, I talked, fought, lived alongside gods, then crafted the weapons that they wield, and above everything else, I formed an everlasting legacy in the form of the Enchanter’s Guild.” The elf listened patiently to the man’s monologue, and she grew with fear with every word. “Few things are left for me to do, and my will to live is trickling down by the moment.”

“Please, don’t do this to me.” The equally ancient woman begged. “There’s a lot still to live for… don’t… don’t abandon me.” She tumbled her way towards the old wizard. Then, while shaking, she grabbed his wrinkled hand with her soft ones and laid it on her modest chest. “I… can… give you my body… if needed.” Her voice trembled as much as herself, the last part was clearly told out of desperation more than of desire.

They had been partners over the years, only a professional companionship. He won’t deny there was a friendship, or perhaps even something more profound, yet… he couldn’t care anymore. Humans weren’t meant to live this long. Even the succulent offer felt as enticing as a glass of water at the moment. Especially if one took in consideration the curse laid upon him. Only if he had been born as an elf… Every problem would’ve been erased. He wouldn’t have been under the yoke of the gods or his mortality.

“I won’t kill myself.” The man told her out of the blue. He surprised the woman, even himself, with the juvenile tone of his voice. “Right there lies my most unstable experiment.” He pointed at the deep ebony prison. “I have put the project down for decades now, judging it too dangerous, an abysmal chance that it may work.”

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As a fellow mage, the elven woman could understand the stupidity and mortality of taking on a project without a true confirmation of its success. She inspected the odor of the void, rotting the nearby space around the sphere. It didn’t look good.

“So, you are just going to try the impossible, virtually zero chance of coming back alive, and you are telling me you are not going to kill yourself? Do you even believe your own words?” Distress and irony combined in her protest.

“A non-zero chance is better than an outright negation.” The man explained with a weak smile.

“Nothing will change your mind?” The elf asked for confirmation one last time. To which the man responded with a slow sway of his head. “Then you better succeed. I refuse to see the Divine Enchanter perish such an anticlimactic death.” Though the woman intended to cheer the man, it came out more like a threat.

“That I may do.” In the end, his project had a nefarious chance of success. This wasn’t but a glorified suicide. “I despise that title, though. It makes me look like a puppet of the gods.”

It was true he had forged alliances with the divinities, but they were also the ones who cursed him in the first place. If this worked… if this worked, he would be free. Every tie to the divine beings he loathed so much would be cut.

He sighed before continuing. “Though if I emerge victorious, I fully intend to make you fulfill your promise.”

The elder elf blushed at those words, more expected of an inexperienced young maiden than an ancient mage. “You better wish.” She added with a hint of roguery.

The enchanter scoffed. “Now, go.” The time for jokes had ended. It was the time for the greatest experiment of the millennium. “Go away as far as you can. Don’t be anywhere close when I activate it.”

“I… I understand.” She knew that it was impossible to change the man’s mind, but still, it pained her seeing him accept death so easily after the incredible troubles they underwent for enhancing his lifespan. “Goodbye…” Words were heavy and difficult to pronounce.

“No.” The man replied. “This is not a goodbye, but a see you later.” He said in a last effort to bring peace to his fae friend’s heart.

“I… see. The human language is still complicated to me.” The woman dismissed it as a joke with a laugh, even though they had been talking in elvish all this time. “See you later, enchanter.”

The old man bloomed with a wide smile. “See you later, sorceress.”

The elven sorceress left the room as the human enchanter fell back onto the armchair. His hand trembled even with his trinkets that protected against age degenerative syndromes.

“Tell me... when she’s... far away.” He told his trusty core with a rugged voice, revealing that the previous conversation had been an act. His body had been suffering for a long time.

He observed the room where he had spent the most time for the last millennia. Thousands of trinkets, artifacts, and other paraphernalia had accumulated over the years. Whether collected during his travels or some gift from important people, this place was comparable to a dragon’s treasure trove.

Automated flying brooms managed by the core still dusted the immense inner tower, even when the end was nigh. Levitating astrolabes littered across the room synchronized together in their movement as they calibrated the final steps of the cataclysmic process the tower was going to undergo.

For the last time, he connected himself to the ether. The web-like structure of the realm of magic was something he had found comforting since the first time he saw it. Magic itself flowed into and outside him in a natural process equivalent to breathing.

Though the cylindrical room drowned with ether, there was one spot devoid of it. The deep ebony orb. The mythical metal had anti-magical properties, but not enough to stop the ether net to infiltrate. Those were the properties of the void.

He lost his concentration as he received a ping from the tower’s core. She had evacuated the area. Any living beings except diverse flora were nearby the tower within a five-kilometer radius. It seems the wards were working correctly and no animal, whether critter or insect, would accompany him to the beyond.

Whilst he had been building the wards, he thought to attract every single mosquito in the planet to get rid of that annoying plague as his last hand to the world. But finally decided against it as it would destroy the ecosystem. Like, every ecosystem. The ether not only affected magic after all.

“It’s time, eh.” He activated the dormant power in his turquoise ring, power filling his very self. The impossible act of getting up from a chair became a menial matter as he unveiled hidden strength. The old man approached the deep ebony sphere with a confident jog, instead of his typical limping.

Space itself distorted once the man stood before the blackest orb. Where there was a perfectly smooth wall, it was now shaped into a circular door. The old man stepped forward, as if going up a ladder, thanks to the object’s faint levitation. The instant he fully entered the sphere, the hole closed. Not a single hint that it ever existed in the first place.

There, floating in the dead center of the spherical room, a dark violet sigil floated. The corrupting energies of the void were already affecting him, no more physical boundaries between them, only magical ones.

“This is it.” He looked in awe at the contained glimpse of the void. The rift between dimensions had been trapped for decades now, yet its jail showed no hints of decay. It was the perfect prison, and now it would be finally open.

Locked behind a cage strong enough to hold gods, the fingernail-sized portal to the null dimension was powerful enough to bring seeds of its corruption. A lesser man would have been tempted to open it for the promise of incommensurable power. But a lesser man the enchanter was not.

He fully intended to close the portal behind him, freeing the world at least from this rift. If he succeeded with his enchanting, then the void would never be a problem again. If he failed, though… The worst that could happen was his death. Not really an undesirable outcome, truth be told.

Are the calculations ready? He communicated mentally with the tower. Countless calculations were required to increase the chances of survival: planetary alignment, position of the stars and satellites, the climate, and more endless and insignificant things that did affect the outcome. Even though he was suicidal, he didn’t want to die.

A green light was given to him by the core after a few instants of silence.

The grasp of the cosmic nullness waited in his bones, the multiple layers of enchantments seemed powerless against its all-consuming aspect. Yet that didn’t stop him, rather he was more motivated by that fact. Neither demons nor gods had explored the confines of the void, let alone the mortals. To his knowledge, he would be the one to cross the boundary. The final frontier.

A maddening smile crackled in his rugged skin as the last layers of protection were removed by the core. He had indulged in every of the twelve elements except Void. This was the ultimate element, not because of difficulty, because that was easily dominated by the complex fluxes of Time, but the lack of Void in the natural world.

The connection to the tower’s core began to falter as the void rift was finally freed of the uncountable defenses. He sensed the ether being absorbed by the uncharted dimension, fear and curiosity struck his heart in equal parts.

He took a deep breath, though it proved difficult as almost every molecule of air had disappeared from the spherical room thanks to the vacuum created by the dimension’s different pressure levels. The void’s being none, of course.

Well, it isn’t like I need oxygen to survive or anything like that. He took a step forward and looked at the void.

It looked back.

An eldritch creature awaited at the other side, probably it had been waiting since he had opened the rift all those decades ago. He didn’t see the creature, per se. But the old mage could register its presence. Its aura was maddening, his trinkets against mental protection were working over-time. This wasn’t a minion of the null dimension. But a lord.

For a brief instant of indecision, he faltered. But then his smile got wider and wider. This was what he wanted. To go out with a bang. He had fought with and against god-like creatures, but never truly defeated one. It would be interesting doing for the first time, perishing on the attempt wasn’t really an issue.

None had seen the void lords, though their existence was well-known and documented. Their tendrils infected the world constantly, and the myths of the ‘Old Gods’ were one of the most horrifying stories to be ever told.

His white and crimson ring began flashing with every step he took towards the barrier between worlds. The pure aura of the void lord was enough to induce death on a living being, activating the pseudo-resurrecting capabilities of his incomplete masterwork. Right now, the heavens or the underworld wasn’t an option. If he perished right now, his soul would be trapped on the unexplored confines of the eldritch plane.

Oh, boy. This is going to be interesting. A fire reignited in his stone heart, his will to live supplanted by a battle-thirst worthy of the god of war. How does a being born before the inception of the world even look? With that thought, the so-called Divine Enchanter crossed the boundary between realms, never to be seen again.