Alastor had once been the kind of man who blended into the background, the type you’d forget the moment you looked away. A late-night radio host, his voice smooth and warm, drifting through the dark hours while the rest of the world slept. He was a regular guy—nothing remarkable about him, nothing that would make him stand out in a crowd. He could’ve been splashed by a passing truck in the rain, and no one would’ve bothered to look twice.

His life was simple, quiet, almost forgettable. He enjoyed the solitude, the steady rhythm of his routines, and the way the night embraced him like an old friend. His listeners were the ones who found comfort in his voice, the ones who tuned in for the brief companionship he offered in the late hours. For Alastor, that was enough. Life was simple, and he was content with his place in it.

The day Alastor’s world collapsed was the kind of day that sank into the bones. The kind of day where the sun can still shine, yet all you see is the gray, the emptiness pressing in on every side.

It started with a phone call. The one he could hear in his gut before it even rang. His wife, Rebecca, told him that she couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t keep pretending things were okay when he had already fallen apart.

Rebecca is a warm, kind-hearted woman with sharp green eyes and soft brown hair, exuding a quiet elegance. She’s compassionate and practical, always putting others first, but she’s also strong-willed and perceptive. As Alastor’s wife, she tried to ground him, but over time, his ambition and isolation drove a wedge between them, leading her to make the difficult choice to leave. Though her love for him remained, she knew she couldn’t stay in a relationship that had become too fractured.

The words tumbled out in a quiet, final way—like a death sentence—and before he could respond, the line went dead.

Alastor didn’t argue. He didn’t beg or scream. He just stood in his office, staring at the empty chair across from him. The chair she used to sit in. His office felt too small. The walls seemed to close in on him, suffocating with their silence.

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He walked through the radio station like a zombie, each step hollow and distant, as if his body had forgotten how to feel. The lights above him buzzed like the last remnants of something that used to be real. The usual hum of the studio, the flow of the show—it all felt like a performance, a scripted act he was too numb to care about. His voice sounded foreign even to his own ears, a tinny, rehearsed thing that spilled from his mouth without meaning. Nothing felt genuine anymore. Not the studio, not the listeners, not even his own words.

When his shift ended, his boss appeared in the doorway, an envelope hanging limp in his hand like some cruel joke. Alastor barely registered him approaching, too lost in the surreal fog that had settled around him. His boss didn’t speak at first—just stood there, the silence thick with the kind of pity that made Alastor want to scream.

“Alastor,” his boss finally said, his voice flat, “we’re replacing you. Someone younger, someone cheaper.”

The words hit like a cheap punchline to a joke that had never been funny. His grip tightened on the envelope, but it didn’t feel like anything real. It was like holding a piece of paper that wasn’t even there, just a figment of his crumbling reality. The company, his whole career—it had all been a façade, a mirage that had shattered, leaving nothing behind but the weight of his failure.

“Sorry,” his boss added, the word meaningless as if the apology was just another lie in a long string of them. “You understand.”

Alastor just stared at the envelope, his eyes unfocused, as if the world itself had turned into an illusion he couldn’t escape. His whole life, the thing he’d worked for, the life he thought was real, was fading—disappearing like smoke. He wanted to scream, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

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Alastor didn’t know how long he walked. The streets blurred together, a parade of empty storefronts and dim lights flickering like ghosts. He moved through the world like a man who wasn’t really part of it anymore, his feet carrying him without purpose, without thought.

He found himself at a park, the concrete cold beneath him as he sank onto an old bench. The sun began to rise, but it didn’t feel like morning. It felt like a slow unravelling, the world waking up to a truth that only he seemed to know. He stared at the light, but it didn’t warm him. It only made the coldness inside him sharper, more biting.

Time slipped by, unnoticed, and still, he sat there, unmoving, like a spectator in his own life. Finally, after what felt like hours, he got up. His legs ached, but he didn’t care. He just kept walking. The world seemed to stretch on forever, every step a quiet rebellion against the hollow weight pressing down on him. Eventually, he found a place opening up, the neon sign buzzing to life, and without thinking, he walked in.

The bar was dark, and the smell of stale beer and cheap whiskey was thick in the air. He sat at the end of the counter, nursing a glass of gin that tasted like regret. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

His eyes flickered over to the jukebox in the corner. A sad little tune spun on the record, and for a moment, he imagined that the music would drown out everything else. If only the world could stay quiet, stay still for a little while. He could forget. Just forget it all.

The bartender slid over another drink, and Alastor tossed back the last of his gin.

“Another?” the bartender asked, his voice sounding miles away.

“Yeah, sure,” Alastor muttered, feeling the cold metal of his wallet in his pocket. His fingers brushed over it, the dull weight a reminder that at least something in his life had once had value.

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Alastor slid into a booth near the back, his eyes scanning the room like he was looking for something or someone. The people around him came and went, their laughter fake, their smiles rehearsed. He watched them, every gesture, every word, felt like part of some performance they were all putting on. They smiled like they meant it, but he could see it—see the cracks behind their eyes.

He used to smile like that too, didn't he? His face felt foreign now, frozen in that same empty grin. Time stretched on, the hours blurring together as he drank, watching the world spin around him, but never feeling like part of it. It was all so hollow, so scripted. He could almost hear the music in the background, playing just loud enough to drown out the silence in his head.

But when he went to pay for his last drink, it was gone.

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Alastor froze. His hands patted at his pockets again, his heart beginning to pound. He stood up, eyes scanning the bar as if the wallet might just appear from thin air. But no. It was gone. Stolen.

“Everything alright, buddy?” the bartender asked, a little too sweetly, his eyes narrowing.

“I—" Alastor stammered. “I... I had it just a minute ago.”

The bartender’s smile faltered. “I’m afraid you’ll have to pay your tab, friend.”

A lump rose in Alastor’s throat, his mind screaming. He couldn’t afford to pay. His eyes darted to the door, but before he could react, the bartender was calling over two burly men at the back of the room.

“Come on, let’s get him out of here.”

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The bouncers didn’t waste time, their hands grabbing him, shoving him out the door like he was nothing more than a piece of trash. His body hit the cold pavement, the sharp pain cutting through the fog of his mind.

Before he could even pull himself up, a boot slammed into his side, sending a sharp, jagged pain through his ribs that stole the breath right from his lungs. His chest heaved as he gasped for air, but before he could catch his breath, another boot slammed into his gut, knocking him back to the cold concrete. The impact rattled through his bones, a deep, searing pain that didn’t seem to end. Another kick came, harder this time, cracking against his knee. A sickening pop echoed in his ears. His leg buckled beneath him, but they didn’t stop. The laughter around him was guttural, cruel, like the sound of vultures circling over a dying carcass.

He tried to raise his arms to protect himself, but they felt like dead weight, useless. His body was already battered, every inch of it aching. His vision blurred, the edges of his world starting to darken as more kicks rained down—first to his ribs, then his face, each blow more vicious than the last. His mouth filled with blood, the metallic taste sharp and foul. He spit it out, but they didn’t care. The world spun, a mess of flashing lights and blurred shapes, and the pain… the pain never stopped. It crawled beneath his skin, deeper and deeper, until it was all he could feel.

A boot hit his jaw, snapping his head back so violently it felt like his skull might split in two. The impact sent stars dancing behind his eyes. His breath came in shallow, painful gasps. His limbs felt numb, unresponsive like they weren’t even his own. He couldn’t fight back. There was no fight left in him. The blows were relentless—faster, harder, punishing him for a crime he couldn't even remember committing.

It was the last moment of his life—the moment everything fell apart.

He never felt the final blow, never saw the darkness that crept in. Just a numbness, a stillness, a feeling of surrender.

And then... nothing.

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He woke up to a searing pain that stretched across his entire body. His limbs felt heavy, foreign—too still. His chest rose and fell with the sharp rhythm of a mechanical beep, each breath forced, a constant reminder that he was still here, still breathing. Life support tubes and IVs snaked from his body, tethering him to the world he barely recognized. But it wasn’t the hospital room that drew his attention. It was the darkness that pressed against the edges of his mind.

Nothing wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t still. It was an endless howl of whispers—like a thousand voices hissing in his ear, too soft to understand, but sharp enough to scrape at his mind. Shapes moved within the darkness, flickering in and out of existence, shadows that swirled and coiled, too real to ignore but too fleeting to grasp. They weren’t real, but it felt like they were. They pressed in on him from all sides, suffocating him with their cold touch.

He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but when his eyes fluttered open, the world around him was too bright, too sharp. A sterile white ceiling, the faint hum of machines, the hiss of oxygen, and the sterile scent of antiseptic flooded his senses. He tried to move, but the weight of his body felt like it had been shackled to the bed. His arms, his legs—they didn’t respond.

The pain, though, was still there. A dull throb that echoed through his skull and radiated through his broken body. His chest felt tight as if the air around him was thickening, and each breath he took was a struggle.

He tried to speak, but his voice came out as a dry rasp, barely more than a whisper. His eyes fluttered to the side. A figure stood at the foot of his bed—a doctor, one of many who had come and gone in the hours—or was it days?—since the beating.

"Mr. Alastor," the doctor said, her voice soft, clinical. She didn’t seem to notice the pain in his eyes or the confusion clouding his expression. "You’ve sustained severe injuries. Broken bones, internal bleeding, damage to your spinal cord." Her words hit him like a punch to the gut, the irony of that statement wasn’t lost on him. "I’m afraid you’ll never walk again."

The words sank in slowly, like stones dropped into water, ripples of disbelief spreading through him. Never walk again.

The idea felt unreal. He couldn’t process it. The numbness in his limbs, the cold ache that seeped through his bones—it wasn’t just physical. His very sense of self was crumbling beneath the weight of those words. The life he had worked so hard to build, the image he had projected for years, was slipping away, slipping through his fingers like sand.

He tried to move again. His fingers twitched in a desperate, futile attempt to grasp onto something, anything, to prove that this was temporary, that he wasn’t lost. But nothing happened. His body was a stranger to him now.

The doctor continued, her voice now sounding distant like it was coming from a faraway place. "The damage is... extensive. Your legs have been... rendered useless. We’ll do what we can to manage the pain, but there’s nothing more we can do." Her words became an echo in his mind. The weight of her statement pressed down on him.

Never walk again.

The hollow laugh bubbled up from the pit of his stomach, a bitter, broken sound. He was trapped. Not just in the bed, not just in this hospital, but in his own body. The void was inside him now—its whispers louder than ever.

He tried to focus on the doctor’s face, but it felt like his vision was swimming as if the world itself were fading out of focus. This was it. This was the end. The end of everything he had been.

She left him alone in the room, the soft click of the door closing behind her a final sound that made him feel more alone than ever.

The whispers in the dark grew louder. He was nothing. He was everything. He was lost.

His body, once whole, was torn apart. Shattered. His skin felt too tight, like it had been remade, reshaped by some unseen hand. His ribs ached, his legs stiff, his hands trembling as if they no longer belonged to him. He could barely move, but the pain was a constant presence—raw, unrelenting, burning in his muscles, in his veins.

He heard voices. Distant, cruel, mocking. They were everywhere, echoing in the shadows, slipping into the cracks of his consciousness. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable—derisive, full of contempt. The world outside was a blur, distant and unreachable. He was nothing. He was everything.

He tried to scream, but nothing came out. His mouth was dry, and cracked, his voice stolen by the void that surrounded him.

He was lost. No direction, no hope, no anchor. Just the whispers, the shapes, the endless dissonance of a mind that was no longer his own.

And then, just as quickly as it had begun, there was silence. A breath. A heartbeat. A flicker of something—a memory of what was once real. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

He drifted for what felt like an eternity, trapped in an endless loop of agony, a nightmare that refused to end. And through it all, he became aware of something that would change him forever: the chaos. The void inside of him, pulling and pushing at the edges of his mind.

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Alastor awoke. But it wasn’t to a world he knew. It was a place beyond reason, beyond time, a vast, ever-shifting void of swirling shadows and fractured realities. He tried to scream, but his voice was swallowed by the dark, his very essence warped by the relentless pull of this place.

His memories were a fog. His name, his life, the people who had mattered—all blurred into nothing.

Except for one thing. One thought.

He would never be weak again.

He embraced the void.