Breaking Will of Eternity

----- Chapter 1: Into The Hollow Dark-----

"Mom... I'm cold."

A whisper, fragile and distant, lost in the void.

Silence followed.

"Please... help me."

The words drifted, unanswered, dissolving into the nothingness around him.

Nyxen floated in the Abyss. Not falling, not rising. Just… existing. Yet even existence felt wrong. There was no warmth, no cold, no air, no weight—only an absence so complete it gnawed at the edges of his mind. The concept of sensation itself was foreign here, as if the laws that once defined his reality had unraveled, leaving behind an empty void that refused to acknowledge his presence.

He tried to move, but there was nothing to move against. He tried to breathe, but there was nothing to inhale. His body—was it even a body anymore?—did not obey him. His senses clawed for something—anything—but the Abyss gave him nothing in return. And so, he drifted. A prisoner in a void without walls.

---

The world hadn't always been like this. He used to have a home, a life, a reason to exist. It wasn't much, but it was his. Nyxen had lived with his mother in a cramped, single-bedroom apartment—one of many packed into a run-down building that stood like a relic of forgotten times. The walls were peeling, the wooden floors creaked under the weight of even the smallest steps, and the heating barely worked in winter. Yet, despite its flaws, it was home.

The mornings were filled with the distant sounds of traffic, the chatter of early-rising neighbors, and the comforting warmth of his mother's voice humming in the kitchen. The air always carried the faint scent of cheap coffee and whatever breakfast she managed to scrape together. It was a simple life, but it was enough.

Nyxen had been at work that day. He had taken an extra shift at the convenience store—a place with flickering fluorescent lights, half-stocked shelves, and a constant, lingering scent of stale bread and cheap detergent. The cash register beeped in dull repetition, marking each purchase with a lifeless chime.

His coworker, a lanky man with tired eyes, leaned against the counter.

"You're staying late again?"

"Yeah. Need the extra hours."

It was routine. His mother worked late too, so what was the point of going home early? The extra money, however little, would help.

Everything was normal.

Until it wasn't.

The Sky Broke. It began with a sound. A distant crack—sharp, unnatural, like the sky itself was tearing apart. A shiver crawled up Nyxen's spine before he even knew why.

Then the world changed. A jagged rift split across the heavens, an ink-black wound stretching far beyond the clouds. It was unnatural—wrong. The sky, something he had always taken for granted, was unraveling. Beyond those cracks, there was nothing. No stars. No light. Just a gaping abyss, deeper than anything he had ever imagined.

Then came the screaming. Panic spread through the streets like wildfire. The ground trembled. Buildings groaned under unseen pressure. Streetlights flickered violently before bursting, shards of glass raining down like deadly confetti. The roads cracked, deep fractures running through concrete like veins of an infected wound. People ran, their terror blending into a cacophony of desperate voices.

And in the middle of it all, one thought dominated Nyxen's mind. Mom.

His heart pounded. His legs moved before his brain could fully process the chaos around him. Shoving past customers, ignoring their panicked cries, he bolted for home.

---

The streets—places once familiar—had become unrecognizable nightmares. The bakery at the corner, where he used to buy day-old bread at a discount, was now a pile of rubble. The scent of fresh loaves was gone, replaced by dust and the acrid stench of burning metal.

The park where his mother had once sat, watching him play as a child, had cracked apart—benches tilted at unnatural angles, the ground crumbling away into endless nothingness. Everything was disappearing. His feet pounded against the pavement as he ran, ignoring the pain in his legs, the fire in his lungs.

Just hold on, please—

Then, he saw it. Or rather, he didn't see it. His apartment complex—his home—was gone. Not destroyed. Not reduced to ruins. Simply… gone. The entire block had been erased, as if it had never existed in the first place. In its place was a gaping void, stretching endlessly, swallowing streets, buildings, people—everything.

His breath hitched. His chest tightened.

No... No, no, no—

He staggered forward, knees trembling, reaching out to nothing. The wind howled through the emptiness. No walls. No furniture. No scent of his mother's cheap coffee. Just nothing.

His mother had been inside. She was supposed to be here, waiting for him. Maybe scolding him for running so fast. Maybe asking if he had eaten. She was supposed to be here.

But she wasn't. The reality crashed down on him with suffocating weight. The silence of the void was deafening.

And then, the ground beneath him cracked.

For a single, horrifying moment, he felt weightless.

Then, he too fell.

---

There was no telling how long he had been here. Seconds? Hours? Years? Time had lost its meaning.

Nyxen floated in the Abyss, consumed by nothingness. There was no ground, no sky, no horizon. Only an endless, inescapable void stretching in all directions. It was suffocating. He tried to move, but his body did not respond. He tried to breathe, to scream, but no sound escaped.

There was nothing. A place where even existence itself felt uncertain. His thoughts spiraled, looping endlessly in a vicious cycle.

Mom… His voice—if it could even be called that—was hollow, barely more than a thought escaping into the nothingness.

Where are you?

No answer. No echo. The void did not care.

A tremor ran through his chest. Despair coiled around his soul, tightening like chains he could not break. He had lost everything. He had nothing left. Something inside him cracked. His mind scattered, unable to grasp reason, unable to hold onto hope.

And in the eternal silence of the Abyss—

Nyxen shattered from within. He lost all cause to live, his mind scattered not being able to be rational. He lost himself, he lost his will.