Breaking Will of Eternity

-----Chapter 2: Acceptance or Denial-----

How much time had passed?

A second? A minute? A year?

Nyxen didn't know. He had no way of knowing.

There was nothing to mark the passage of time. No ticking clock, no shifting shadows, no rise or fall of breath. The Abyss was as it always had been—silent, formless, absolute. A vast nothingness that stretched infinitely in every direction, swallowing all sense of existence.

And he was trapped in it.

At first, he fought against it. His mind screamed in defiance, demanding an answer, searching for something—anything—to grasp onto. He ran through every memory, replayed every moment that led him here, tried to force logic onto the impossible. But the Abyss did not care for reason. It did not care for his desperation.

There was nothing.

No warmth, no cold. No pain, no hunger. No sensation at all.

He was weightless. Without form. Without tether.

Like he had been erased from existence, yet left just conscious enough to suffer the realization of it.

And so, his thoughts unraveled.

"Am I even alive?"

The question came unbidden, a whisper against the void. It should have had an obvious answer. Life was breath, warmth, sensation. Life was motion and sound and meaning. Yet here, in this endless nothing, was there even a difference between life and death?

What did it mean to be alive when he could not feel his own body, when he could not see or hear, when he could not even confirm that he was real?

"If I have no senses... then how can I be sure I exist at all?"

The thought should have been absurd. But the Abyss did not let him escape his own mind. The silence stretched, pressing against him, forcing him deeper into questions he had no way of answering.

And so, the doubts grew.

"If I am here... does that mean others are too?"

He wasn't the only one who had fallen. He had seen others—buildings, streets, people—all swallowed by the void. Had they all ended up here? If so, where were they? Why was he alone?

Or worse—what if he wasn't?

What if there were others, but he simply could not perceive them? What if they, too, were trapped in their own isolations, screaming into the Abyss, just as he had?

The thought sent a silent chill through his mind.

And then, another question surfaced. A more terrifying one.

"What if reality itself was never real?"

Had he truly fallen? Had there ever been a world beyond this one? Or had everything—his home, his mother, his memories—been nothing more than a fragile illusion? If there was no proof of his existence now, then what if there had never been proof at all?

What if he had never been meant to exist?

The thought should have horrified him.

It did.

And yet, it also made him wonder—what if the Abyss was not a punishment, but a revelation? What if the world he had known had been a lie, and this... this void was the truth?

If that was the case, then what had his life even meant?

What had he been?

What was he now?

But in the end, there were no answers.

And he would never get them.

At some point—perhaps after a thousand thoughts, perhaps after a million—Nyxen simply stopped resisting.

He stopped trying to understand the Abyss. Stopped clawing for meaning, stopped demanding explanations from a void that would never give them. His voice, which had once screamed in defiance, now lay silent. His thoughts, which had spiraled endlessly, now came to a halt.

"This is my reality now."

The moment he accepted it—

Something changed. For the first time in an eternity, he felt... something. It was faint, almost imperceptible. But it was there. A sensation.

At first, it was nothing more than a whisper at the edge of his awareness—the mere knowledge that he had a body. It was such a foreign, overwhelming realization that he almost recoiled from it. After so long without sensation, the very concept of 'self' felt strange.

Then came something else.

The space around him.

Before, the Abyss had been an endless void, an existence without form. But now, he could feel it—not as a place, but as a presence. It stretched around him, vast and formless, yet no longer an empty nothingness. It was there, pressing against him, acknowledging him in some unfathomable way.

Had it always been like this? Had the Abyss always surrounded him like this, and he had simply been unable to perceive it?

Or had something changed?

He didn't know.

But for the first time since falling, he had something. A single, undeniable truth.

"I exist."

And that was enough.

An unknown amount of time passed.

Maybe seconds. Maybe years. It didn't matter anymore.

Nyxen's awareness sharpened, his presence solidified. His thoughts, once chaotic, now had clarity. He could feel his body—weightless yet whole. He could move, though there was no ground to step upon, no air to displace.

Yet, the void remained.

He was still trapped. Still lost. Still alone.

And yet, something had shifted.

Before, the Abyss had been a prison. An unchanging, suffocating silence that sought to erase him. But now... he wanted to understand it.

He was tired of asking meaningless questions. Tired of trying to grasp at a reality that no longer existed. If there were no answers, then he would find his own truth. If there was no path forward, then he would make one.

If the Abyss sought to consume him, then he would consume it first.

"If the Abyss is all that remains, then I will learn it."

Even if there was nothing to learn. Even if the answers never came. Even if, in the end, he discovered nothing at all.

And so, with no path forward and no hope of escape, Nyxen chose the only thing left to him.

He learned.

At first, it was nothing more than quiet observation. He reached out—not with his hands, but with his awareness—feeling the void around him. The Abyss was not empty, not truly. It was vast, endless, yet… present. It wasn't just a space; it was something. A force? A will? A silence so absolute that it seemed to press against his very existence? He didn't know. But he wanted to.

So, he listened. He observed. He let himself sink deeper into the nothingness, not resisting, not rejecting it.

It was maddening at first. He expected movement, sound, a reaction of some kind. But the Abyss remained unchanged, indifferent to his efforts. It was like trying to listen for a whisper in a vacuum, waiting for an answer from something that did not care to respond.

But then—subtly, quietly—he began to understand.

The nothingness wasn't just a void. It had depth. It had layers. It wasn't completely silent; it simply spoke in ways he hadn't yet learned to perceive. The Abyss did not exist as a prison, nor as a torment. It simply was.

And if it simply was—then perhaps he could be, too.

His fear dulled. His mind steadied. He did not know if he would ever escape. But for now, he would learn.