The void was a sculptor's clay, if the sculptor were blind, mad, and really needed a hobby. Devon floated—no, pulsed—in the absence, his consciousness a flickering ember in a starless expanse. He willed a hand into being, the effort akin to dragging iron through tar. Fingers materialized first, translucent and trembling, their edges fraying into static. Pathetic, he thought, the words ricocheting in his skull. Georg could've shaped a whole damn arm by now. Probably while whistling.
But Georg wasn't here. Georg was alive.
He clung to that truth like a prayer—or, more accurately, like Claire clinging to her last vial of chili oil during a kitchen rush.
"For my next trick!" Devon mouthed to the nothingness, soundless and grinning like a street mime who'd just found a wallet. His ghostly fingers snapped—a pantomime of arrogance—and a spark flared. Not light, but its memory: a sickly gold, stolen from the Inquisitor's censers. It sputtered, died, then reignited as something darker—a bruised violet, crackling with static. Holy magic? He scoffed, the void swallowing his laughter. "Call it what it is. Rot. Cancer in a choirboy's robes. Also, terrible interior design."
The spark swelled, birthing a blade—jagged, serrated, its hilt studded with eyes that blinked in discordant rhythms. Holy magic, reshaped by spite. Devon slashed, and the void screamed. Or maybe it was just indigestion. Hard to tell.
He practiced.
Fists became hammers. Hammers became wings. Wings became shields. Each construct dissolved faster than the last, the void gnawing at his focus like rats on a corpse. "You're a stingy muse," he spat, sculpting a facsimile of Claire's diner. The neon sign fizzed—Claire's Outhouse—before crumbling to ash. "But I've rebuilt from less. Remember that time the deep fryer exploded? Good times."
Memories sustained him. The sizzle of bacon on the grill. Natalie's glaive whistling past his ear. Lapen's sister swallowing the Purifier vial, her fever breaking in a sweat-soaked gasp. They're alive. He clung to it, each recollection a brick in the dam against madness. "Also, if I go nuts here, who'll teach Gonov how to not shoot himself in the foot?"
"If gods exist," he mused, conjuring a chair just to watch it unravel like a cheap knit sweater, "they're either sadists or cowards. Or interns. Honestly, this feels like divine outsourcing." The Inquisitor's face flickered in the static—Murdoch's scarred jaw, that swamp-gas gaze. Devon hurled a phantom knife. It vanished mid-flight. "And if they don't?" He leaned back, legs materializing cross-legged. "Then the throne's empty. Time to redecorate. Maybe add a lava lamp. Or a punching bag with Murdoch's face."
He'd spent years enforcing the Monarch's taxonomy—Fighter, Mage, Bard, the suffocating order of it. Now, unshackled, he hybridized with abandon. A gun that fired lightning. A shield that sang lullabies. A dagger forged from his own rage, its edge humming with rebel static. "Class systems?" He dissolved the dagger, reforging it as a scalpel. "Just another cage. Also, way too much paperwork."
The smog haunted him.
In life, it had been a shroud, a reeking metaphor for the Monarch's gaze. Now, in the void's clarity, he saw the cracks. "Omniscience?" He conjured a replica of the capital, its skyline choked in gray. "Then why the borders? Why the wars? Why the hat? Seriously, who designed that gaudy crown?" The smog thickened, tendrils coiling like serpents. Devon plunged a hand into the model, ripping out a factory's heart—a pulsing, tumorous engine. "Fueled by fear. By us."
The engine exploded, the blast echoing with Georg's voice: You're their dog.
"Was," Devon corrected, smearing the ash across his chest like war paint. "Now I'm the fucking virus. Also, way better at accessorizing."
Delusion? Maybe. But the void answered.
When he whispered fire, it burned colder. When he demanded light, shadows curdled. He carved sigils into his ghost-flesh, each mark a rebellion: a fern (for Claire), a honeycomb (for Lapen), a dandelion (for the Brigade). The void tried to scab them over; he reopened the wounds, savoring the sting. "You're learning," he told the darkness, flexing a hand now solid as bone. "But I've had worse teachers. Much worse. My third-grade arithmetic tutor still haunts me."
Murdoch's face surfaced again, sneering. You'll unravel.
"Already did," Devon said, and laughed. "Turns out, I'm a fabulous loose thread."
Time bent. Or ceased. Or maybe it just gave up and took a smoke break.
He stood—stood, legs trembling but whole—in a facsimile of the ISB barracks. The walls oozed black blood, ceiling sagging with tumors. "Home sweet hell," he crooned, strolling past cells where his own screams still echoed. "Still smells like burnt toast and regret. Classic." At the armory, he paused. Rows of seraphim blades hung pristine, their holy light guttering as he neared.
"Let's fix that."
He breathed static into the nearest blade. The metal writhed, shedding its gilt like snake skin, until only a jagged shard remained—a mirror reflecting his hollow eyes, his scarred lips, his hair now streaked void-white. "There," he rasped, sheathing the shard at his hip. "Presentable. Ish. Honestly, the gray streaks are an upgrade. Claire'll be furious she didn't think of it first."
The Monarch's lie unraveled in the void's clarity. Holy magic wasn't divine—it was stolen, siphoned from the smog, from the wars, from the fear. And Devon? He'd become a thief in kind. "Your turn," he told the darkness, flexing fingers crackling with hybridized power—rebel resolve and imperial cruelty fused into something new. "Hope you've got a good dental plan."
The void didn't answer.
Instead, he materialized a box. Not a fancy one—more like a soggy takeout container from the Outhouse, grease stains and all. Inside, scrawled in his own jagged handwriting:
Name : Devon Vael
Age : Unknown (But let's be real—old enough to know better)
Art : Void (It's not a phase, Mom)
Class : Null (Dropout chic)
Mission : Kill the Monarch
Subtext : Also, maybe rescue the diner's coffee machine. That thing's a national treasure.
He snorted. "Dramatic? Sure. But hey, if you're gonna have a mid-afterlife crisis, commit."
The box dissolved, but the words lingered, etched into his ribs like graffiti. Kill the Monarch. Not a prayer. A promise.
"First step," he muttered, conjuring a door where none had been. It was crooked, its knob a mismatched gear, but it'd do. "Time to redecorate someone else's reality."
He reached for the knob—and froze.
A crack split the void, not of his making. Beyond it, the world flickered: rebels huddled in sewers, Claire's diner boarded up, ISB patrols swarming like roaches. A newsreel played in reverse—Georg dragged into a cattle car, Lapen's sister coughing blood into a rusted sink, Natalie's glaive shattered.
"No," Devon whispered. "They're losing. We're losing."
The Inquisitor's voice slithered back. You thought your little rebellion mattered? The Monarch sees all. The smog, the fear, the doubt —it's His canvas.
Devon snarled. "Yeah? Well, I've got a new paintbrush."
He tore at the crack, void-energy surging as he pried it wider. The scene sharpened: his own corpse still hung on the gallows, rot-gloved fingers curled in a stiff middle finger. Time's a joke here, he realized. Out there, I've been dead a week. In here…
In here, he could still taste the iron of his own blood.
"Not a great look," he muttered, eyeing his decaying doppelgänger. "Could've at least touched up the complexion."
But the gallows weren't empty. New bodies swung beside his—faces he didn't recognize. Rebels. Strangers. Fuel. The Monarch's soul engine churned beneath the city, smokestacks belching fresh smog.
"You're not omniscient," Devon spat. "Just a parasite with good PR."
He'd spent years in the Inquisitor's shadow. He knew how they worked—the surveillance networks, the soul-tithe rituals, the way they manufactured fear like it was rations. The smog wasn't a metaphor. It was a weapon. A veil to choke hope.
"But I'm not choking," he growled.
The void trembled as he clawed at the crack, peeling reality like fruit. The rebels needed a spark. A distraction. A virus.
"Fine. Let's crash the Thief's(Monarch's) system."
He stepped toward the rift—and the void yanked him back.
"Oh, come on," he groaned. "I'm not asking for a parade. Just a quick apocalypse!"
The crack sealed, leaving him alone.
But not powerless.
He turned to his corpse, still grinning on its pike. "You," he said, pointing. "You're my bookmark."
The void hummed. Time here was syrup—thick, malleable. He couldn't leave it, he had to understand things more.
"I'll stay for more days, until they take my corpse down." he decided.
The crack sealed, but not before Devon glimpsed the golden threads beneath the smog—not magic, but compliance. The Class System wasn't law. It was a script, rehearsed daily by rebels and Imperials alike. Every time a Stone Pelter accepted their "role" instead of grabbing a wrench, every time a Seraphim polished their wings instead of questioning who forged them—the System grew roots.
Devon knelt in the void, his phantom hands clawing at the vision. No blade could cut this. No spell. Only a truth corrosive enough to melt the stage. He tore a page from the ISB's ledger—Citizen Tiers: Approved Vocations—and flipped it, inking words with sewage sludge and Natalie's stolen glaive-dust:
BLACK LIBERATION
(Abolish the Algorithm in Your Head)
Your "class" is a collar. The Monarch didn't create classes—he stole them from you. Build a longer table. Feed your neighbors. Arm your neighbor. The smog chokes us equally. Breathe together. Fight together. Win together.
He folded the pamphlet into a dandelion seed, its veins pulsing not with magic, it flew towards alleyways where smog did not condense, where shadows breathe—a place where Rug Rats taught Cobble Whisperers to read, where rebels swapped roles like shared cutlery. "Grow wild," he whispered, launching it through the crack.