Damien’s meager form flickered, as if merely being in the presence of this creature was enough to snuff him out like a candle. It looked down at him wordlessly. Damien couldn’t tell if it was amused by his fear – or if it could even be amused.

“I’m here to sense the Ether,” Damien called out. If he’d had a throat, Damien was confident that his words would have come out squeaky and trembling. Instead, they rippled through the silent world surrounding him like a blade.

It Who Heralds the End of all Light continued to stare down at him. Then, slowly, it began to open its mouth. The ground trembled and heaved as the mouth continued to open, blanketing the world in complete darkness.

One by one, the stars blinked out. The energy that made up Damien’s new form sputtered and faded as an incredible chill wrapped its bony fingers around the boy. His words caught in his throat as pain tore through every part of his body at once.

It felt like thousands of jagged knives were being slowly drawn across every part of his body. He let out a silent scream as his spectral body went rigid. His world was agony.

“Ignore it!” Henry’s voice pierced the darkness. “Fight through the pain, boy. True power is not gained easily!”

Damien couldn’t respond. Luckily, he didn’t need to. Henry knew his thoughts.

“Look around you!” Henry ordered. “The ether is everywhere – even in the void. It is like strands of light that connect every single bit of existence together.”

Damien could barely hear Henry’s voice through the pain ravishing his body, but the key word was barely. He gritted his metaphorical teeth and let out a scream of defiance and pain. He looked up. There was only darkness.

“Look harder!” Henry insisted. “You must search, no matter the pain.”

And that was what Damien did. His gaze scanned the shadows enveloping him, flicking back and forth in search of the smallest iota of light. All the while, the light making up his glowing body dimmed further and further.

“There’s nothing!” Damien wheezed.

“There is. Look!”

Coherent thought started to fade. Dissonant whispers of words that Damien didn’t understand and languages that he’d never heard echoed through his mind. He searched the sky desperately for any signs of the lines that Henry had spoken of, but all that met him was the fathomless black of the void.

His screams intensified and the whispers grew louder. Henry said something, but Damien barely recognized it. Thousands of voices were yelling within his mind at once. Each word ripped through his soul, bringing on flashes of pain at a level that the boy had never thought possible.

“…It’s too much,” Henry said. “We need to stop and try again later. If the boy dies–”

“No!” Damien snarled. “I’m not done!”

He’d faded to a such a pale yellow that he was nearly white. His very body seemed to pulsate in and out of existence. Damien was no longer aware of the difference between his voice and those crying out within his mind.

As his soul was stripped and torn away, the vestiges of human emotion that the boy felt were peeled back, piece by piece. The pain, of course, did not lessen in the slightest. The parts of Damien that made him mortal flickered and winked out of existence.

First went his memories. Seventeen miniscule and worthless years of life, gone in the blink of an eye. Next went his thoughts and voice, followed by his feelings. As the parts that made Damien’s soul his own were sent tumbling into the void, the very core of his being was revealed.

A single spark. The flickering candle that rested at the center of his being that encompassed his greatest desires and goals, condensed into a mote of light. The one light that Henry could never have for himself.

It was creativity. It was human longing, one of the greatest forces in existence, and one that Henry and It Who Heralds the End of all Light could never have.

“Enough!” Henry yelled. “He cannot handle this!”

There was no response. Henry watched helplessly as the mote of light that was Damien flickered and faded, the darkness encircling it like a school of starving sharks.

It grew smaller and smaller until nothing but a pinprick of light remained within the shadows. The very last bit of Damien’s existence in the universe, alone and surrounded by the void.

The spark flickered. Then it blinked. And then it flared. Light erupted within the heart of the void. Beams of energy carved through the sky, splitting the darkness and slamming into the spark.

Bit by bit, a torso formed around the spark. It was followed by arms and legs, and then by a head. Each beam of light that slammed into Damien reformed his spectral body by a small amount. In moments, he was as he’d been when he first entered the void.

However, the light didn’t stop. It continued as dozens of golden lines formed all over him and his light grew brighter. Damien let out a scream. It was not of pain, but of resolve. All over his body, the glowing lines split open to reveal golden glowing eyes.

The arcs of light stopped flying into Damien, but the void was no longer dark to Damien’s new eyes. An immeasurable number of thin threads crisscrossed throughout the void. The majority of them rose up into the sky, where the outline of the face had appeared once again. However, several of the threads also connected to Damien.

Henry’s power enveloped Damien. The boy was powerless to resist as a layer of fog fell over his mind. Memories of pain like this could never be removed, but they could be dulled.

“Is this magic?” Damien asked, the eyes covering his body flicking about erratically.

“No,” Henry said. “This is the Ether. And you are an insane idiot.”

“I know,” Damien said, his voice full of pride and pain. And then, despite not being in a human body, he fainted.