I drifted through an endless darkness, I saw nothing around me as far as my vision extended; a splitting pain tearing at my consciousness. It felt like my entire being was being ripped out; everything that was me was being forcefully pulled out of my soul. I saw nothing but pitch black all around, yet I felt something in the air all around me; the ever-present swarm of something tried to force its way into my soul and erase everything. I intuitively knew that if the walls that protected my soul crumbled, I would be gone.

So I did what I’ve always done; I persevered and survived. I pictured the wall of my soul in my mind's eye and held onto it like an infant gripping its mother. It was my lifeline, my everything. Time passed, I had no way of telling how much; I could tell my mental defenses grew stronger the longer I held my barrier.

I could still faintly sense the swarm all around me, but I wanted to see it. As far as I could tell, I didn't have a body to speak of, but I was aware of a slight glow coming from what I instinctively knew was my soul. It was shaped like a small ball of whitish light; looking at it calmed me down, insuring me that I still existed. When I focused my mind, I realized that I could feel it glow brighter; colors suddenly erupted around me. It drowned me in a constantly shifting sea of reds, blues, yellows, blacks, whites, and golds; I even saw some colors I did not know by sight. I tried in vain to process what I saw, but the swarm of colors around me was so overwhelming that I couldn't stop myself from losing my awareness. All at once, everything was once again desolate and empty void. It was just me and the swarm still attacking my soul, and though I couldn't see them anymore, I was still vaguely aware that it existed. The walls around my soul stood firm and repelled the unrefined attacks of the colors around me, but I could feel parts of it cracking under the relentless pressure. I once again focused only on strengthening the mental walls that safeguarded me and allowed time to flow its course.

I didn't know how much time had passed since I first opened my awareness to the world around me, but I felt my defenses were once again strong enough to allow me to focus elsewhere. I started by focusing once more on the minuscule glow of my soul until it began to grow and shine brighter under my gaze. It shone a brilliant white, entrancing me with its beauty and filling me with a warm feeling of happiness. Even though I could sense nothing around me other than the swarm, I was reassured that I was still me; I still existed. As long as I resisted, as long as I fought, I would survive, and that was what mattered.

I expanded my sense once more, this time focusing only on a small compartment of space in front of my soul. Replacing the empty void was an uncountable number of tiny particles; these specific ones shone mostly a light shade of red, with black mixed everywhere. It was as if the black particles were a canvas; the red was the paint. The black made up the surrounding space while the other colors existed inside of it. I tried focusing my sense into the red particles, trying to discern what they were. When I tried to pry into the red particles with my new sixth sense, the result was I could feel something influencing the behavior of the particles. When I reached the... something, I could understand it instantly. It was not spoken in any language; it spoke in intent. I instinctively understood that the red particles had not been created with this intent; it was engraved onto it after it was made. Their purpose was to search for souls like mine and erase the contents inside without harming the exterior.

I had a sudden realization that had these particles been trying to destroy me without the baggage of leaving my soul intact; I would have died. Well, I guessed I was already dead, but I would have been annihilated; there would be nothing left I could call me.

I realized that if someone or something else could impart intent on these particles, I should also be able to. So I reached out once more with my senses and gathered what I hoped was intent before commanding the particles to stop attacking me. I waited patiently for a change to the small swarm I had told off to react. I began counting in my head to keep track of time, and once I hit 372, I decided I hadn't affected it at all. So I tried observing the swarm once more.

Time passed, and I continued watching until I noticed an oddity. While the large majority of particles were red and black, I noticed a massive amount of nearly see-through particles, not quite white in color. It appeared like a swarm of particles mixed in with the black and red but nearly wholly invisible. On closer inspection, I realized that the intent I had felt from the swarm of red earlier originated from this colorless swarm. This was the something from earlier. The invisible particles carried with them the command to attack souls similar to mine. I felt a familiar feeling from the colorless invisible particles and had an idea. I reached into my soul, past the walls I had defending it, and willed the particles I found within myself to move. They appeared almost entirely similar to the ones commanding the red but had an even stronger familiar feeling, as if a part of me. I focused on the particles and commanded them to stop the attack on my soul by any means they could.

After imparting my intentions into the particles, I extended them out of my soul in a small tendril that moved perfectly in sync with my will. After leaving the safety of the walls, they clashed with the foreign particles. The outcome was nearly instant; the pressure on my soul from that small pocket of space vanished, replaced by the warm feeling of the colorless swarm that I had held in my soul. I slowly began extending my senses outwards, willing the colorless particles around my soul to nullify the previous command to attack imparted on the colorful swarms all around me. As my colorless particles finally encircled all around me, I felt a massive weight lift off my shoulders. The pressure that the multitude of colors had exerted was gone, replaced with the familiar and calming glow of my soul in its stead.

Now that I was relatively safe, I took a second to appreciate the beauty of the shifting colors around me. They flashed in a symphony of blinding shades of light, many of which I did not recognize. While most particles seemed to group with others of their color, I saw many clusters of diverse colors sticking together. I observed that most of the particles floating through the air had a small colorless particle attached to them, commanding them into action. The particles without the smaller colorless guest seemed to drift around aimlessly, purposeless. I could also perceive the black particles holding everything else together, like the very foundation of reality.

I found myself with an almost scary amount of time on my hands to face off with what I had been putting off until now. I reflected for what must have been the thousandth time on what I could have done to save my Father. If only I were stronger. If only I were smarter; maybe I could have saved him. The image of his lifeless body thumping against the couch replayed in my mind over and over again. I didn't want to think about it anymore, but I felt I owed it to him to remember because no one else would mourn Jerry’s death. He had few friends and even less family. Is all Jerry had was me, and yet, I still failed him. I had let down the second person ever truly to care for me.

I was snapped out of my self-deprecating thoughts when I saw something on the outermost reaches of my sight. I had my vision extended in perhaps ten square meters all around me, so I noticed when a new type of particle entered. While black particles seemed to make up the space around me, this new particle didn't, it occupied the space like any other, but it felt wrong. It was a sickly green color, reminding me of the nearly poisonous food served at one of my first foster homes. While its color and feel were sickening, what happened next shocked me even more. The green particles entered the space occupied by a cluster of yellows, and instead of having one bounce away or stick together, the yellows vanished. The green absorbed the yellows and grew bigger still, absorbing the nearby gold particles.

While nothing seemed off at a glance, when I looked closer, I could see that everything the gold particles used to be had been erased. There was no gold, only the repulsive shade of green. It grew at a snail's pace, slowly but inevitably, and it was heading right for me. That normally wouldn't have been a problem if I had legs, but I had never been in control of my movement until now, seemingly drifting randomly through the void of what I now knew as black particles. The other problem was how I seemed to be drifting closer to the green wall of death, along with all the particles around me. It seemed to have a vacuum-like quality that drew everything towards it, absorbing everything in its path apart from the black particles it occupied.

I thought about how imparting my will into colorless particles forced them into action and attempted to will them to move me in the opposite direction.

"Move," I commanded, imparted with more specific instructions written within the intent. I wanted them to push against the walls of my soul and move it away from the hideous wall of green I was slowly drifting towards.

I watched as tendrils of near-invisible particles attempted to push against the now thick walls that defended my soul. They pushed on for multiple seconds, and I finally felt myself move slightly away before immediately going back to where I was. The colorless particles could not move me; no matter how hard they tried, they were too weak. I was getting ever closer to the green particles that seemed to eye me hungrily whenever I focused my senses on them.

"Move,move,move,move,move,move,move,move,move,move,move, move,move,move!" I frantically commanded the colorful platoon of particles surrounding me. They refused to heed my will, drifting around me as if their erasure wasn't imminent.

"Move, get me AWAY." I didn't want to die like this; after everything I'd survived up till this point, it felt wrong to go out because I couldn't maneuver away from a slow-moving wall of green. I began to feel truly desperate, had it all been for nothing?

"PLEASE, SOMEONE SAVE ME. HELP ME, somebody, anybody, I beg you." I mentally screamed at every particle in my vicinity. The colorless ones who came from my soul responded by continuing their futile struggle of moving me out of the way, but the colorful foreign particles completely ignored me.

I reached deeper into my soul than ever before and withdrew every shred of colorless energy that I could muster. My head swam in my pain, and I felt significantly more fatigued than I had just a few moments prior. However, despite the pain and fatigue, I felt calmer; looking at my soul allowed me to think clearly.

I was just a few meters away from the sickly green particles when I suddenly had an idea. If the black particles remained unaffected by the green death, they could perhaps impart the same effect to me.

I imparted my will onto nearly all the colorless particles under my command and told them to scream at the black particles surrounding us to help. Then, with the small number I had remaining, I attempted to take over some black particles and get them to save me.

I'm unsure how much time passed until finally, a cluster of black particles joined together with my colorless ones and started racing towards the small ball of light that was my soul. I tried to put up a wall to stop it, unsure whether it was harmful or not to allow the black particles into the wall I had fortified myself with. It turns out it didn't matter what I thought as the combined particles smashed my mental wall to pieces before merging with my soul.

I had never been in so much pain in my entire life; nothing could compare to the agonizing pain that berated my very existence. It pounded in my mind and tore open my very identity, laying bare everything I'd ever tried to hide. I suddenly felt exposed, embarrassed, and proud all at once. I was embarrassed by my weakness at being helpless to protect Jerry yet proud that he felt I was good enough to call a son. The thought calmed me even while I felt the black particles fusing themselves with my soul, integrating with my entire being. I was now the particles, and they were now me.

As a result of that, I knew what I had to do. With my newly acquired knowledge of the daily comings and goings of black particles, I also understood what they were. The particles were energy in compact form, representing an element. The red represented fire, the white represented wind, the blue represented water, and the black represented space.

I'm amazed I didn't know it myself until this point; I mean, it was literally the space everything else seemed to exist on. Now that I had absorbed the knowledge of the black particles, I understood that the repulsive green particles represented the void element. I didn't know where it came from or how to stop it, but I at least knew what it was now.

I began creating a portal in space, not destroying the space itself but connecting it elsewhere. I poured my everything into making a destination for myself, commanding the particles to take me somewhere safe. As soon as I gave the command, I felt massive amounts of colorless particles tinged with black poor out of my soul and get to work, leaving me empty and drained. The last thing I did before losing consciousness was put up my mental wall once more and, despite not being religious, uttered a small prayer to whatever higher deity existed to let me survive.