The year was 3022.
Earth had always run on a series of fragile ideals unity, peace, progress stories the nations told themselves until the soil cracked, and the skies folded inward. In the end, they did not lose a world.
They lost the world.
The first.
The only true home.
And when Earth fell, something deeper broke.
No mind not human, not alien, not machine, not divine has explained what happened next. Some call it retribution. Others, an error too vast to comprehend. But explanations no longer matter.
What followed cannot be repaired.
That was the birth of the Voidlands.
Where once stretched a universe — infinite, tangled in time and teeming with stars. Now only a single island remains, drifting slowly on a bed of clouds through a breathable, boundless sky.
There is no sun.
No stars.
No up or down.
Only wind.
Only weightless silence.
Only two remain.
The Keeper
She Who Dreams in Stillness
She does not walk.
She arrives.
Where she moves, the air warms — not with heat, but with the ache of a forgotten embrace. She has no face, not truly. Yet those who behold her swear they've seen a mother. A lover. A sunrise before the storm. What they see is not her, but themselves, echoing through her.
And yet, no one remains to look.
She creates not by choice, but by yearning. Her movements leave miracles in their wake:
A garden of fruit-bearing trees made from colored glass.
A staircase spiraling up into a hollow moon.
A creature with no eyes that hums lullabies, then vanishes into mist.
But all of it fades.
She never reacts.
Perhaps she cannot finish what she begins.
Or perhaps she dares not — knowing that to finish is to end.
Some say she is the void — that the island persists only because she remains. Others whisper she is a prisoner, not bound by walls, but by laws no longer written. Even the Temple denies her: its doors stay shut when she draws near.
And when the wind hushes, and even the sky seems to hold its breath, one might hear her think. It sounds like a hymn with no words — a resonance inside the bones. Those who hear it forget something sacred.
But they do not know what they've lost.
Legends say she dreams the Voidlands into being — and that when she wakes, all will be undone. There are those who believe the Severant, her opposite, was once her companion. Or her creation. Or her destroyer.
But she never says.
She only watches.
She is not a god.
She is not a being.
She is the ache between what was, and what could have been.
Her name is Keeper.
And she is waiting.
The Severant
He Who Unmakes with Purpose
He is stillness without peace.
Where he moves, sound folds inward. Not silence — but absence. The breath before a scream. The hush before a verdict. He wears form like a sentence: a figure shrouded in rusted armor and slow-burning ash, faceless but for a slit of flickering red where a mouth might once have been.
His presence carves the air.
Reality bends around him, afraid to touch.
He does not build.
He ends.
Not with fury, but with precision. With focus. With something that might resemble love — though colder than ice and older than memory.
He believes in justice.
But not the kind mortals ever wanted.
To the Severant, all things must reach their rightful end.
And if they do not, he brings it to them.
Where the Keeper dreams, the Severant remembers.
And memory, he knows, is a wound that must be cauterized.
With a gesture, he can unmake anything — matter, thought, consequence. No fire. No sound. Only absence.
His voice, when heard, cuts like a blade of truth. Lies cannot endure it. Minds cannot withstand it.
And when he marks something — a tree, a soul, a feeling — it begins to fade.
Not all at once. But inevitably.
He watches the Keeper always. Not with hate.
With sorrow.
Or guilt.
They do not speak.
They do not strike.
But they orbit one another like dying stars — held in place by something neither can name.
He, too, is barred from the Temple.
Not because he lacks the strength.
But because he remembers what lies within.
And even he would not survive it.
Some say he was once a cosmic judge — a guardian of order. But the universe ended, and he endured. Others claim he is the echo of an ancient war, the final weapon still waiting for a wielder who never returns.
Etched into the Temple's sealed threshold is a single phrase, in a language none recall:
He ended what could not bear to continue.
He preserved nothing — and in doing so, saved everything.
He is not evil.
He is not merciful.
He is the answer to a question no longer spoken.
He is the Severant.
And he, too, is waiting.
The Temple
Between them stands the Temple — a monument from a forgotten age, built by hands no longer remembered. It holds every memory, every truth, every wound ever carried.
But neither the Keeper nor the Severant may enter.
Neither remembers why.
Its stone is etched with stories the wind no longer speaks. Its doors are sealed, not by lock or seal, but by time itself — as though waiting for something lost to return.
Or for someone.
The Island
The island beneath them floats endlessly — not a continent, but more than a fragment. Wide enough for a life to be lived. Soft hills slope into orchards of whispering fruit trees. Small rivers run, vanishing into the clouds below. Crumbled ruins dot the horizon — the bones of something once built, long unremembered.
In one corner of the island stands a crooked home made of starlight and forgotten wood. Its windows face both dawn and dusk, though neither has shone in a thousand years.
The place is empty.
And yet, it waits.
It is a land large enough for someone to grow.
To fall.
To dream.
To begin again.
But for now, there is no beginning.
Time has splintered.
Now it is Year Zero.
There is no light.
There is no during.
There is only air.
There is only void.