Chapter 49 - The Void

3rd Person POV

Arto slipped out of the bed carefully. The particular careful of someone who had learned the specific calibration — how much movement, how slow, at what angle — that left the people sleeping around him undisturbed. Albedo's hand, which had been at the back of his neck, relocated to the pillow in the way that sleeping hands relocated when the surface they were resting on was quietly removed. She did not wake.

He stood in the dark room for a moment. Looked at them. Then he left.

[Sector 80: Inter-dimensional Portal]

The Simulation Room's main corridor at this hour had the quality of a working space at rest — the hum of active sectors running their overnight functions, the mana lamps at their low maintenance frequency, the specific silence of machines doing what machines did when the people who operated them were not present to observe it.

Sector 80 was at the end of the hall. He keyed it open. The ball of Void matter was still on the floor where it had been when they left — persistent, defined by its displacement, patient in the way of nothing. He looked at it briefly and moved to the portal frame.

The activation was routine now. Fourth attempt architecture, the standing wave target, the boundary focus. The portal opened with the particular quality it had developed since the correct breach — not nothing this time, the color of the space between worlds present and legible in the sector's wall.

He deployed the barrier. The familiar construction, the architecture he had cast from the other side hours ago, now placed from this side with the same systematic precision. The differential sealed. The lab stable behind it.

He stepped through. The Void received him. That was always how it felt — not entering, not arriving, but being received. The accommodation that Robin had named and that he had confirmed and that he was still, in some part of him that processed things slowly rather than immediately, working through the implications of. The pressure that should have ended him simply not applying. The environment reading him as — belonging.

He floated. He did not consciously direct himself upward. The Void had no up and down in the conventional sense — those were properties of contained universes with gravitational references, not properties of the space between them. But his body oriented anyway, the same way it had always oriented in the Void across three thousand years of falling, finding a direction that felt like forward and holding it.

He was still for a while. Just still, in the Void, in the silence he had once known as the only thing available to know. He thought about the body. It was a question he had not let himself ask directly since arriving in this world.

Not the question of the reincarnation itself — the Void had given him a new life, had pulled a fractured soul through the space between worlds and deposited it somewhere it could continue, and he had accepted the mechanism of that without examining it too closely because examining it too closely required asking questions he did not have answers to and he had been occupied with other things.

But today — Robin's examination, the biological assessment that had found nothing unusual, the confirmation that his body in the Void was the same as his body in the lab — had made the question unavoidable.

His body.

Not a body, not the new body that a new life should have provided. His body. The specific physical architecture of the man who had been born into Abyssgard and had been made into a weapon and had led a Legion and had died in the Second Abyssal War with a broken arm and the armor of a supreme commander and a necklace he had made for someone he had loved.

He touched the necklace now. It was there. It was always there — had been there when he woke in this world, had been there with the armor and the sword, had been there with the broken arm that had healed in the days after Rias found him in that field. A necklace with a bird worked into the metal, a bird similar to Radia, and words in his mother tongue that he had engraved himself because he had learned to work metal in the margins of the things he had been taught to learn and had wanted to make something with his hands that was not a weapon.

I love you. In Abyssgard language. For someone he remembered in one word. Love.

The necklace had been in his hand when he died. He had been certain of that. The specific memory of it — the Second Abyssal War's final engagement, the Abyss Queen, his arm breaking in the last exchange, the necklace in his closed fist because he had taken it out to hold it while he could still hold things. He had died with it.

He had arrived here with it. The armor, he could reason around — the Void had taken what it found, and what it had found was a dead man in armor. The sword, similarly. These were physical objects attached to a body, and the body had been carried through.

The necklace was different. The necklace was something he had been holding specifically. Something he had taken out to hold because there was someone he had wanted to be thinking about in that last moment. He thought about that.

About what it meant that the Void had preserved it. About what it meant that the Void had preserved him — specifically him, specifically this body, specifically the armor and the sword and the necklace — rather than depositing a fractured soul into whatever new form was available.

He did not have an answer. He had an intuition, and the intuition was the kind that required more information than he currently had before he was willing to articulate it even to himself. He let it sit. He looked up.

Not up in the directional sense — outward, away from the barrier, away from the world boundary behind him, into the dark of the Void that extended in every direction without feature or landmark or any of the reference points that made navigation possible in a contained universe.

He had looked into this dark for three thousand years. He knew what it looked like. He squinted.

The habit of someone looking at something far away and trying to see it more clearly — the human reflex of squinting against distance, applied to a distance that squinting could not meaningfully affect. He knew this. He squinted anyway.

And then—He stopped. He was very still. They were small.

That was the first thing — so small that he had looked at this dark for three thousand years and had not seen them, had not known to look for them, had been looking in the wrong way for the wrong thing. Not the vast signatures of world boundaries that the detection machines would find. Not the standing waves of reality containers pressing against the Void from inside.

Smaller than that.

The light that stars produced when viewed from a distance great enough that stars became points rather than objects — that small, that distant, that specific quality of something that was there and would have been there the whole time if you had known how to look.

Tiny...Like dust in a shaft of light...Like the particular quality of a clear night sky seen from somewhere without ambient light, the stars not the bright obvious presences of what people meant when they said stars but the faint accumulated field of everything that was too far away to be obvious and was present anyway.

The Sea of Worlds...He was seeing them...Not their boundaries, not their signatures, not the standing waves that the detectors would read as data. The worlds themselves, at this distance, in this dark, reduced to the light they produced against the Void's nothing — tiny, gentle, specific in their separateness.

He was looking at them. He had been in the Void for three thousand years and had not known to look up.

He stayed very still and looked at the tiny lights scattered in the silence around him and thought about Nami's detection machines running their search and thought about the INA and thought about Robin's framework for wormhole navigation and thought about everything they had built today in three hours of outside time.

He thought about finding his home among the tiny lights.

He knew it was there. He could not point to it. He did not have the data, did not have the coordinate, did not have the INA's output to tell him which of the tiny lights was the world he had come from and died in and been carried away from. But the certainty was not the certainty of knowledge — it was the certainty of someone looking at a sky full of lights and knowing that somewhere in it is the one that belongs to them, before they have found it, simply because it exists and they know it exists.

His home was out there. Among the stars of the Sea of Worlds. And somewhere in it — if the world had survived, if the barrier had held, if the thing he and ten million soldiers had died to stop had stayed stopped — somewhere in that tiny light, three people existed in the fragments of memory he still carried.

Friend...Love...Mother.

He looked at the lights. The silence was not the silence of three thousand years ago. He noticed this. The silence was the same dark, the same cold, the same absolute absence of the properties that contained universes took for granted — sound, warmth, the pressure of atmosphere, the ambient mana of a world that was alive and running. All of that was absent. The same as it had always been.

But it felt different. Three thousand years ago the silence had been the silence of a fractured soul falling through nothing with nowhere to go. It had been the silence of everything pleasant eroding away and only the weight remaining. It had been the silence of a place that was not a place, that was simply the between of things, that had no relationship with the thing it contained because the thing it contained was not meant to be there.

Now—He was a resident. Robin had said it and she had been right and he had heard it and had not fully received it until this moment, floating in the dark looking at the tiny lights of the Sea of Worlds with the barrier behind him and the mansion on the other side of the barrier and the people in the mansion who were asleep in the warm room.

The silence welcomed him. Not warmly — warmth was not a property the Void possessed and he would not have known what to do with warmth from it. But in the way that a familiar place was familiar. The specific quality of I know this, this knows me.

Dark and cold and gentle and quiet in the way that old things were quiet — not because they had nothing to say but because they had been here long enough to know that most things did not require saying.

An old friend. He thought about the Void keeping him for three thousand years and then releasing him into a world where Rias had found him in a field, and he thought about whether that was something the Void had done deliberately or whether the Void had no intentions and he was finding meaning in accident the way people found meaning in accident when the accident was large enough.

He did not know. He looked at the tiny lights. I will find you. To his home world, to the tiny light among the tiny lights that he could not yet identify. He thought: I will find out if you survived....I will find out if she is still looking.

His eyes were growing heavy, like the sleep he was having before arriving in this world, the reason why he was oblivious about how 'he' was formed from a just a fragment of a soul, the sleep that brought him into this world, into this pleasant dream where he has a family, where he is happy, where he has people who truly care about him.

Maybe...The thought arrived without alarm, which was itself something worth noting. He had spent two thousand years as a weapon and a thousand years as a commander and three thousand years in the Void and more than a year in this world, and in all of that he had developed a comprehensive relationship with the proximity of ending. He knew what it felt like to be afraid of it. He knew what it felt like to be past being afraid of it. He knew the specific quality of someone who had died once and had not expected the continuation.

This was neither of those....This was — wondering.....Maybe this world had been the dream. The thought was not distressing. It arrived with the quality of something that was simply being considered, turned over, examined for accuracy the way he examined everything for accuracy before filing it.

He considered it. A soul withering in the Void — a fragment, Robin had said, how 'he' was formed from just a fragment of a soul, and he had not examined that word closely when she said it but he was examining it now. A fragment. Not the full soul, not the intact architecture of a person, but a fragment, a remaining piece after the Void had taken everything pleasant and left only the weight.

A fragment of a soul, falling.And in the falling — dreaming. The way the mind produced dreams in the absence of external input, filling the void of consciousness with whatever the deep interior contained. What would the deep interior of a fractured soul in the Void produce, given three thousand years to produce it?

A world where people looked at him and did not flinch from his face...A world where someone found him in a field and stayed to talk to him because she was curious rather than afraid...A world where there were people who had read the book he had carried inside his head for three thousand years and had understood it and had built on it and had sat beside him in a lab for sixty hours because they wanted to know what came next.

A world where someone put their hand on the back of his neck in the dark and stayed there. He let out a small sound. Not quite a laugh. The exhale of someone who has encountered a thought that is too large to receive quietly and too precise to be dismissed.

When thinking about it, he thought, it truly feels like a dream. A dream assembled from three thousand years of wanting.

From the fragments of what he had been before the Void took the pleasant things — before the friend had faded, before the love had faded, before even the memory of his mother had faded into a single word that he carried because it was the last thing left of her.

From the specific desires of a child who had been taught to fight but had never been taught to belong, who had found belonging for four years in a forest with wolves and had been taken back and had spent the rest of his life carrying those four years as the only reference point for what warmth felt like.

What would that child dream, if the child were a fragment of a soul falling in the Void?

He thought: this....exactly this.

The people. The mansion. The mana lamps. The warmth. The specific ordinary extraordinary quality of a house where he was wanted rather than used, where his knowledge was appreciated rather than extracted, where people stayed beside him even when his dream tried to kill them.

Where Rias had flinched a little and stayed anyway...Where Akeno had wandered into his nightmare and kept wandering back...Where Robin had sacrificed all her network to keep death from claiming him again...

Where Nami had demanded hugs and kisses for a Void matter injury and had been completely serious...Where Albedo had heard him say I love you in a language no one else in the world spoke and had asked him to keep the cube and had kept it correctly.

It all feels so....real, and comfortable, like everything is on his side, like this world is showing him some mercy that his old home didn't, all of it feels so good it's absurd for think this is real, it might just be all a dream of a soul fragment falling endlessly into the darkness of the Void, maybe there is no Sea of Worlds, it's just halucination of a desire that was never answered, a desire to be happy, to be accepted, to be...loved.

"Am I still....dreaming from the sleep I took? Am I...still inside the Void?" He thinks to himself as his body floats aimlessly inside the endless nothingness with no sign of falling down further, he just remains there, floating. "If this is a dream....when will I wake up? Will I ever if there is no sound calling me, am I going to sleep forever until I finally wither away?"

The Void held him—not like water, not like air, but like a breath held too long between two people who no longer needed words. Arto floated, suspended between certainty and a question he couldn't shape into syllables. The tiny lights of distant worlds flickered around him, indifferent to his crisis of existence.

He can feel himself not breathing in or out, the feeling of his primary living function of his body not working but he didn't die because of it sure is weird, yet it leave him with...utter silence, where the only thing ringing is the thought of himself with no answers, no questions, no sounds.

"A dream....pleasant like this.....maybe.....until the end.....it's the mercy I can grant myself...." He thinks as his eyes slowly closes "Because here," in the total darkness with only a few flickering dust of light "there's only me"

Arto's POV

[??????]

I open my eyes again, I can see myself at somewhere else, a scene I couldn't remember, but from the look of it, I am inside something that is like a room, or a fragment of it, half of the room is opened to the Void, only the bench where I am sitting is intact.

I look over to my left to see a shadow sitting next to me, all black, no face, just a shape of a person and a distorted voice, talking to me, I know they don't sound like that, but...it's all I remember "You have me, remember? I'll be here for you if there's no one here for you. I promise you that, now I am gonna keep it. Follow me!" the distorted voice still gives me enough clarity to know what it was talking about

"Where?" that question flew out of my mouth naturally like a reflex that I don't where it came from, but before I know it, an answer "A new bar, good wine and music, you'll love it. C'mon"

"Alright, alright, Dad. I need to forget something anyway." That again, where did it come from, why am I saying that, and who is this 'Dad', why am I calling this person 'Dad'? I've never had someone to call 'Dad' since.....no, no, this can't be Sivan, he never talked to me this.....casually....like a friend.

Could it be....'Friend'? But.....why do I call them 'Dad'?

Not answering my question, the shadow takes my wrist and pulls me out of my seat towards the door of the room, the door that has half way from disappearing with its pieces slowly flying away into the darkness, like the room withering away into the darkness.

The shadow opens the door casually as it leads to a new room, half-fading away like before, something that looks like a simple bar, the whole place has wither away, only leaving the bar counter and a small stage behind.

The shadow pull me down a seat at the bar counter, behind the table there are no one, same for the shelf "A bottle of red wine, 2 glasses please" the shadow next to me says casually.

After a few moments, 2 broken glasses are placed before us and a bottle.....only the neck of it floating in the air. The shadow the takes the bottle neck and pours wine for us both, black liquid start pouring out of what's left of a bottle, filling the broken cup.

The shadow takes its own cup and raises it seemingly for a toast "C'mon, Arto, drink" Without my own control, an answer come out of my mouth "I've never had wine in my life"

I wrap my fingers around the cup, looking at it hesitately, I've never had wine, never been used to it, my metabolism can't take alcohol or else it will react in some not so funny ways, but now, I'm sitting in a bar with a shadow who seems to be my only friend back in my past life

"Everyone has their first time" The shadow clanks their glass agaisnt mine "Now, cheers!"

The wine tastes like nothing. Not the absence of flavor—but the memory of it. Like pressing your tongue to a photograph of grapes and knowing, intellectually, what it should taste like. The glass is broken, but the liquid doesn't spill. The bar is crumbling, but the stool beneath me holds firm.

"So, how does it go? Your life?" The shadow asks me, I turn to it, not knowing what to answer, which life is it talking about, the past life I don't remember, or the one I am living now?

I stay silent for a while, and it seems the shadow is patient enough to wait for my answer...or is put on a pause until it could get the right answer out of my mouth. The awkwardness of the scene is getting on my nerve so I decide to say it.

"Which one?" I ask, and it seems the answer clicks as the shadow takes a sip and says again with that distorted voice "This one, you know, the one since.....me?" Since.....'Friend'? Since.....my Creator's death, since Sivan's death.....so....that's how it is

You were there, didn't you, 'Friend'? The night where the 2 men I hated the most fell under my blade, the night where I was left alone after their death, aimless, empty, crying, weeping in the dying rage when knowing the one I despised.....was also the one who taught me everything.

The coward, the butler, the Father, Sivan, he chose his own death as a atonement for the child he failed, the one he treated as his own son....more like, the replacement of his own son, keeping him alive at all cost, no matter how much pain the child is in.

I remember now, you were there, taking their souls away, it was you....Death, my only friend, all the way back, always has been.

"We've been friends for longer than that, you know?" I swirl the glass in my hand, looking at the shadow "You need to be more specific" that answer clicks again as the shadow starts talking again "From the time....I came not for my mission....when I came back for you?" 

The memory hits me like a collapsing star—that final night after they left with the souls they came to take away, I was left alone in the emptiness of the vengeance that has been boiling inside my heart for 2000 years, it was.....hollow, frustratingly so.

I remembered myself crying a lot, not out of pain, not out of lost, but out of the meaninglessness of my life, a living weapon left alone with no use, no direction, no aim, no nothing, just emptiness...but then you came back, and.....a hug and.....an assurance 'I'll be there for you if there's no one there for you'

I've always thought it was a constant promise of death until.....they actually stayed, and....became this monster's only friend. I look at the shadow, at Death, at the only thing that remained consistent in both lives—my beginning, my end, my middle. The wine glass trembles in my grip, the memory of liquid shifting like a half-forgotten dream. 

"It was....better, chained still, legion, politic, factions, manipulation, but....better than before, since...you, at least I have someone to talk to" I can feel the shadow patting my back like a real pal "That's....good....to hear...sorry I couldn't help you more, you know I hate politic and scheming"

"Of course, Death is a simple end of a story, simple, but eventual. So you never judge, never calculate, never.....care. Which makes talking to you a lot more....relief" I dip my head forwards, eyes still on the half broken glass of wine, or whatever this black substance is. The shadow tilts its head—or at least I think it does—the amorphous silhouette shifting in a way that suggests amusement.

"Funny, coming from the guy who spent two thousand years accumilating anger down to the millisecond." The voice isn't mocking, just...observational. Like it's noting the weather. "But yeah. That's the perk of being an inevitability. No stakes."

On the crumbling stage, there is a standing microphone, and from the behind the curtain, another shadow appears, the walk it performs was graceful as it approaches the microphone, and like a singer, it starts to sing, a voice I couldn't hear, but can describe, it's.....angelic.....'Love'

This is where I found her, my first love, the woman whose voice could soothe my soul, make me forget the grief, the pain, the chains over my mind, to just....feel, with the beating heart that has made so many silent.

My body goes still, I can't turn anywhere aside from her direction, I couldn't hear it, by my heart is tingling like the first time I saw her in that bar, like an echo from the past has finally found it way to me, a glimpse of what was lost has returned to me, even in this dreamlike state.

"....Hey....hey.....Arto....you alright?" The shadow at the bar pats my back again as I snap out of the mesmorization the performance of the shadow on the stage. "Yes, yes, I am alright. It's just....just....so beautiful." I stumble on my answer, my eyes have never left the stage.

"Damn, for the first time I've seen you blush, that girl really took your heart, didn't she?...…." The shadow sitting next to me says playfully like a tease from an old friend, their distorted voice carries a note of amusement I haven't heard in millennia.

"I...am?" My palms found my cheek as I could feel it burning, my heart is running faster. I don't know why, maybe it's how I felt when I met my first love, maybe it's me getting affected by the alcohol that I can't consume. Nevertheless, it's....a pleasant memory knowing I still have happy times the last time I lived.

So, all this time, is it you have been holding my pleasant memories.....Void?

The shadow beside me exhaled—a sound like wind through hollow bones. "No...." I turn, to see the shadow has changed its shape, into something new, something that looks....like me, with 2 blue fire burning where the eyes should be "It has never left your head, it's just spreaded too wide for your narrow view to witness. So until you can extend your view, I will keep it for you"

The wine glass slips from my fingers, shattering silently against the nonexistent floor. The fragments hover midair, suspended like frozen tears.

"You're..." A voice punches a hole inside my ears, breaking the silence of the Void that I have been experiencing "ARTO!!!" I snap awake, looking around, panting heavily as the first loads of air entering my lungs, reviving the inactive funtion of myself.

Until I can fully gather myself completely, I look around to see Nami is looking at me with terrified eyes as she calls me again "Arto! Are you alright?" I can feel the surface beneath me rock solid, unlike the soft bed of nothingness like last night

"Don't touch him, Nami, his body temperature is almost absolute zero, touching him and you will get frostbite" Robin's warning voice rings out, stopping Nami from approaching me. I sits up from the bed, looking aimlessly around to regain my sense of direction and time. The white scene of the place takes me a while to adjust my eyes that just came out from total darkness.

The medical bay's fluorescent lights hummed overhead—too bright, too sterile. My breath fogged in the air, crystallizing into fractal patterns before dissipating. Nami stood frozen halfway across the room, one hand outstretched, fingers twitching like she wanted to reach for me but couldn't. Behind her, Robin's extra arms were already moving, adjusting dials on a mana thermometer whose display flickered erratic warnings.

"Your core temperature is stabilizing," Robin murmured, though her eyes didn't leave the screen. "Slowly." I flexed my fingers, watching as the frost coating my knuckles cracked and fell away in delicate shards. The sensation was... distant. Like watching snowfall through glass. "How long?"

"All night, we woke up today not seeing you in bed, and Albedo freaked out because she couldn't sense your mana signature anymore" Nami explains as she takes the chair next to the bed and sits down to look at me "And now,"

She turns towards the closed door of the room and casts a spell to create a barrier before it was destroyed by Albedo, who barged in with the strength of a train "Master!!!" she cries, nearly knocking Robin off her feet in her haste to reach the bed.

Robin sighs "Alright, Albedo. You need to calm down...." she raises both her palms towards Albedo's face like calming an overhyped puppy "Arto's temperature is at dangerous number and he is freezing the place just by being in here, so, calm down, get yourself a warm jacket, then you can get in here, okay?"

Hearing Robin, Albedo calms down, her black swan wings folded behind her back as she lifts her hands from pressing into the magic barrier "Okay....okay....I'll let others know he is home." Albedo leaves the entrance of the room as Robin turns to Nami "Us too, Nami, let's go fetch something warm to wear"

Nami lets out a sigh of air that is white like it's winter as she stands up from the chair "I'm glad you're okay, Boss. I'll be back right away and don't you dare disappear again, you oversized ice cube" she comes to Robin as they leave the room together, leaving me behind in the cold.

I look down at my hands—pale as marble, veins tracing blue beneath my skin. The sheets beneath me are stiff with frost, crackling when I shift. The entire bed is encased in a delicate lattice of ice crystals, spreading fractal patterns across the metal frame. My breath comes slow, measured—each exhale lingering in the air like a ghost.

[Timeskip: Brought to you by wolf Arto warming his family by his thick fur]

Albedo returns first, bundled in a thick fur-lined coat that swallows her frame. Her breath comes in quick, visible puffs as she steps cautiously into the room. "Master..." Her voice trembles—not from cold, but from the effort of holding back. Her wings twitch beneath the coat, feathers rustling like restless shadows. "You were gone. Your presence in the mansion's wards... vanished."

The bed creaks as I sit up further, ice fracturing under the movement. "Sorry for not telling you, Albedo, I needed....to think about something..." My voice sounds distant to my own ears, layered with the static of something not quite mortal. Albedo's golden eyes flicker—not with fear, but recognition. She's seen this before.

"You're worried again, my husband. I can see it on your face, in you emotional color, I can see it clearly, you're anxious about something." She takes a step closer to me, not a tint of fear or hesitation "What was it about, my love? You know we are always here to hear you"

The frost on my fingertips hissed as it sublimated into mist. Albedo's warmth radiated even through her coat—too bright, too alive against the sterile cold. "Dreams," I admitted finally, watching my breath curl between us.

Albedo tilted her head—not questioning, just waiting. She had learned patience from Grayfia, learned observation from "Dreams? Is the Dark Arena surfacing again? Has it found a way to haunt your head again at night? If that's so...." she speaks with determination filled in her eyes.

"No, Albedo, it's just....." 2 new figures appears at the door in thick jacket, Rias and Akeno, both wrapped in fur-lined coats, stepping cautiously into the cold. Akeno clutched a steaming thermos in her hands, the scent of spiced cider curling through the frost-laden air. Rias's breath came in quick white puffs as she took in the sight of the frozen bedframe, her crimson eyes widening slightly—not in fear, but in that particular way she had when assembling puzzle pieces mid-battle.

"...just what, Arto? Why did you leave us and head into the Void last night?" she said worrily as she comes closer to me, following her was Akeno "Yes, Darling~What happened?"

The thermos clicked as Akeno set it on the bedside table, condensation freezing instantly into delicate fractal patterns. I watched the steam twist—remembering the shadow-bar, the broken wine glass, the singer whose voice had no sound. "I was thinking that....."

Robin and Nami enter the room with their winter clothes as well. Nami starts immediately "Great, the entire harem is here to listen to Arto's explanation. Now, you unpredictable favorite stock, tell us what's on your mind"

"Sit down, Arto, we're here to hear you and we're not going anywhere until we get the reason why you slept in the Void last night" Robin sits down as well, folding her arms seriously, her expression firm yet gentle "You scared us, Art. We woke up to Albedo screaming that your soul signature vanished from the mansion wards."

Seeing my women being so persistent, I have no other way but to sit down and tell them what I had in mind "You see, when I encountered the Void the other day it was.....unexpected how welcoming it was to me, it was absurd how it reacted specifcally to me like something....native to the space....And a thought came to my head"

I sish and look at them, I don't think they want to hear this but, "A thought that I am still inside the Void, that I am just dreaming, that everything I am having here with you all, everything were just a way my mind hallucinating what I desire while I am still fading away endlessly in the darkness of the Void."

The silence that followed was thicker than the frost coating the bedframe. Robin's extra hands paused mid-motion. Nami's fingers stopped tapping against her thigh. Even Albedo's restless wings stilled beneath her coat.

Then Rias punched me in the shoulder.

Not hard—but enough to make the ice crystals shiver. "Idiot." Her voice was softer than the word suggested. "If this were a dream, do you really think I'd let you monopolize the hot water heater every morning?"

Akeno giggled, the sound like wind chimes cutting through tension. "Or that Robin would tolerate your terrible coffee-stealing habits?"

Robin's lips quirked. "Statistically improbable." I can see their reaction, worry, care, love. "But that's exactly why I am scared" The words came out "Everything I am having here, it's too good to be true for someone like me, a monster, a weapon. Love, care, acceptance,....I've never had a chance to experience.....delivered to me exactly how I wanted. I thought it might have been the answer of fate to compensate to what I've been through. But also, it might just be a dream made by my own fractured mind of what I desire"

Nami's fingers twitched. Then, without warning, she grabbed a loose pillow from the chair beside her and hurled it directly at my face with merciless precision. The frozen fabric cracked against my forehead before bouncing off harmlessly, leaving a dusting of frost in the air. "You dense motherfucker," she hissed, nostrils flaring. "Do you think *I* would let myself be this emotionally compromised in *anyone's* fantasy? Wake *up*, you walking freezer unit."

Robin sighed and rubbed her temples, but I caught the way her extra hands were subtly rearranging the medical instruments—a nervous tic she'd never admit to. "Arto," she said, slow and deliberate, "if this were your dreamscape, would I really still be insisting you reorganize your financial records by fiscal quarter?"

Akeno slid onto the bed beside me, the heat of her body making the frost sizzle where her thigh pressed against mine. She tapped one perfectly manicured nail against my chest—right over the scar tissue where Tailless had nearly cleaved through my ribs last winter. "Hurts, doesn't it? That's not how pain works in dreams, darling~" Her smile was sharp, knowing. "Unless you're into that. Should we be concerned?"

Albedo's wings finally burst free of her coat with an agitated rustle. "Master," she growled, hands clenching in the fabric of my shirt, "if this were an illusion, do you truly believe I would still be *this frustrated* with your self-sacrificing idiocy?" Her grip tightened. "I'd have rewritten reality by now to make you *wear a coat* when it snows."

Rias leaned forward, her breath warm against my frozen knuckles. "Arto," she murmured, pressing her lips to the icy skin there—a kiss that burned. "Dream-me would've win at chess last Tuesday."

At that moment, Grayfia steps into the room, carrying a tray of hot drinks for everyone, she steps in elegantly and hands each one a cup to warm them against the freezing air I am exuding. She hands me a metal cup of hot chocolate "For you, my Master" I thank the cup from her as the outside of it freezes under the coldness of my skin while the drink inside is still hot.

After that, she takes a step back "I heard your anxiety from the door, my Master, and I have a say in this. We have no way to prove that you're dreaming, and neither do we have any way to prove that you're not, the brain of yours is smart enough to create something like this as the final mercy for your withering soul. But like the cup you're holding" she gestures to my cup.

Then, she lets out a gentle smile of a caring maid "Even if you're still in the Void, even if we're all things you made up from your own dream, the warmth you're feeling....is real like the hot chocolate, even though the cup, the outside is cold...At least, inside, you're still feeling warm."

A tilt of her head "So stop thinking about if this is real or not, enjoy the warmth while it lasts, even if it's a compensation of fate, or one final mercy you are granting yourself. I am saying this as your dutiful maid....or an entity you made up to keep you dreaming. Because either way, Master, you deserve to be loved"

The silence that followed wasn't heavy—it was the quiet of snowfall muffling everything else. I stared at the cup in my hands, watching the condensation freeze and crack in fractal patterns against the metal. The heat inside remained untouched, steady. Like them.

Albedo's wing brushed against my shoulder—a deliberate, grounding pressure. "Master," she murmured, voice softer than I'd ever heard it. "If this *is* a dream… then let it be a good one." Rias leaned forward, pressing her forehead against mine. Her skin was warm. Too warm. "And if it's not?" she whispered, breath curling between us. "Then stop doubting it."

The thermos clicked as Akeno poured cider into my frozen cup, the liquid steaming violently against the cold. "Drink," she ordered, voice sing-song but firm. "Before I make you."

Nami snatched the cup from my hands before I could react. "On second thought—" She took a deliberate sip, wincing as the heat scalded her tongue. "Ow! Okay, yeah, that's *definitely* real. No way your subconscious would make *me* suffer this much."

The words settled between us like thawing ice—fragile but no longer brittle. Albedo's wings twitched against my back, her grip tightening just enough to anchor me as the last of the unnatural cold bled from my skin. Across the room, Kuroka—who'd slipped in unnoticed during the commotion—stretched lazily along the windowsill, her tail flicking in slow, deliberate arcs. "Maa~ All this drama before breakfast," she purred, golden eyes glinting. "And here I thought Rias was the theatrical one." 

Rias threw a frost-encrusted napkin at her. It shattered midair. 

Akeno clapped her hands together suddenly, the sound sharp enough to startle Kuroka off the sill. "Alright! Since we're all thawed out—" She shot me a pointed look. "—mostly, let's discuss the *real* issue here." She leaned in, breath warm against my ear. "You promised us pancakes last night, darling~ 

That promise snaps me out of the thoughts as I stands up "Oh, right, I totally forgot about it." I move out of the medical sector into the hall of Simulation Room where scientists of Gremory and Sitri clan are walking along it to head to their sectors for their work today.

And like usual, they greet me respectfully, but I don't look a bit decent enough to receive such courtesy as water is condensing outside my body like a cup of ice water, making me go wet and cold as I walk along the corridor.

"Are you alright, Lord Arto? You're getting really sweaty" Doctor Faunas of Sitri clan stops on her track and checks on me like a doctor she is "No, no," I deny "It's just...water condensation, my body just experience extreme coldness and now I am....causing water condensation. I know it sounds weird, but....don't laugh at me, doctor"

Faunas's clipboard clattered to the floor as she doubled over laughing, her prim bun coming undone. "Oh god—the great innovator—" she wheezed between giggles, "—reduced to—a walking—condensation machine—"

Behind me, Kuroka's tail flicked against my damp shirt. "Maa~ Should've seen him earlier. Looked like a freezer unit someone left in the rain."

Rias emerged from the medical bay, still rubbing warmth back into her arms. She took one look at my dripping sleeves and pressed her lips together—that telltale twitch at the corners. "Arto," she managed with admirable restraint, "you're tracking water everywhere."

Akeno materialized at my left, materializing a towel from who-knows-where. "Here~" she sang, draping it over my head with unnecessary flourish. "Wouldn't want our esteemed director ruining Sitri's precious floor sensors~"

Faunas comes closer to check on me "You're vital signatures are all normal, and you've just came out of medical sector, so I think you're totally fine, especially with Robin taking care of you. So, enjoy your day, Lord Arto, if there is any problem, let me know, okay?" The white haired doctor continues her trip down the hall of main hall of Simulation Room "Also, please don't mind the laughing" She adds with a little chuckle before she disappears down the corridor.

Nami appears behind me and taps my shoulder "Hey, walking humidifier, can we *please* get breakfast before I start gnawing on your arm?" Her stomach growls audibly. 

The hallway smells faintly of ozone and freshly charged mana crystals—the particular scent of Sitri maintenance crews recalibrating the atmospheric regulators overnight. It mixes oddly with the aroma of coffee drifting from break rooms as researchers begin their shifts. 

Kuroka drapes herself over my shoulders from behind, purring directly into my ear. "Maa~ Little sister says pancakes are acceptable if served with extra whipped cream~" 

Koneko's voice carries from further back. "I never said that."

[Timeskip: Brought to you by chibi Arto flipping pancake]

3rd Person POV

[Arto's mansion - Kitchen]

The kitchen is now filled with the sound of morning sizzling as Arto is flipping pancakes for his family while his body is regaining its temperature, keeping him soaking wet, this leads to a decision well-appreciated by everyone except for Koneko, that's Arto is cooking with his shirt off, and only wearing a swimming trunk, much to the delight of his women as they are enjoying the sight of their beloved cooking breakfast with his body steaming due to rapid temperature increase.

Grayfia hands him an apron, which he puts on to protect himself from grease splashes. The apron has "World's Best Chef" embroidered on it, a gift from Akeno after he mastered her favorite pancake recipe.

Kiba leans against the counter beside him, expertly slicing strawberries with a knife that hums faintly with stabilization magic. "You're improving," he notes, nodding at Arto's flipping technique. "Last month you'd have torn at least three of these."

From the breakfast bar, Robin observes through three pairs of eyes while her other hands simultaneously annotate a research scroll and prepare coffee. "The Maillard reaction is occurring more evenly now," she remarks clinically, though the slight upturn of her lips betrays her approval. One of her hands steals a finished pancake before the plate reaches the table.

Nami slaps the wandering hand away with a wooden spoon. "Financial rule #47," she declares, "no eating profits until they're properly accounted for." She's already calculating syrup distribution ratios on her ever-present clipboard, the gold nib of her fountain pen flashing as it records projected consumption rates.

Rias has another question for Arto as she comes closer to him "So, Arto, how was sleeping in the Void?" Hearing that, he settles down the spatula and turns to her "Well, let me tell you all when I'm done cooking, it's quite....interesting"

He then goes back to cooking as water keeps dripping down his body into the small bathing tub he uses to not buy Grayfia anymore work in cleaning the kitchen floor. The pancakes continue to cook perfectly—golden brown, fluffy—as steam rises from his skin in curling tendrils. Akeno leans against the counter beside him, twirling a lock of hair around her finger as she watches the interplay of heat and moisture on his shoulders.

"Mm~ You're practically steaming like fresh bread, darling~" She plucks a droplet from his collarbone with deliberate slowness. "Should we be concerned about you overcooking?"

Robin's disembodied hand materializes to press a thermometer against Arto's forehead. "Core temperature stabilizing at 37.2°C," she announces from across the room without looking up from her notes. "Though I recommend hydrating. You've lost approximately 1.8 liters of fluid through condensation."

Nami snorts into her coffee. "So what you're saying is—our interdimensional badass is literally...dripping assets." The resulting groan from Kiba sends strawberry slices skittering across the cutting board.

The kitchen's warmth seems to amplify as Rias slides onto the breakfast bar, her bare feet swinging idly. "You were going to tell us about the Void," she reminds him, chin propped on one hand. The morning light catches the curve of her smile—all mischief and genuine curiosity. "Unless you'd rather we interrogate you while you're...indisposed." Her gaze flicks meaningfully downward.

"Well, I'll tell you everything because I have nothing to hide" Arto uses a spell he made to lift all the plates and himself along with the tub and floats towards his family and presents them before his family "Here's breakfast, everyone, please enjoy as you listen to my story"

The pancakes land with improbable precision—Robin's extra hands adjusting trajectories midair—as plates slide into perfect formation around the table. Kuroka's tail hooks around the syrup bottle before it tips, while Akeno's fork stabs three pancakes in a single fluid motion.

"Alright, here goes, last night, when I slept in the Void, I saw something that could be called...a reconcilation of what I've lost." Everyone turns their attention to him "You know I came to this world after thousands of years wandering aimlessly inside the Void. And along the way, I....forgot many things when it comes to myself, especially...pleasant memories of people I cared about"

Arto wipes his face with the towel before continuing "Unlike battle experience, skills, knowledge and leadership, which left scars and marks on my body via scars, in my mind via schemes, manipulation and surviving instinct, pleasant memories are much easier to forget, especially when they are only a few fragments of my old life and didn't leave remarkable traces on me aside from the faint emotions"

Koneko stops mid-bite, strawberry jam glistening on her lip. "That's...sad," she mumbles around her pancake, ears flattening against her head. Kuroka's tail curls around her little sister's shoulders—uncharacteristically gentle.

"Yes" he admits "Especially when you know you're forgetting, but couldn't remember what was slipping out of your mind. That's what happened to me, whenever I recall my own story, some details were missing, starting from the good memories I had with those who truly cared about me. There were only 2 people, those I could only remember 2 words of when it comes to them after thousands of years, 'Friend' and 'Love'"

The pancake on Akeno's fork froze mid-air, syrup dripping in slow motion onto the tablecloth. Grayfia's teacup made a tiny, precise *clink* as she set it down too carefully. Even Robin's wandering hands stilled—a rarity—before reforming into fists on the tabletop.

Rias leaned forward, elbows pressing into the syrup-stained cloth. "But last night?" she prompted, voice softer than morning light through curtains.

Arto watched condensation roll down his forearm and vanish into the apron's fabric. "Last night," he continued, "I saw them." The words felt strange—"well, some fragments of them inside the fractured scene of what's used to be my memories. The weird thing is that while I couldn't remember one bit about them, somehow, when I was in the Void, I remembered them...no, it's like what that entity told me, it was keeping the memories for me, what I saw was only what my narrow view could percieve because they have been spreaded too wide for me to see clearly"

Kuroka's ears twitched as she licked whipped cream from her fingers. "Maa~ So the Void's your dusty old attic now? Keeping all the things you lost between dimensions?"

The corner of Arto's mouth twitched. "More like...a library with shattered shelves. The books are there, just in pieces." He tapped his temple. "And and within that library, there is a librarian, a shadow of a person who spoke to me in broken sentences—someone who took the shapes of the people from my memories, including....me"

"It told me that the memories I forgot, actually never left my head, it's just spreaded too wide in the Void for my narrow mind to see" He finishes as everyone in the family looked at him with questioning gaze, except Robin who is already piecing things together "So, what you're saying is, the Void didn't erase your memories, just fragmented them beyond recognition, and now you're slowly piecing them back together?"

Arto nods, flipping another pancake onto the stack. The scent of vanilla and browned butter fills the kitchen. "Exactly. Like reconstructing a stained glass window from shards—except I don't know the original design." His fingers twitch around the spatula. "The shadow—the librarian—showed me glimpses. A bar. A man I called 'Dad.' Wine I've never tasted but remembered hating."

Akeno's fork clinks against her plate. "And this...librarian. Did they seem...friendly?" Her usual playful lilt carries an edge Arto rarely hears—the same tone she uses when assessing threats.

He hesitates. The Void hadn't felt hostile, but—"More than friendly, they felt.....familiar, when they imitated the voices of others, they were just distorted sounds, but when it comes to my voice, it spoke it clearly, combining with its shape, it's like...looking into a mirror, but I'm not sure if it's really me, or just something mimicking me."

Albedo—who'd been unusually quiet—suddenly presses her cheek against his damp shoulder. "Master," she murmurs, "if it was you, wouldn't it have tried to take your place?" Her claws trace idle patterns down his bicep. "Instead, it showed you kindness."

Robin's fingers drum against the table—a staccato rhythm of consideration. "Fragmented consciousnesses often develop autonomous behaviors in dimensional voids," she muses. "If your memories scattered, it's plausible they coalesced into a...custodial entity." She pauses. "Or perhaps it's simply how your psyche interprets the Void's interaction."

Nami steals a pancake mid-sentence, dousing it in syrup. "So what you're saying is—his lost memories might've formed a weird, protective ghost version of himself?" She takes a messy bite. "Because that's not creepy at all when we consider Void is an empty space" she said in pure sarcasm.

Grayfia nods "Nami is right, Void is completely empty with nothing out there at all, even an atom, so a theory of it developing its own consciousness seems quite absurd on physical level"

Robin's fingers pause mid-notetaking. "Unless," she counters smoothly, "we consider Arto's soul fragment as the anomaly." Three hands gesture simultaneously—one sketching a sigil in the air, another adjusting her coffee cup, the third catching Nami's wandering fork. "A soul remnant drifting through absolute nothingness for millennia would fundamentally alter its environment through sheer persistence of existence."

The kitchen falls silent except for the sizzle of batter. Even Kuroka stops mid-bite, cream dotting her nose.

Rias tilts her head. "You're saying he...infected the Void?"

Robin's smile is all sharp edges. "More like illuminated it. Imagine dropping ink into distilled water." Her visible eye tracks the steam rising from Arto's shoulders. "Given enough time, even the smallest presence becomes pervasive, and once it's completely dissolved into the water, you can name me ways to seperate water from ink, but if that water cup is the Void, do you think it's possible anymore?

The silence stretches like taffy. Koneko's ears twitch at frequencies too high for human hearing as pancake syrup drips onto her plate in slow, glistening strands.

Albedo—still draped over Arto's shoulder—tilts her head until her horns scrape his damp collarbone. "So Master is...pollution?" she murmurs, voice thick with amusement.

Robin's answering chuckle is dark as coffee grounds. "In the most literal sense. A foreign element that altered the Void's fundamental nature through prolonged exposure." Her fingers twitch—a subconscious mimicry of writing equations in air. "But that could only be attained if the foreign element could maintain itself within the Void where the temperature is absolute zero, time is frozen, and nothing could exist in it."

Arto watches pancake bubbles form and pop with methodical precision. The spatula feels suddenly heavy. "So when I survived there..."

"—you became an impossibility that *should* have dissolved," Robin finishes. Her gaze flicks to his chest—where the Stabilizer sigil glows faintly beneath his apron. "Yet here you are. Breathing. Condensing water vapor on our kitchen tiles."

Akeno's fingers dance along his spine, collecting droplets. "Mmm~ So our darling is basically...a very handsome, pancake-making paradox~"

The absurdity breaks the tension. Even Grayfia hides a smile behind her gloved hand, but the question about Arto's existence never ends "I see," Grayfia said "so Master's forgotten memories are now inside the Void, giving it something where there is nothing, the pollution created an entity who is holding the memories. In other words, the Void is taking the identity of the Arto who lived those pleasant memories"

Arto stops eating as he looks at his maid "That's.....actually quite accurate, Grayfia" The steam rising from his skin begins to swirl—subtly, unconsciously—forming fractal patterns that dissipate before anyone but Robin notices. She scribbles something in her notebook with three hands simultaneously.

Rias taps her fork against her plate thoughtfully. "So the Void isn't just empty space anymore—it's become...you? Or at least parts of you?" Her foot nudges his calf under the table, warm against the lingering chill. "Does that mean you can control it now?"

The question hangs like syrup dripping from Nami's stolen pancake. Kuroka's tail flicks against Koneko's shoulder—a silent signal that makes the younger nekomata set down her fork with unusual care.

Arto watches the last pancake steam on his plate. "I don't think control is the right word," he says slowly. "It's more like...shared custody." His fingers twitch, and the kitchen lights flicker—not dramatically, just enough for Kiba to glance upwards. "When I was inside, I could feel it reacting to my thoughts, but not obeying them. Like trying to steer a river by willpower alone."

"But those forgotten memories, are they that powerful to be able to maintain themselves in the Void?" Rias raises the question "I think I know such answer" Akeno raises her hand and points at Arto's dark blue eyes "It's in his eyes, the fire"

"This?" Arto blinks as 2 blue fire appear in his pupils as they start burning, drawing everyone's attention. Robin tilts her head "I heard you called Will of Abyssgard, but you never truly explain it to us. Now is a good chance"

The blue fire in Arto's pupils burns steadily as he starts pointing into his eyes "It's called Will of Abyssgard, the core symbol of the entire legion, you're not considered as a part of the legion unless you have this fire burning in your pupil. It represents the resolve of Abyssgard Legion, the will to stand against anything that is trying to harm what they are trying to protect, it's the physical representation of the moto of the entire Legion 'No Abyss harms what AbyssGard'."

A deep sigh as he continues "Every soldier of the legion has something to protect, anything at all, a person, an animal, a place, an object, an ideal, a promise, a memory, as long as it's what they would fight the Abyss to protect, they are a true Abyssgard soldier. That's why the Legion of such various origins could bind together, they are both protecting something from the common enemy, that is the Abyss. So, Abyssgard was never a surname given to a child, it was a title, granted to a person who has fully understood the values of the legion, and have awaken the fire through a trial where they must face their deepest fear, amplified by thousands of times, to protect what they value the most. As you can see, my name is actually only Arto, the Abyssgard part was added after I completed the trial"

Robin's summoned fingers twitched—not with clinical detachment, but something perilously close to reverence. "Fascinating," she murmured, her voice hushed. "So the Will of Abyssgard... it's not just a flame. It's a covenant. A pact etched into the soul itself."

Nami stands up from her seat to go take a look at that fire "Wait—so you're telling me," she said slowly, "that the Void couldn't erase you because your soul literally burned its way into oblivion and said 'fuck you'?" Her lips twitched despite the gravity of the revelation. "That's... kind of hot, actually."

Koneko leaned forward, golden eyes narrowing. "Then why didn't the Void just... eat you? If it's nothingness, how does it keep things?"

Arto flexed his fingers, watching the faint blue embers dance across his knuckles. "Because that is a perk of the Will of Abyssgard on a soldier's own soul, it's the ultimate protection against anything that tries to break their will, their soul, their spirit. The fire will burn away anything that tries to harm the soul of the soldier, including the Void's cold embrace. It burns in the Void's coldness, refusing to be erased, marking its presence. That's the reason why I was able to maintain myself within the Void for thousands of years, my will never truly let me die, it burnt, and would have continued to burn as long as I fell. I don't know if it could stop burning, but it's the reason why I could arrive here with my knowledge and experience intact in my head"

Akeno cups her chins in questions, then she asks "Then, Arto, do you think the stories you forgot, the part that fell from your memories into the Void.....carried such will?"

"Maybe," he murmured. "Maybe that's why the memories I forgot could infect the Void, they gave the Void something that doesn't die upon its touch. And in a space where there is nothing, what could withstand its devastation became what of the Void itself, like a drop of ink blened into water, like a piece of charcoal burning on a piece of paper, the new state become its nature, its identity" 

The kitchen fell silent, save for the faint crackle of frost evaporating from Arto's sleeves. Koneko's ears twitched first—then flattened. "So…" she mumbled around a mouthful of pancake, syrup dripping onto her chin, "does that mean the Void *likes* you now?"

Albedo's wings rustled beneath her coat. "Master *is* very likable," she purred, nuzzling his shoulder.

Robin's fingers twitched mid-air, sketching invisible sigils. "More accurately," she corrected, "the Void has assimilated aspects of Arto's consciousness to the point where they share a symbiotic relationship. His presence altered its fundamental nature." Her visible eye flicked to him. "Which raises the question—if your memories shaped it, will it reach out to claim the rest, to complete itself?"

At that moment, Albedo notices something when she sees Arto winces his eyes "Master," she whispers, leaning closer "Your eyes, are they alright?" she takes Arto's hand over his left eye off to see something horrific.

His left eye burns with the usual blue fire, but the left now swirls with inky darkness shot through with pinpricks of light, like a starfield glimpsed through smoke. The Void gazes back.

Albedo's breath hitches—the first sound in the kitchen since the Void unveiled itself through Arto's iris. Robin's extra hands freeze mid-scribble, ink dripping unnoticed onto her notes. Even Grayfia's impeccable posture falters, her gloved fingers tightening around her teacup.

"Well," Nami drawls, breaking the silence with forced levity, "that's new." Her fingers twitch toward the butter knife before reconsidering. "Should we… poke it?" Koneko smacks her arm. "Don't poke the eldritch eyeball!"

Arto blinks slowly, the Void's expanse rippling with each movement. When he speaks, his voice carries an odd resonance—as if two people are speaking in unison. "It doesn't hurt." He touches his temple, fingers coming away damp with condensation. "But it's…attracting, like my eye is being dragged into mysterious darkness"

He stands up from his seat "I'm heading to Sector 80 and open the inter-dimensional portal, I think it wants to see me, so that we can reconcile, so that the fragments can become one again"

The kitchen erupts into motion—chairs scraping, porcelain clattering as Rias's fist hits the table. "Absolutely not." Her voice isn't loud, but it carries the weight of a Gremory heir's command. "Not alone."

Grayfia is already at his side, her glove pressing against the small of his back—not restraining, but anchoring. "Master," she murmurs, "you are still hypothermic."

Akeno's fingers twine with his, her lightning-charged warmth searing through the lingering frost. "Mmm~ And here I thought we were past the 'reckless self-sacrifice' phase, darling."

Albedo takes Arto's hand "I will follow you anywhere, Master, so don't leave us worrying. If you're heading into the Void again, we won't stop you, but at least, let us be there to pull you back before you drift too far away, okay?" 

The Void in his left eye pulses—a slow, rhythmic expansion that makes the kitchen lights flicker in sympathy. Arto exhales, watching his breath crystallize midair despite the room's warmth. "Sector 80," he murmurs, more to himself than them. "The stabilization field should contain any..." He trails off, fingertips brushing the frost gathering on his eyelashes. 

Grayfia intercepts him at the door, her gloved hands already unfurling a thermal cloak lined with Stabilizer sigils. "At least dress appropriately," she chides, fastening it around his shoulders with surgical precision. The fabric immediately begins steaming where it contacts his skin. 

[Simulation Room - Sector 80: Inter-dimensional Portal]

The door open to reveal Sector 80's cavernous chamber, with a flick of his fingers, everything is turned on, Robin and Nami quickly go to check the indexes to confirm the stability of the portal "The containment field is holding at 87%," Nami reported, fingers dancing over holographic keys. "But the Void's resonance is interfering with our dampeners."

Arto stepped forward, the Void eye pulsing in time with the portal's fluctuations. Condensation rolled off him in waves, forming icy spirals on the floor. Behind him, Rias gripped his wrist—not to restrain, but to anchor. "Talk to us," she demanded. "What exactly are you planning to do?"

He exhaled, watching his breath crystallize midair. "Reconciliation." The word carried dual resonance, his voice layered with something deeper. "The fragments in the Void... they're not just memories. They're *me*."

Akeno's lightning sparked between her fingers. "And if it decides it wants the rest of you?" Arto smiles "It can't, because unlike me, that Arto is the one who lived the rare gentle memories of my life, he is kind, innocent, and yes...naive, he doesn't have the edge of a person who has been through blood, war and agony. If he wants more, he will soon regret what I could offer"

The portal pulsed in response—not violently, but with the slow, insistent rhythm of a heartbeat heard through water. Sona's monitors flared crimson as the containment field dropped to 79%. "We're losing stability," she warned, fingers flying across the controls. "Whatever you're doing, do it fast."

Arto stepped forward, frost crackling beneath his bare feet. The Void eye dilated, its starfield swirl accelerating into a vortex. "It's not about doing," he murmured. "It's about remembering."

Robin's hands stilled mid-scribble. "Wait—you're not going to—"

He was already moving, plunging his hand into the portal's surface. The reaction was instantaneous—the silver-black membrane rippled like disturbed mercury before *closing* around his wrist like a vice.

He steps into the portal completely, into the endless Void as it welcomes him as he floats, and turns back to the people on the other side as his lips move, no sound, but the order is clear "Close the portal"

The chamber erupts into chaos. Rias lunges forward, her fingers brushing the portal's surface just as it seals shut with a sound like tearing fabric. The containment field spikes to 120%, throwing everyone backward in a shower of sparks. Robin's screens shatter as the Void's resonance overloads every stabilizer circuit in Sector 80.

[Void]

Inside the Void, Arto floats weightless. The cold is familiar—older than memory. His left eye burns brighter, casting jagged shadows across the nothingness. Then, movement: a ripple in the darkness, coalescing into a figure.

It's him.

Not a reflection, not an echo—the other Arto, the one who lived the gentle memories. His eyes are the same blue fire, but softer, untainted by war. He reaches out, and their fingertips brush. "Good day to you, Arto"

Arto starts as he spots the part of him that left the mark into the Void "We haven't gotten the chance to finish our conversation last night. I haven't gotten to know your intention of reaching out to me. Are you here to give me back what I left behind to go back to your empty self? Or take what's left inside me to complete your new identity as Arto Abyssgard, Void?"

The shadow doesn't answer, instead, it turns and shows him the scene last night, the crumbling bar. And like last night, the 2 take their seats next to each other with the same glasses, same wine from a bottle with only its neck "Let us continue what we left behind" The shadow pours him a shot.

"Thank you" Arto accepts the broken glass filled with dark liquid "As we were talking last night, you're keeping my pleasant memories. but it's spread too wide for my view to fully capture what happened"

"Indeed, and until your view is opened, you will know what happened" The shadow nods, swirling its own glass of Void-dark liquid. Arto's fingers tighten around the fractured wineglass—its edges jagged but strangely painless against his skin.

"Now tell me, what exactly do you want?" He asks. The shadow turns to him "I....want....to see....more...." The Void pulsed in time with the shadow's words, the crumbling stage appeared again, and like before, the formless singer came to the stage and started singing again, in a voice that he could only describe as angelic but couldn't remember.

"What you marked me with, Arto, memories, emotions, sensations, I couldn't erase it, it kept lingering in the space like stubborn stains on the fabric of the Void"

The shadow's fingers tap against the broken glass—a perfect mimicry of Arto's own nervous habit. Around them, the memory-bar dissolves further, reforming into a cliffside under a bruised twilight sky. The singer's voice swells, though her form remains indistinct—a silhouette backlit by dying sunlight.

"So....what do you want to do with it?

The shadow-Arto tilts his head, the motion sending ripples through the Void like ink dispersing in water. "I want...to feel," it says, voice fragmented yet achingly earnest. Behind them, the cliffside memory flickers—a gust of wind carrying the singer's voice, clear for the first time. It's a lullaby.

Arto's breath crystallizes midair despite the lack of temperature. "Feel?" His fingers twitch toward the Stabilizer sigil glowing beneath his collarbone. "You're not real. You're just echoes I left behind."

The shadow smiles—an exact replica of Arto's rare, unguarded expression. "And yet..." It presses a hand to its chest where a heart would be. "Here I ache." The cliffside dissolves into a battlefield littered with broken weapons, the singer's voice warping into a war chant. "You gave me this. Your grief. Your joy. Your..." It gestures to the shifting scenes. "Love."

"You want to see.....more?" Arto asks. The shadow nods, swirling its glass of Void-dark liquid. Fragments of forgotten battles and half-remembered laughter flicker in its eyes—blue flames identical to his own, yet softer at the edges. "What's stopping you?"

The shadow leans forward, the battlefield dissolving into a dimly lit infirmary where a younger version of Arto—relieved, kind and unburdened "I can't see more than what you show me, Arto." he points upwards, where the Sea of World lies "I can't see what's going on in those worlds. But you can, and I....want to see it too, now that I know there are things beyong silence"

Arto watches his own face twist with longing—an expression he hadn't worn in millennia. The wineglass trembles in his grip, its fractures spreading like spiderwebs. "You want...access?" His voice carries the weight of gunmetal and bloodstained snow. "To my present?"

The shadow's fingers tap against its own glass—once, twice—before dissolving entirely. The bar reconstructs around them, the singer's voice swelling into the chorus. "No," it murmurs. "I want...perspective." Its form flickers—becoming taller, broader, armored in Legion regalia. "You see through eyes that have known war. I want..." It gestures to the shifting scenes. "To see what you refuse to."

The realization strikes like a blade between the ribs. The Void hadn't preserved his forgotten memories—it had *learned* from them. Arto's breath crystallizes midair, forming jagged fractals that hover between them. "You're not a reflection," he breathes. "You're a request."

The shadow smiles—soft, unbearably young. "I am what you left behind." Around them, the bar dissolves into the mansion's kitchen: steam rising from pancakes, Nami's laughter ringing sharp as cutlery, Akeno's fingers brushing his wrist. The scene is painfully vivid, but wrong—the colors too bright, the edges blurred with longing. "You gave me glimpses," the shadow continues. "But never the full picture."

"So that's the deal between us, you want to go with me on my journey, in exchange for...."

The shadow's form flickers—distilling into something simpler, purer. A child's outstretched hand. "The power for you to go, the power to manipulate the Void to your order, the power to go on more journeys—for glimpses," it murmurs. The infirmary memory wavers, replaced by unfamiliar constellations swirling above Kuoh Town. "Not control. Not ownership. Just...windows."

Arto's left eye burns colder. Frost creeps down his cheekbone. "And if I refuse?"

The singer's voice stutters—a scratched record. The shadow's fingers twitch toward the wineglass, now overflowing with black liquid. "Then I take you, and go on my own journeys." Its voice fractures into echoes—the scrape of steel, the whisper of snow. "Your precious ones won't even notice the difference."

Arto's fist clenches, shattering the wineglass. Black liquid splatters across the crumbling bar like spilled ink. "You don't get to threaten them."

The shadow tilts its head, observing the droplets freeze midair. "Not a threat. A certainty. You carry me now." Its fingers tap the counter—once, twice—and the droplets reform into perfect spheres. "But you could carry me *willingly*."

"I see, you've proven your point, that even in the most pleasant bits of my life, you still have that edge to strike a deal, seems like our nature dies hard. But fine, you have your deal" Arto stretches his hand forward to shake the shadow's hand "You can ride along, watch through my eyes, see what I see, but you don't get control, you don't get a say in where we go, or what we do"

The shadow's fingers clasp his—icy yet familiar, like gripping his own reflection in a frozen lake. Around them, the bar dissolves entirely, reforming into the Void's endless expanse—only now, it's no longer empty. Pinpricks of light flicker in the distance, reflections of forgotten constellations. 

"Good," the shadow murmurs. Its form wavers, melting into Arto's silhouette like ink absorbing into parchment. "Then let's begin."

A jolt seizes Arto's spine—not pain, but the sensation of something slotting into place after millennia of dislocation. His left eye burns hotter, the swirling darkness resolving into clarity.

The comes the pain in his left eye, like something is forcing it into a mold that has already been filled, and it's...gouging it out. Arto's body recoils as he clutches his left eyes as the pain is getting worse and worse until.....empty.

The pain was cut short as he can feel the vision of his left eye is gone "My eye...." he murmurs, but there is something on his left hand, a pendant in the shape of a black eye, closed, dormant.

At that moment, he couldn't hear the voice of his Void self anymore, the place has returned to its emptiness he once knew, no more bar, stage, singer. He turns back as he sees it clearly, his world, the world he is living in, the sphere of light in the Void, calling him back. He moves toward it, the pendant pulses with warmth—not heat, but the sensation of fingertips brushing against closed eyelids.

[Simulation Room - Sector 80: Inter-dimensional Portal]

The portal reopens violently, the containment field shattering like glass as Arto emerges mid-fall. Rias catches him first, her grip bruising-tight as they crash onto the reinforced flooring. "Idiot!" Rias hisses into his collarbone, her voice raw. Her fingers dig into his shoulders—not shaking him, but confirming he's solid. "You absolute self-sacrificing—" 

Akeno intercepts with a kiss—hard enough to bruise, her teeth scraping his lower lip. When she pulls back, lightning crackles in her pupils. "Next time," she breathes, "I'm tying you to the bed." 

The next one to lunge at Arto is Albedo as she hugs him from behind not caring one bit about how cold his body is, her wings wrap around him protectively from behind as she digs her chin into his shoulders "Master, I swear to every Devil's name, if you ever pull such a stunt again I will *personally* bind you in ropes forged from my own essence and keep you under watch for an entire century." Her voice drips with honeyed venom—a succubus's version of a scolding.

The pendant pulses against Arto's palm, its warmth spreading up his wrist in slow, deliberate tendrils. He uncurls his fingers just enough to peer at it—the closed eyelid carved into its surface twitches faintly.

Robin, Nami and Grayfia come next, Nami carefully retrieves the pendant for research, Robin takes a look at Arto's empty eye socket with medical equipments Grayfia prepared from...nowhere, like any duty maid could do?

Robin's fingers—both real and conjured—hover millimeters from the ruined socket, her summoned eyes blinking in sync as they analyze. "No bleeding," she murmurs, surgical tweezers glinting under the harsh med-bay lights. "The tissue's cauterized by Void energy. Almost like..." Her voice trails off as she rotates a lens, revealing fractal patterns in the wound. "It was removed with surgical precision."

Nami tosses the pendant between her palms, her nose scrunched at its unnatural warmth. "And this thing's giving off the same resonance as Sector 80's portal before it imploded." She freezes mid-toss as the closed eyelid twitches again. "Oh hell no. Did you just wink at me?"

Grayfia's glove presses a sterilized compress against Arto's forehead—frost already reforming along its edges. "Master," she says, too softly for the others to hear, "what did you trade?"

Before he can answer, Kuroka materializes from the shadows, her tail lashing as she snatches the pendant from Nami. "Nyah~ Bad luck to stare at a cursed artifact, little thief." She holds it up to the light, her slit pupils narrowing. "Though this one's fancy—custom-made for our Arto, neh?" The pendant pulses once in her grip, and she drops it with a hiss. "Definitely haunted."

Nami catches the pendant mid-fall "Now, Kuroka, that's a bad cat behavior, you're lucky I love you, but punishment is still in order, no belly rub tonight"

Kuroka's ears flatten instantly. "Nyah?! That's cruel—" she wraps her arms and 2 tails around Nami, nudging her to change the decision while the CFO is trying to contain her smile.

Grayfia takes the pendant from Nami's hand and checks on it while Robin continues to check on Arto "You're not just missing an eye, you're missing a piece of your soul, and that piece is..." she turns towards Grayfia, who is holding the pendant "it's in here" Grayfia confirms "I can feel Master's soul resting in this eye pendant, it's quite the same with him, but why is it has to be here?"

"Well, that would require me explaining the deal I made with the Void self of mine and the reason why I asked you to close the portal" Arto sighs, watching his breath crystallize against Grayfia's compress. The pendant pulses in her grip, its rhythm syncing with the Stabilizer sigils beneath his skin.

"The thing about the Void self of mine is that it cannot know what was happening inside each world, to it they are just glimpses of light in the dark night. Until my memories were etched into its fabric, it finally something called 'new', with it, it adapted to the version of me who is....you know, accustomed to those pleasant memories. So, the nature of my Void self is the gentle side of me, the me who didn't have to exeprience the memories of pain, lost and grief. That's why its offer was genuine, lacking the edge of a politician and a stragegist. And when it was merged into me, it....dissolved into the side of mine that has experienced pleasant memories created by....that's right, you all, my beloved family"

The pendant hums softly against Grayfia's hand—a contented sound, like a cat purring after a meal. Rias exhales sharply, her grip loosening fractionally. "So what you're saying," she mutters, "is that you basically adopted an eldritch horror and turned it into a house pet?"

Grayfia answers "That is...one way to phrase it, but it's only a eldritch horror when it comes to its power, its nature is Master's gentler self with much less....experience and knowledge, the things that he took with himself into this world. In other word, Master....deceived it into giving him its power then dissolving into his own consciousness due to consciousness duplication, now Master has become one with the entity of the Void, he has become the Embodiment of the Void"

The pendant pulses violently in Grayfia's palm—once, twice—before falling still. The temperature in Sector 80 plummets as frost creeps across the shattered monitors, crystallizing in jagged fractals. Arto exhales slowly, watching his breath disperse into the frigid air like smoke. "Not quite," he murmurs, flexing his fingers. The Stabilizer sigils along his forearm flare brighter—golden circuitry threading through veins turned ink-black.

Robin's summoned eyes blink in unison, tracking the unnatural shift. "You're stabilizing," she notes, surgical instruments hovering mid-air. "But your mana signature... it's harmonizing with Void resonance."

Akeno's lightning crackles defensively along her fingertips. "Explain. Now."

The grin that spreads across Arto's face is sharper than usual—too many teeth, too much knowing. "I didn't absorb it. We *merged*." His left eyelid—now smooth where the socket had been—twitches. "And now, that eye pendant, and me, have the power to manipulate the Void, though it's still limited because you see, the eye is still closed, meaning I would need a lot of training to open my view, to see more worlds, to build bridges towards them. Watch"

Grayfia hands him the eye pendant as he holds is tightly as the empty eye socket of Arto opens, projecting a vision of a new sky with stars in positions that defy any constellation. "This, is the Sea of Worlds, each star here represents a reality within the vision of my eye"

The projection flickers—an unstable hologram warping under unseen forces. Akeno reaches out instinctively, her fingers passing through a star cluster that dissolves into static. "So these are... other dimensions?"

"Universes," Arto corrects, rotating the pendant. The celestial map shifts, galaxies condensing into threads of light. "Or possibilities. The Void doesn't distinguish." His voice carries an unfamiliar resonance—like two people speaking in perfect unison.

Nami snatches the pendant back, her nose scrunched. "Hold on. You're saying this could help you...bridge your own way to other realities in the Sea of Worlds, like we, can establish MONOPOLIZED trading routes...." the word 'monopolized' was almost screamed through her voice with the excitement of a child getting their favorite toy on Christmas Eve.

Robin's summoned eyes blink rapidly—her tell for rapid calculation. "An interdimensional market with us as the ones running the paths, yes, very profitable, Nami. But, language..."

"We have you, right?" Nami chimes in "You can be our translator with only a week of spying that world with your eyes and ears, I've already accounted for that"

Robin's lips twitch as three extra hands sprout from her shoulders to pinch Nami's cheeks. "Ever the opportunist," she sighs, though her summoned eyes dart toward the projection with undisguised intrigue.

Grayfia clears her throat, her gloved finger tapping the pendant's closed lid. "Master. This... merger. Are we certain the Void won't attempt to reclaim its lost aspect?"

The temperature drops another degree as Arto's shadow stretches unnaturally long—not mimicking his movement, but pulsing independently like a second heartbeat. "It can't," he says, too calmly. The pendant hums in agreement. "Because it's no longer lost. Just... relocated."

Kuroka's tail puffs up as she edges backward. "Nyah... that's not creepy at all. But hey, how do we actually....bridge our way to another world anyway?" she asks like a curious cat. And Nami is happy to answer.

"Well, my cat, you asked the smart question, so you will have belly rub again tonight" Nami says, patting Kuroka's head with her free hand while the other still clutches the pendant. The feline's tails flicker happily—until Nami's next words freeze her mid-purr. "By sacrificing the CFO's favorite panties to the Void gods, obviously."

The room's collective groan is interrupted by the pendant pulsing violently in Nami's grip, its closed eyelid twitching like a disturbed sleeper. Grayfia plucks it from her fingers with glacial precision. "What Nami means," she says as she takes out a piece of paper and make 2 dots on it with a pencil she found on some desk, "is that we uses Master Arto's power to create a warp in space"

She bends the paper, closing the distance between 2 dots as the space between them bent downward "you can imagine the space between 2 worlds is a sheet of paper, when you bend the paper down, the distance between 2 points closes, letting us travel in a speed faster than the speed of light by multiple time" 2 points stands next to each other on the same spatial plane

Rias's eyes widen "Woah, hearing such scientific things from Grayfia is....weird. Where did you read that?" Grayfia answers right away "Well, I've been reading Master's physic documents, and did from deduction on the spot, did I do well, Master?"

Arto chuckles—a sound that starts human but ends with the resonance of distant thunder. "Flawless, as expected." He takes the paper from Grayfia, folding it further until the dots overlap entirely. The pendant pulses in sync with the motion, its closed eyelid fluttering as if dreaming.

Koneko, who'd been silent until now, pokes the pendant with a claw-tipped finger. "So this thing's like...a cosmic GPS?" Her nose wrinkles as the pendant emits a pleased hum. "Why's it warm? And why does it feel like it's *watching* me?"

Before Arto can answer, the projection above them convulses—stars twisting into the shape of a single, massive eye. The temperature plummets further as frost crawls up the walls in jagged spikes. From the pendant, a voice echoes—not Arto's, but something softer, younger: *"Because I am."*

Albedo's wings flare instinctively, shielding the group as Rias's Power of Destruction crackles around her fists. "Okay, new rule," she snaps. "No eldritch artifacts get to talk unless—"

The pendant interrupts with a sound disturbingly close to a giggle. *"I like her,"* it murmurs, its voice layered with Arto's and something...else. *"She's sparkly, and cute."*

"Arto, stop that" Nami smacks his arm "Don't freak our cute little cat out like that! She is still small and adorable" then she hugs Koneko, who looks clearly annoyed, but couldn't do anything about it "Don't worry, Koneko-chan, it's not something weird, it's just Arto-senpai's thoughts ringing out through the pendant, it's his soul after all"

The pendant hums indignantly—a vibration that travels up Grayfia's arm like a plucked violin string.

Akeno's lightning crackles again, but softer now—less threat, more restless energy. "Alright, Void-boy. Demonstration time." She gestures to the still-flickering projection. "If this thing can bridge worlds, show us something useful. Preferably before Sector 80's containment fails completely."

"Well, I can't do that now, that would require a lot more training, I've only been able to for a ball of nothingness, so...." he flicks his fingers again as everything is turned off "I need some rest" he turns to Robin "And a new left eye...Robin?"

She raises 2 fingers "2 million dollars straight into my personal account and you will see with 2 orbs by next morning"

Arto's remaining eye twitches—not from pain, but the familiar sting of Robin's fiscal sadism. "Two million for an eye?" His shadow stretches toward her like an accusatory finger. "Last time it was one-point-five for reconstructing my entire nervous system after the—"

"Ah-ah." Robin's summoned hand materializes to tap his lips shut. "That was wholesale. This is bespoke." Another hand sprouts to adjust imaginary glasses. "Unless you'd prefer a discount model?" A third hand wiggles a glass eye carved with the Nico clan's logo—its pupil shaped like a dollar sign.

Nami snorts into Kuroka's shoulder. "Oh please let him take that one." The pendant pulses in Grayfia's grip—once, sharp. *"No,"* it murmurs, the word vibrating through the floor. *"Too ugly."*

Nami bursts out laughing "Hah! It just said what he thought unintentionally, now we have a way to see if he is honest or not, Grayfia, you keep that eye pendant safe, it's the Arto's thought pryer." Then she turns to Robin "As for the money, I'll send you 1 million first, and when you complete the eye for my Boss, I'll send the rest"

The pendant pulses indignantly in Grayfia's grip—not a protest, but a resigned acknowledgement of being outmaneuvered. Robin's summoned hands vanish with a satisfied flicker, leaving only her surgical gloves to tap against Arto's collarbone. "Payment confirmed," she murmurs, already conjuring diagnostic runes above his ruined socket. "Good, your Void self left nothing behind, even infections, I'll have it ready by next morning"