Abyss

A blast – a supernova that made galaxies envious – and that was it.

She expected to be dead, but she found herself in nothingness. Her siblings were gone.

No, that didn’t mean she was in afterlife – she was the queen of afterlife. This wasn’t her death realm, full of the mist of vengeful souls, barely able to think and exist. This was just… nothing.

Hunakai didn’t know why her sibling attacked her. Or tried to kill her. Last she remembered was being in the death realm on her throne – she had no idea how she ended up in the vast cosmos of the celestial realm, staring into Kalani’s eyes as they blasted her with the power of – whatever that was. It was, somehow, everything and nothing. Kalani shouldn’t have been able to command nothing, they only had power across matter and nothingness was the void realm’s influence, and that was on Kalani’s twin, Kaila. Maybe because all the siblings were in the celestial realm, Kalani could draw their power? Or was stronger? All Hunakai’s guesses were conjecture, she had no clue.

She should have felt angry, but it was hard to feel in the emptiness.

Maybe this was the ‘afterlife’ for the queen of the death realm. Maybe she couldn’t get to return where she ruled.

Maybe there was just nothing in the first place, nothing at all, and the realms, her siblings, the mortals, were all a dream she didn’t know she was having.

Hunakai laughed without joy – but there was no sound. It was looking more and more likely that she’d always been just part of the nothingness. After all, she could have been here for mere moments or forever – there was no time here.

So she waited, no sight, no perception, no sense other than a consciousness she had begun to doubt.

Then the nothingness cracked.

After an eternity of darkness, the thinnest ray of light was too bright for Hanukai. For some time, if she could call it time, she was still blinded, but this blindness was blue.

Another eternity passed. Hanukai’s senses got used to the light. When she finally was able to face the ray of light, she shivered with a feeling. Excitement. This was no real light, like in the celestial realm – but the mist of the dead, ashen blue, crying in agony.

The realization hit her harder than anything she was sure she had experienced, filled with joy, relief, rage, and hurt… This time, Hanukai was paralyzed with emotions, but she embraced it. Feeling again was agony, and yet, she was smiling as she wept.

As Hanukai familiarized herself with feelings again, she also felt the ray of blue mist waiting for her command. She turned it around herself, drawing more from the crack, relishing in the feeling of death. It was not enough yet, she couldn’t force the crack to crumble, but she kept drawing, eager to feel yet again, filling the emptiness with her element, her death.

Hanukai felt the voices of the dead in her mind. The betrayal. The pain. The unfinished revenge.

She could now compare her memories to understand what had happened to her. Kalani practicing anti-matter in the celestial realm. Kalani blasting a galaxy made of anti-matter toward Hanukai. Kalani hurling a black hole of matter into the galaxy, the reaction devastating. Wounding. Bleeding.

Hanukai remembered where her rage came from. Her betrayal. Ironic, wasn’t it, she now fully experienced the same agony that reduced souls into the blue mist she commanded. She took it in. She took them in.

She rebuilt her death realm, out of tortured souls. The timeless, spaceless husk became a new universe for the dead. She kept drawing the mist in, slowly, surely, for yet another eternity.

None of these souls were content, that was the nature of the blue mist – and thus, Hanukai’s happiness and relief often mixed with the restless until she no longer could tell what she felt. Yet, she kept drawing.

Rebuild the death realm, get back your power, break out of this husk. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild…

It was… maddening, if Hanukai had to be honest with herself. Getting an immortal question her sanity and make her feel it was slipping away was no easy task, and yet, this pocket outside of space and time was doing it easily.

Thus, Hanukai started talking to the mist.

At first, it was a garbled mess. The mist consisted of countless souls, each of them in despair, and they all screamed into Hanukai’s consciousness whenever she tried communicating with them beyond commanding. The chaos was barely bearable even for the immortal mind. However, Hanukai eventually could pinpoint a constant stream of self-consistent thoughts, and she focused on it, talked to it.

That was how the first soul in the husk formed.

The soul talked to her, fully comprehensible when singled out. “My brother was an airhead and he died with a blade on his back,” it told her, and she felt remorse, empathizing with a mortal’s story as she found her own to be relatable.

Hanukai reforged more souls while she kept pulling in the mist.

“My own child slaughtered…”

“…I needed to make her pay…”

 “…I loved them.”

Each tortured soul was stuck in their own vicious cycle, but this time, not on her throne but surrounded by the souls, Hanukai listened, understood, and sympathized.

They became a part of her, emotionally, so she decided to make them an actual part of her.

Hanukai took the souls one by one. She felt herself glow with the black mist, and with them, she was reborn. She felt rage take over as her power revived with her makeshift death realm, and she used it to crack open her abyssal coffin.

The cosmos of the celestial realm hit Hanukai like a slap. But no, she couldn’t let déjà vu take over, she needed to find Kalani, she needed to find justice-

Kalani met her gaze, right outside the remains of the abyss. They gave the saddest smile, one that Hanukai didn’t know Kalani was capable of, and gathered something in their hand.

Antimatter.

“Not yet, dear sister,” Kalani said, “I’m still working on it.” They sent the galaxy right at Hanukai’s heart. She couldn’t even see the second blow before it hit her.

Her souls diffused into the cosmos. She let out a scream as she fell backward. Every fiber of her existence hurt, for just a moment, then everything went dark.

A blast – a supernova that made galaxies envious – and that was it.