The moment Noah’s hand met Hollow Symphony’s, the gray room fell away. He found himself standing within the corpse of the Night’s Shadow once more. Stretched, dough-like strands of stone spanned all around him — but not all was as it had been. Noah needed a moment to realize that it wasn’t the Night’s Shadow that had changed.

It was him.

This was far from the first Rune that Noah had taken into his soul. Even though he hadn’t actually formed Hollow Symphony, he’d gotten pretty used to the sensation by now. But this time was different.

There were a number of reasons for that. But the one that made itself the most abundantly apparent was the fact that Runes were stored within one’s soul — and he had no access to his runes right now.

He didn’t seem to have access to much of anything other than the fragments of the Line that kept swirling in and out of existence like psychedelic fireflies.

But that didn’t stop Hollow Symphony. It wove into him, its presence passing through his mind like a passing breeze as it sought out housing within him. Faint song seemed to coil in its wake, tickling the back of Noah’s thoughts.

And he followed it.

Almost instantly, strain burned at his mind. The music faded so quickly that he couldn’t even make out what instruments he was hearing. It was just… music. Maybe the concept of it more than the actual thing.

But still Noah followed. His mind plunged inward, like he were trying to turn himself inside out, as he tried to follow in the wake of Hollow Symphony. It certainly seemed like it knew where it was going.

There was a single advantage that came with being so disembodied that he couldn’t even tell if his soul was still around. A soul, a body, any manner of existence at all, all of those things could get hurt. They could take damage. He knew that more than most.

But whatever he was now… it seemed to be more of a concept than a tangible thing. He was simply Noah. And it was a hell of a lot harder to hurt that. A soul could be broken. A body could die. A vague, abstract representation of Noah in the corpse of an ancient monster surrounded by an endless sea of white — that just was.

Then again, I’d imagine that whatever part of me this is can be hurt too. But I don’t know how, and I don’t know what I’m doing to it. Thus, I get to play stupid and pretend like it’s perfectly fine.

Armed with the perfectly impenetrable defenses of ignorance, Noah followed Hollow Symphony into himself.

Something was changing inside him. He couldn’t exactly say what. The magic was so difficult to follow that he was barely even sure where it was. There were fragments of something almost familiar, but they were so few and far between that it felt like he was trying to piece a tapestry together just by looking at a few loose threads.

But Hollow Symphony didn’t seem to care. The Rune’s presence intensified within him, syncing with the drumming beat of his heart. Some part of Noah did register that his heart didn’t actually serve any purpose here given he was in some sort of spirit realm, but he figured it was probably the thought that counted.

He followed the song as far as he could, his teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut to block out anything but his awareness of himself. There was nothing but Noah. No white void. No stone corpse.

Just him.

And then he found Hollow Symphony.

Saying that it was deep within him would have potentially been a lie. Noah didn’t have a damned clue where the rune was. He certainly wasn’t inside his mindspace right now. Noah hadn’t moved from where he stood within the Night’s Shadow’s corpse.

His eyes were just closed. He couldn’t see anything at all. But he could feel. And he could tell without needing so much as a single glance that Hollow Symphony had joined with him. The Rune’s power rose up like water pouring into a well.

And almost instantly, Noah realized that this rune was unlike any other rune he’d ever had. Whether it was truly stronger than Sunder and the Fragment of Renewal or not, he didn’t know. The rune was just… different.

It was definitely nothing like what Wretched Symphony had been. The base, the core of the rune, that was the same. But that was also where the similarities ended. While Noah could feel immense power within Hollow Symphony, it was nowhere near anything that could be called Divine.

How much of itself did it strip away?

This rune doesn’t have access to Sunder. And even if it did, there isn’t anything to put back together. It just carved an enormous chunk of itself off because it realized it didn’t like the path it was headed down. I knew that some runes could get a personality, but didn’t this thing basically just destroy hundreds upon hundreds of years of work because it changed its mind? There are a hell of a lot of humans who wouldn’t have the guts to make such a decision.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

What terrifying willpower.

But that wasn’t to say that it had cut everything away. Noah could feel Hollow Symphony in a way that he’d never been able to feel any of his other runes. There was more than just magic within it.

There was intention. Desire. Determination. A number of other things as well, emotions swirling through it with just as much clarity and weight as any person he’d ever met. They certainly weren’t the same kind of emotions, but they were there all the same.

“A law made manifest,” Noah muttered. “So this is what runes can become. Or is it an entirely separate manner of being, similar only in the fact that it bears rune in the name? It certainly didn’t like being compared to my other runes. The moment I get out of here, I’ll have to study it.”

But getting out of here was the problem at hand. For all the power Noah felt within Hollow Symphony waiting to be discovered, he could tell within an instant that this rune couldn’t escape the white void any more than he could.

They were both equally stuck.

Well, isn’t that ironic? So much for that idea.

Noah’s eyes opened. He still stood in the corpse of the Night’s Shadow. Discomfort and pain gnawed on the edges of his mind, steadily making their way deeper. Whatever part of him this was — the void wasn’t doing any wonders for its health.

“Where the hell am I?” Noah muttered, setting off through the Shadow’s body. Coils of the Line swam into view, but this time, he ignored them. He didn’t want to put a foot more than he absolutely had to on the Line.

***

It took Noah several hours to find a way out of the Night’s Shadow on his own feet. At least, he was pretty sure it did. He wasn’t actually certain how much time had gone by. There was no way to track its passing within the Shadow’s gray corpse.

When he finally got out of it, he was greeted by the sharp white light of the void all around them. That really wasn’t much of a reward at all. Noah clambered up to stand on top of the gray corpse, exhaustion and annoyance mingling on his features.

There was nothing but emptiness around him. He stood on the only patch of color that seemed to exist.

“Well, shit,” Noah said. The reality of the situation was only just starting to really set in. Even with his new rune, he couldn’t sense his magic. He couldn’t feel his body, nor could he feel the call of the gourd.

There was nothing at all.

Just him and this endless white blanket covering the world. He sat down on top of the Night’s Shadow, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his throbbing head on top of them as he stared out into the distance.

He wasn’t quite insane enough to sprint off in a random direction. It would change nothing. A memory shifted free from his mind. Even though it had been formed only a moment ago, it felt like it had been years.

Hollow Symphony called this place a gap between worlds. I don’t think that’s a place where I can sprint in a direction until I find an end. Even if I can… how long would that take? Would everyone I care about be dead by the time I escape?

Noah swallowed. Fear and anger welled within him as shimmering fragments of the Line spun out around him. Neither emotion helped. He was just as devoid of an answer as he had been before.

The shimmers of gold almost felt like they were mocking him. It was like they knew that he, who had once hated nothing more than being forced to walk on an endless path, now wished desperately that he had literally anywhere to walk to at all.

“What do I do?”

There was no answer.

Mascot wasn’t coming to save him. Renewal and her Prophet either didn’t know he was here or couldn’t do anything about it. Moxie and the others were all waiting for him. They were probably wondering what had happened during the fight with Father. Wondering if any part of him still remained.

Noah pulled his gaze up. He couldn’t give in. There had to be a way out.

What would Moxie do if she were in my position? What about Lee? Or, hell, what would Father do?

His eyes danced around the endless white. Every single idea he could come up with ended the moment it took fruition in his mind. They all involved runes, and the only one of those he had to call on here had been very clear that it couldn’t do anything at all to escape the void.

There was no magic.

All he had…

Noah paused. He slipped down from where he sat upon the dead monster, dropping to the white ground as a thought drifted through his mind. Then his gaze flicked down to his shoulder, and then to his hands.

A violin and its bow shimmered into being within them.

And then a grin crossed Noah’s lips. A long note coiled through the empty air around him. His magic was nowhere to be found, but there were patterns everywhere. Even in nothingness, there was a pattern.

The grin grew wider as he started to play. He didn’t know how he’d gotten stuck here or what part of him this even was. Really, there was only one thing he knew one thing for certain.

Patterns held power.

And, when patterns went wrong, they could do a hell of a lot of damage. It didn’t matter how vast the white void was. Nothing was indestructible.

This endless sea of white stood between him and Moxie. It stood between him and everyone that made up that black splotch of oil that stood strong in the sea of eternity.

And if that tiny smattering of memories could resist the Line, then there was no way in hell he was going to let some puny white void keep him stuck inside it.

Noah’s song spun out around him, the power from Hollow Symphony flowing into it to form a Formation. Making such a thing without actually knowing what the rune did was normally a horribly stupid idea.

It would invariably result in the destruction of the Formation.

And, a few notes later, it did.

A crunch echoed out. Noah’s magic inverted on itself like a house crumbling down all around him. He threw himself to the side, diving and scrambling out of the way as searing power cut through the air behind him with a scream.

He just barely managed to pull himself away from the detonating magic in time to avoid getting caught in the blast. It still threw him several feet forward, sending him skidding across the white ground.

Noah scrambled to his feet, spinning toward the fading fragments of his Formation.

And then his grin grew wider. Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs NoveI(F)ire.net

In the sea of flawless white nothingness was what could only be described as a dent.

Screw finding a way to escape. I’m just going to break everything until there isn’t anything left to hold me.