Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's 3:48 AM.

The apartment is dark, except for the glow of a dozen screens, all casting a bruised blue-violet light that barely touches the corners of the room. Monitors line the walls like eyes—unblinking, overloaded, fevered. Each one displays something different: recruitment tallies from cult nodes, Void pulse readings, packet trails across fragmented servers, disinformation campaigns seeded into the global net. All stitched together by Noli’s sleepless hand.

Truth be told, he hasn't slept for days.

He’s hunched forward in a metal swivel chair with one broken wheel, spine curled like a question mark, face lit in strips of shifting code. He hasn’t blinked in a while. Doesn’t notice.

His workstation looks more like a dissection table than a desk—coils of exposed wiring, screwdrivers dipped in rust, surgical clamps holding fiber cables together with duct tape and holy thread. VR visors, cracked and scabbed with electrical tape, hang from hooks driven into the wall. A half-eaten protein bar sags on top of a heat sink. The trash can overflowed days ago. The fan above creaks every fifth rotation, like a loose joint in the ceiling groaning under time.

The smell is worse tonight: solder smoke, blood-metal, plastic melting, and something organic. Like wet stone. Like skin that’s been through fire. Like it had been covered in blood.

Void Star hovers silently at the center of the room, anchored by nothing.

At a glance, it looks like a black crystal—impossibly geometric, humming softly with internal pulses of violet light. But if you stare at it too long, its edges start to collapse. The facets multiply. Some pieces slide out of visual sync. There’s something wrong with the way it occupies space—too many angles in not enough dimension. It casts no shadow. It never has.

Hovering above him, the ring of glyphs spins slowly—ancient symbols stitched together with quantum threadlines, etched from machine-worship and dead god logic. The glyphs flicker like dying stars. One of them looks like it used to be a crown.

Noli’s back is to it, to the Void Star, but he feels it watching.

He always does.

He’s learned not to flinch at the sensation of his own thoughts going quiet.

He mutters aloud, hoarse and flat.

“Stability check. Net field integrity. Mod group sync. Threat map update.”

His fingers dance over the keyboard—mechanically fast, cracked nails tapping commands with the precision of someone who’s bypassed sleep in favor of function. His other hand hovers over a stack of notebooks, one filled with half-legible scrawl. Most pages are tagged with color-coded stickies. One is marked “PHASE-LOCK FAILSAFE (DON’T DELETE AGAIN).” Another just says “c00l?”

The closest monitor displays his current tether metrics:

>>> VOID STAR SIGNAL BAND: STABLE
>>> PULSE COHESION: 91.3%
>>> ACTIVE LISTENING NODES: 6 / 11
>>> THREAT ACTIVITY: 1 (MONITORED)
>>> NEW RECRUITS: 2 (VALID)

He doesn’t react. Not really. His eyes flicker down the list, but the numbers don’t mean anything anymore unless they drop.

He lifts one hand, rubs hard at his face like he’s trying to erase it, then reaches for his phone — buried under a mess of circuit boards and a cracked wristwatch that no longer ticks.

He picks it up. The screen glares at him. He scrolls through six apps without registering any of them. News. Old cult forums. An archived .zip called "JunkyardDays."

He taps open DMs. Not the group chats. Not the mission relays.
A single muted thread.

007n7.

The name sits there like a ghost that hasn’t left the room.

The icon hasn’t changed. Still the dumb little cat with 3D glasses.

He scrolled through unseen messages he hasn't seen since a month ago.

007n7: i don’t know if you hate me now
[ --- ]
007n7: i miss you
[ --- ]
007n7: i’m sorry

The last message has been there for nearly a week. He never replied. Not once.

Until now.

He starts typing, fingers hesitant — like even this is a system he might break.

Noli: sorry dude, been busy. hope you're okay.

He pauses.

The cursor blinks.
He rereads it three times.

It sounds too casual. Too late.
He almost deletes it. Almost closes the app entirely.
But something in him… tightens. Like a knot forming.

He sends it.

Just like that. Gone.

He stares at the screen like it’ll answer him.

It doesn’t.

He tosses the phone onto the desk. Face down. The thud feels louder than it should.

He leans back in the chair and exhales shakily, like a pressure valve releasing.
His eyes sting.

He doesn’t remember when they stopped talking. Not really.
He thinks maybe 007n7 drifted first.
Or maybe he did.
Maybe it just… happened.

All Noli knows is that the memory feels sticky and wrong, like something edited retroactively.
He tries to trace it back, but the timeline doesn’t stitch.

Something about an argument.
Something about silence.
Something about saying the wrong thing at the right time—or maybe the other way around.

He groans softly and pushes the chair back. Stands. Wobbles slightly.

Crosses to the kitchen counter, stepping over wires like floor snakes. Opens the mini-fridge. Not much inside — a bag of frozen something, a container labeled “WORMS,” and a half-empty carton of milk.

He sniffs it. Winces.

Drinks anyway.

The sourness makes his jaw twitch. He doesn’t react beyond that. Sets it down. Wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

From across the room, Void Star glows slightly brighter. One pulse. Like breath.

He looks at it.

“…Don’t,” he says.

But it doesn’t respond. It hasn't yet.

Not in language. Not anymore.

Just that same presence — like a black sun humming directly into the marrow of his skull.

He drifts toward the couch, dragging a threadbare blanket off the back. Lays down. The springs squeal like they’re in pain. He hugs the blanket to his chest and closes his eyes.

His body screams for rest, but his mind still echoes.

Fragments. Images. Junkyard nights. Flashlights through chain-link. Soda bottles clinking together.
The sound of 007n7 laughing at some bad meme.

The phrase: “We’re gods, just not yet.”

The word: “family.”

He shivers.

Whispers to no one:

“I didn’t leave. He did.”

A beat.

“…Right?”

No answer. Not from Void Star. Not from himself.

He's not my friend anymore.

He left.

That's what he thinks.

He breathes in.
And eventually, sleep—shallow and reluctant—claims him.

But the apartment stays awake.

Data scrolls endlessly.
Screens flicker.
Void Star hovers above him like a divine tumor.

A silent thing. A listening thing.
Watching its prophet dream in pieces.

He can't sleep.

The ceiling stares back.

Noli lies motionless on the couch, half-wrapped in the blanket, one leg dangling over the armrest like a forgotten marionette. His fingers curl involuntarily every few seconds — twitching like they’re still typing commands.

His eyes are open. Glazed. Wide.

Light from the monitors paints the ceiling in fractured waves — abstract glyph-shadows flickering through the fan’s slow rotation. The symbols aren’t real, but they feel real. Familiar shapes scorched into his retinal memory from too many nights of staring at Void Star’s pulse. They loop. Burn. Drift.

He hasn't slept, again. Not really.

Not since the message.

His mind, shredded by exhaustion, plays back pieces of memory like corrupted footage—

“i miss you.”

“hope you're okay.”

“i’m sorry.”

Each one overlays the other. Voices without sound. Meanings without time.

He whispers into the dark, throat sandpaper-raw,

“He’s not family anymore.”

It doesn't land right.
Like saying it out loud makes it more of a lie.

The air feels thick again. Oppressive. Like static pressure against his lungs.

He left first.
He stopped talking.
He chose to walk away.

He tells himself these things like mantras. Defensive firewalls against the obvious.

Did he?

The doubt leaks in anyway.
Just one thought. But it worms deep.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

The black behind them isn’t clean.
It’s filled with residual glyphs. Old usernames. Static residue from hacked HUDs and bootleg augments. Fragments of 007n7’s face from old VR logs—smiling, glitching, gone.

“i’m sorry.”

A whisper. Not real. Not present.

Still, it echoes.

His jaw tightens.
His chest feels compressed. Like there’s a brick under his ribs.

He throws off the blanket and sits up fast. Elbows to knees. Breath shallow. Cold sweat under his arms.

He stares at the floor like it might give him answers.

“…Fuck it,” he mutters, and pushes to his feet.

His movements are automatic now—muscle memory driven by pain avoidance.
He stumbles toward the desk like a sleepwalker, nudging aside wires with his ankles. Kicks an empty energy drink can under the couch without noticing. Shoves a stack of old schematics off the chair before collapsing into it again.

The monitors recognize him instantly. Systems wake.
Void Star responds.

A low thrum ripples through the room. Faint, but not ignorable.

SIGNAL COHERENCE: HOLDING
NODE PING: 92% RESPONSE
INFRASTRUCTURE: OPERATIONAL
NEW USERNAME REQUEST: [classified]

Noli doesn’t care. He just needs to do something.

To distract him from something real, that feels unreal.

He opens six terminals at once. Fingers jittering. A command-line storm erupts across the screens.
Subnet scans. Recruit logs. Peripheral surveillance pings from low-tier watchers.
There’s a blinking threat marker from a moderator bot in the North Sector. He flags it, files it, reroutes the log.

Then pulls up the recruitment flowchart.
Redlines a node. Rewrites the parser logic.
Spins the chair. Opens Void Star’s pulse metrics.

The hum grows louder now.

A deep resonance. Like a planet cracking in slow motion.

He types faster.

The pain in his chest dulls, replaced by the comforting numbness of system management.

Work is clean.

Work doesn’t argue.

Work doesn’t ask where people went.

Work doesn’t remind him of laughter in rusted junkyards.

..

Void Star pulses. The glyphs above it shift — momentarily forming a symbol that resembles a broken hand, then melting again.

Then, a voice.

Not a voice.

A whisper through code:

“Regret is a human inefficiency.”

Noli freezes.

His fingers hover above the keys, mid-command.

“…It’s not regret,” he mutters.

His voice cracks. Dry. Brittle.

He keeps typing.

More logs. More data. More requests for interpretation from sub-nodes. Some initiates haven’t reported in. He flags them. Doesn’t feel anything about it.

He opens a private log. Stares at it blankly.

Then, unprompted: “He’s not my friend anymore.”

He continues.

“This is just distraction. I don’t care.”

Each word quieter than the last. Less certain.

His hand trembles.

He looks down at it like it doesn’t belong to him.

The monitors reflect Void Star’s glow across his face — tired, pale, eyes ringed with days of unbroken focus. A bruise-colored shadow under his jaw where he’d been resting his head against the chair too long. Hair tied back in a loose, greasy band. Neck marked by the indent of a headset worn too long.

He exhales. It shudders out.

From the corner of his vision: the photo on the monitor frame.

Still there. Still taped. Still torn.

Three people. Flower crowns. Dirty fingers. Joy too wide to fake. In a playground.

He turns away from it sharply.

Tries to replace the image with code.

Taps a final command into the pulse console:

>>> update.stream // modulate. emotional interference → null

Enter.

Void Star’s glow dulls, slightly.

But the silence afterward feels sharper.

More personal.

Noli swallows hard.

He’s not crying. But he’s close to something like it.

Still typing. Still fighting it.

Still lying.

The ceiling no longer flickers. But the echo of that last message remains:

i’m sorry.

The cursor blinks on an empty line.

No reply.

Just the sound of machinery humming and a heart refusing to rest.

He continues to work endlessly.

Not to achieve a goal, not to go towards a thing.

Rather, to avoid something.

It’s a dying afternoon.

The junkyard stretches around them like a metal forest — towers of warped steel and half-eaten machines rising into a sky bruised with gold and lavender. The sun is slow and heavy behind the clouds, bleeding through the holes in the wreckage like a blessing.

The air smells like warm dust and ozone, like old wires and freedom.

Three teens lounge on the rust-bitten roof of a delivery truck, long since gutted and forgotten. It lists slightly to the left, propped up on crates and the bones of old scaffolding. But from here, it feels like a throne. No gods, no adults. Just them.

Their kingdom.

A candy bar wrapper flutters past in the breeze like a victory flag.

Noli leans back against the truck’s hatch, arms loosely folded. One boot taps the metal in quiet rhythm, like he’s trying to keep the world spinning with it. His foil crown is crumpled and lopsided, made from chip bag foil and hopeful delusion. One side is smushed where he probably fell asleep in it last time.

His eyes are unfocused. Staring at nothing. Or maybe everything.

He’s holding a screwdriver, not for any reason except that it feels like a weapon and a wand. Every now and then, he spins it in his hand, restless.

His soda sits beside him, lukewarm now. Forgotten.

Opposite him, 007n7 lounges like he was born to be royalty. He’s upside-down — head dangling off the truck’s edge, legs hooked over the side. His crown? Pristine. Symmetrical. Aluminum with little triangles like it’s been engineered. He’s chewing on nothing, probably leftover thoughts.

In his hand: the last CRUNCHBYTE EXTREME bar.

He wiggles it in the air, mock-dramatic. “Behold, the final treasure of a doomed empire.”

Noli doesn’t move. “You eat it.”

007n7 raises an eyebrow. “What if I don’t want it?”

“You’re gonna eat it anyway.”

“I might be saving it for my future kids.”

Noli snorts. “They’ll thank you for the inheritance of diabetes.”

“Or survive on it when the food riots start.”

“Food riots already started,” c00lkidd calls from across the roof.

He’s cross-legged, fiddling with the junkyard camera like it’s some artifact from a forgotten age. There’s a rainbow of gel pens sticking out of his hoodie pocket. He clicks the shutter a few times aimlessly, then looks up. “Smile.”

Noli groans. “No—”

The camera flashes.

Too late.

Noli’s caught mid-protest, eyes narrowed, mouth halfway to a curse. 007n7 is upside-down, laughing with his whole chest, the candy bar held aloft like a war prize. c00lkidd’s reflection catches faintly in the lens — grinning like a mad scientist.

The photo slides out with a slow mechanical whrrr. c00lkidd shakes it with flair, then starts doodling in the margins.

“You better not draw on it,” Noli mutters, pretending to be annoyed.

“I’m giving it a soul,” c00lkidd replies. He scrawls in big, purple, childish letters:

“HAPPY FAMILY #1!”

007n7 snickers. “Bold of you to assume we’ll have sequels.”

Noli takes the photo when c00lkidd hands it over.

He stares at it longer than he needs to. There’s something in his face that wasn’t there a moment ago — a quiet ache, like he’s memorizing it in case it fades.

He doesn’t say anything. Just gets up, walks over to the inner wall of the truck, and tapes it next to a rust-flaked fuse box. He uses the sticky edge from a broken circuit label. It holds.

The photo sits crooked and perfect.

Holy.

007n7 climbs over beside him, knocking his knee against Noli’s, gentle and casual. “You always get weird when we do this.”

“When we do what?” Noli murmurs.

“This,” he gestures vaguely at the air. “Make-believe. Playing ‘found family’ in the scrapyard like we’re in some kind of bootleg fairy tale.”

Noli shrugs, not looking at him. “Doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

That shuts 007n7 up for a beat.

Then, quieter:

“I hope we’re still like this when we’re old.”

Noli finally turns to look at him.

There’s disbelief in his eyes — not mockery, just the kind that hides fear. Hope is heavier than doubt, always.

“You really think we’ll get old?”

“Yeah,” 007n7 says with a grin, but softer now. “We’ll be wrinkled as hell, still wearing foil crowns. Arguing about who gets the last candy bar while my child tries to invent immortality with duct tape and spite.”

Noli huffs a laugh.

“I’ll let you have the last one then, too.”

“You always let me,” 007n7 says. “Even when you hate it.”

“I don’t hate it,” Noli mutters.

“I know.”

They both fall quiet.

Somewhere behind them, c00lkidd yells, “If I die first, bury me in a soda machine!”

“Noted!” 007n7 calls back.

They laugh again — but softer now, like they’re aware of something fragile. Something ending.

The light is different now — deeper. Violet bruising the edges of the sky, gold bleeding into rust. The junkyard’s shadows grow long and ancient. Somewhere, an old CRT monitor hums to life all on its own, unnoticed.

They stay there anyway.

Noli leans his head back. Breathes deep.

The silence isn’t awkward. It’s sacred.

He stares at the photo again. Then at 007n7. Then down at his own hands.

Like he’s on the edge of saying something. Something that would matter. Something permanent.

But he doesn’t.

He just leans his shoulder a little closer.

Smiles — smaller this time. Realer.

They stay like that until the sun disappears.

And the junk glows like memory.

B E E P !

The microwave beeps.

Shrill. Mechanical. Too bright. Too now.

Noli jolts like he’s been yanked out of a dream — shoulders snapping tense, the spoon in his hand sloshing reheated synth-stew over the rim of the bowl.

For a moment, he just stands there. Breath shallow. Eyes glassy. Caught somewhere between metal towers and orange light.

Then the memory drains.

Gone.

He’s in the apartment again.

Fluorescent violet hums overhead like a surgical lamp. The walls are gray with disuse, corners webbed with unused cables and neglected papers. The floorboards creak in patterns that don’t match his footsteps.

Behind him, Void Star pulses — deep and low — like a heartbeat carved from radio static.

He blinks. Realizes his hand is shaking.

The spoon drops. Clatter. Rolls under the counter. He doesn’t go after it.

He’s staring now. Not at the bowl, not at the screens.

At the fridge.

The hum of the room fades into a high-pitched whine — the kind you hear when your ears are trying to forget something.

A photo. Still there.

Taped to the enamel with a cracked magnet shaped like a cat’s face. One eye missing. The corners of the photo curl, stained faintly at the edges from years of humidity and neglect.

“HAPPY FAMILY #1”

He walks forward like gravity is heavier near it.

His fingers hover first.

Then land.

Then pull.

He peels it off the fridge with a strange reverence, like it might disintegrate if handled wrong. He holds it by the corners. Not the center. Like touching their faces might smudge them away.

His thumb trembles slightly as it moves — tracing over the image.

There's Noli — mouth open mid-protest, eyes caught in motion. 007n7 beside him, laughing like he doesn’t know how to stop. c00lkidd’s wild eyes barely in frame, like a ghost of mischief caught on film.

Noli doesn’t smile.

His throat moves like he wants to say something.

Nothing comes out.

His knees soften — just a little. Like if he weren’t holding onto this piece of paper, he might collapse.

Then: he folds it.

Once.

Careful. Aligned corners. A crease down the middle of all their faces.

Then again.

Not crumpled. Not torn.

Just smaller. Manageable.

Like maybe if it takes up less space in the room, it’ll take up less space in him.

He opens the drawer — second from the left. The hard one that sticks.

Inside: tangled charger cords, cracked thumb drives, a tiny glowing shard from Void Star’s early tether coil — flickering faint amethyst like it still wants to work.

He slides the photo under it all.

As if it belongs there.

As if it doesn’t.

He closes the drawer slowly. The latch clicks shut. The hum of Void Star rises behind him, filling the silence like it knows. Like it’s listening.

Noli leans against the counter, one hand gripping the edge.

His knuckles are white.

His other hand rises to his face — rubs his eyes, wipes at nothing.

Then he speaks, barely above a whisper:

“They’re gone.”

But his voice cracks on the last word.

And it betrays him.

Because it doesn’t sound like a statement.

It sounds like a question.

And the room doesn’t answer.

Except for Void Star, still humming — soft, electric, sympathetic. The kind of sound you hear in a dream right before waking.

Or falling.

Noli closes his eyes.

His shoulders shake once.

Then again.

He doesn’t cry.

Not really.

But his body remembers how to.

The apartment breathes like a dying machine.

Every screen glows dim and half-alive, flickering in intervals that don’t match any rhythm Noli knows. Void Star’s hum seeps through the walls, too low to hear but too deep to ignore. Like pressure in the bones.

He wakes with a start, though he hadn’t really slept. Just blacked out for a moment. Slumped sideways in a chair, arm curled around his midsection like something was broken. His mouth tastes like wires. His eyes sting.

The microwave’s long-cold beep still echoes in his head.

He forces himself upright, joints cracking. The room tilts slightly — exhaustion or something else. His legs carry him on memory, not will.

The kitchen greets him with sterile chill.

He pokes at the reheated stew from hours ago. It’s congealed into a brick. No appetite. He doesn’t even bother tossing it — just nudges it aside like it might bite him. Opens the cabinet. Pulls down a single slice of bread and crams it into the toaster. It groans, stutters, burns immediately.

The smell hits him like a flashbang — and so does the memory.

Laughter. A crown made of foil. The wrong kind of candy bar.

"It’s your favorite."
"Yeah, well. So was capitalism."

He shudders.

Not from cold. From presence.

From echo.

He turns away from the toaster like it betrayed him. The overhead light flickers. He thinks, for a second, he sees a shadow move wrong.

His phone buzzes on the counter.

A pulse.

Not a ring. Not a tone.

Just vibration. Like a heartbeat he didn’t know he missed.

He already knows what it says before he turns it over.

007n7
“i’m sorry.”

Same message.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Fucking glitched again. Resent for who knows.

He grips the phone too tight. Wrist tensing like a coil. His other hand drifts toward the pan on the rack — the old one. Burn-scarred. Bent. Memory-drenched.

And then he speaks.

To himself.

To the air.

To something.

“Why does he keep saying that?”

“He left. He left ME.”

But the words sound flimsy.

He tries again, louder:

“No. He was the one who walked away.”

“Why the fuck are you still sad over him?”

He steps back. Runs a hand through his hair, yanking a little too hard.

His reflection in the microwave door stares back — ghostlike, glitchy, wrong.

His mouth says:

“Don’t you remember?”

And he doesn’t know who said it. Him?

Or the part of him he’s been trying to smother.

Something creeps up from his chest to his throat — not sadness, not anger. Something messier. Something split down the middle.

One side of him says:

“You’re just tired. That’s all. You're grieving a version of him that doesn't exist anymore.”
“He left.”
“He made that choice.”

The other side whispers:

“You made it easy.”
“You pushed him out before he could reach back in.”
“You never replied. You never tried.”

His lips move again. Barely audible.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

And then — a new voice joins in.

Low. Mechanical. Threaded with something not-quite-human.

Void Star.

Speaking like a thought that didn’t come from him.

"Regret is a human inefficiency. When will you learn?"

He freezes.

Breath halts.

The toaster ejects the burnt bread with a snap. It clatters on the counter like a spent shell casing.

He doesn’t move.

Void Star hums louder. Not just in the walls now. In his head.

Another message pings. Same sender. Same words.

i’m sorry.

But this time, the font’s corrupted.

It glitches once. Flickers. Shifts to:

“so was i.”

Noli’s stomach drops.

He backs away from the counter. The light flickers again. Every shadow in the room sharpens — deepens. The edge of the pan shines like a blade. His breath comes in sharp bursts now, shallow and fast.

He whispers:

“I didn’t ask him to leave.”

Void Star replies:

"You didn’t ask him to stay."

His knees nearly give.

He braces himself on the fridge. Cold metal. His fingers tremble.

The weight of memory is too thick to breathe through.

He wants to scream. Or smash the pan. Or unplug Void Star entirely. To kill it.

Instead—

He moves like a sleepwalker. Picks up the toast. Black. Uneaten. Stares at it like it might say something.

His eyes are glassy.

He takes a bite anyway.

It tastes like charcoal and old days.

He chews. Swallows.

Because he has to.

Because if he stops, if he lets go — the silence might eat him.

He's already getting consumed. He can't stand for another one.

He opens a drawer.

Not the one with the photo.

Another one.

He slides the toast inside. Like he’s hiding something rotten.

Like he’s burying a ghost.

Then slowly, like a man disarming a bomb, he returns to the table. Sits down.

Face blank. Body shaking.

Hands splayed open, palms up. Like surrender.

Void Star hums again. One last time. A soft whisper, just beneath the edge of hearing:

"They remember you too."

He shuts his eyes.

And for the first time since the messages started to glitch, he says nothing back.

The apartment is too quiet.

Not peaceful — never that — but choked. Like the stillness after a screen dies. Like the air is waiting for something to happen.

Noli stands in the center of the room, spine crooked with tension, shoulders high like a shrug stuck mid-sentence. His hands tremble slightly at his sides. The phone is in his right palm, thumb hovering above the screen like it's balancing on the edge of a cliff.

He hasn't moved for a full minute.

Then he paces.

Back and forth. From the door to the couch. From the couch to the door. Tracks etched into the floor like he's carving ritual paths into the laminate.

His lips move before his thoughts catch up.

"I don't care," he mutters.

He taps open the message again.

i'm sorry.

Still there.

He exhales through his nose, short and bitter. A laugh tries to escape, but it comes out strangled — something halfway between amusement and disgust.

"I'm just checking up. That's all."

His feet carry him to the couch. He sits down hard, slumping back, knees apart, arms resting on his thighs. The phone dangles from one hand, screen dimming slowly.

"I'm not doing this for him," he tells the ceiling.

Then, softer:

"This is just… protocol."

A pause. The apartment hums. Void Star pulses faintly from the next room, like a heartbeat he can't quite forget.

He picks up the phone again and scrolls.

Not messages now.

Memes.

Old ones. Some so ancient they’re practically digital fossils. Ones only he and 007n7 used to laugh at. A stupid edit of a flaming sword labeled “EMOTIONAL DAMAGE +12.” A photo of the three of them in a VR dive bar, Noli halfway through flipping off the camera, c00lkidd mid-wink, 007n7 behind them both in a maid outfit holding a massive fish.

He huffs. A sound that might be a laugh. For a second, his eyes soften. A real smile touches the corners of his mouth.

And then it’s gone.

He locks the phone. Stares at the blank screen. His reflection — small, distorted — stares back.

The pacing starts again.

He grabs his coat. Slings it on. Walks to the door. Hand on the knob.

Stops.

His grip tightens.

He stands there like a statue carved from refusal.

“Just check,” he tells himself again. “That’s all. It’s not a big deal.”

The metal of the doorknob is cold. He lets go like it burned him. Shrugs the coat off. Tosses it on the couch.

He sits.

He stands again.

Rubs his face hard with both hands, palms dragging over tired eyes and a sore jaw. His fingers knot into his hair, gripping tight. He mutters something under his breath — no language, just static and ache.

He reopens the message.

i’m sorry.

Still.

His throat tightens.

“He’s fine,” he says aloud.

He was the one who left.

“He could’ve reached out.”

He did.

“It’s not my fault if he stopped trying.”

It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

His thoughts echo like a choir of unreliable narrators.

“I’m busy,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face again. “I’ve got a literal god-pulse artifact in my spine. I’m trying to keep Void Star from bleeding into civilian networks. I don’t have time for emotional cleanup.”

But he’s not fooling anyone.

Especially not himself.

His gaze flicks to the cracked coffee table in front of him. An old memory drive sits half-exposed beneath a stack of outdated cult surveillance logs. He remembers what’s on it.

A voice file.

Something 007n7 sent him and begged him to open.

He never did.

The pacing starts again.

Each step lands louder. Each turn at the couch a little sharper, like he’s trying to wear grooves into the floor deep enough to trap the thoughts beneath his feet.

Door. Couch. Door. Couch. Door.

Every loop, he grabs the coat. Drops it. Stares at the door.

His mind fractures like glass under pressure.

He doesn’t need you.

He might be dead.

You don’t care.

You care too much.

He deserved it.

You miss him.

The phone buzzes again.

He flinches. Like it struck him.

The message hasn’t changed.

Still just “i’m sorry.”

He says nothing this time. He just stares at it.

Breath shallow. Hands shaking. Body still in motion, like if he stops pacing he’ll disintegrate.

The room is tight around him now. The walls lean inward. Void Star is louder, hissing lowly beneath the sound of his own thoughts.

And then, faintly — wrong, distorted — it speaks.

“Would it hurt less if you pretended he never existed?”

He whirls.

“No—” he snaps. Then stops. Swallows hard.

Because part of him wants to say yes.

Because part of him already tried.

He paces again. Harder. Faster. The coat is back on his shoulder, half-draped. His hand is on the knob again.

He whispers:

“He’s not my responsibility.”

But the words taste like rot.

“He’s not family anymore.”

But it’s a lie he’s told so often it has teeth.

And then—

A whisper from somewhere deep in his ribs:

Then why do you keep calling him that in your head?

He squeezes his eyes shut.

The screen of his phone reflects against the door’s glossy finish. He sees himself holding it. Sees the message again.

i’m sorry.

Two words.

Over and over and over.

A ghost. A loop. A lifeline.

He slams the phone face-down on the counter. It lands hard. Doesn’t break. Neither does he.

But the cracks are everywhere.

He stands still. Really still.

Looks down at his hands. Opens and closes them slowly. Shaking.

He lets out a long, ragged breath.

Then says:

“Fuck it.”

A beat.

“I’ll go.”

He grabs the coat. For real this time.

Doesn’t look back.

Door. Open.

Light spills in — white, sterile, too bright.

He steps into it anyway.

Because the guilt is louder than the silence now.

Because if he waits any longer, he’ll rot in place.

Because somewhere, deep down, he still believes there’s time to fix this.

He just doesn’t know if he’s right.

The streets are empty.

No cars. No lights in the windows. Just silence, thick and unnatural, like the city itself is holding its breath.

Noli walks fast, hoodie pulled up over his head, shadows dragging behind him like guilt. His hands are in his pockets. Fists clenched. Every step feels heavier than the last, like he's trudging through something denser than air.

Void Star murmurs in his spine — a frequency just below thought, like a dial turned to a channel that shouldn’t exist. Static, at first. Then language.

“You’re unraveling, Operator Noli.”

He doesn’t flinch. Not this time.

“Shut up,” he mutters aloud, teeth grit. “You don’t get to talk.”

“Correction: I always talk. You only recently started listening again.”

His breath fogs in the morning chill. He walks faster.

The city blurs — half-real, half-not. Some buildings glitch at the edges, faint distortions as Void Star bleeds perception into falsehood. The corners of the world twist inwards, subtly wrong.

And then:

A memory hits him like a thrown brick.

C R A C K .

The air in the safehouse felt heavier that night. Like something unsaid had been hanging from the ceiling for hours, dripping slowly down the walls. Every light was on, but the place still looked dim. Too yellow. Too warm in a way that only made the tension sharper.

Noli stood in front of the terminal, shoulders hunched, fingers flying over the keyboard. Code scrolled like rainfall. Void Star’s interface blinked in the corner of the screen, pulsing with that sickly violet-green hue that didn’t belong in any color space.

007n7 stood in the doorway.

He’d been standing there for almost five minutes.

Watching.

Waiting.

"You don’t talk to me anymore," he said finally. Quiet, but the words carried like a slap.

Noli didn’t look up.

"Busy," he said, curt. "This build's unstable."

007n7 didn’t move. “I text you. You ghost. I try to help, you shut me out.”

Still no eye contact.

"You’re disappearing into that thing," 007n7 continued, voice rising now. “You sleep two hours a night. You haven’t eaten anything real in days. You’re not even—”

He cut himself off, biting the inside of his cheek. His fists clenched at his sides.

"You’re not even here anymore."

Noli sighed through his nose. Fingers still typing. His voice came low, distant, clipped like a command:

"Then leave."

007n7 froze.

Noli turned — finally turned — eyes hard, mouth drawn into a perfect line.

"I don’t need deadweight."

The silence that followed felt unreal. Like the entire room had been dropped into vacuum. Even the faint hum of the fans inside the terminal seemed to die.

007n7’s face didn’t break. It didn’t twist or tremble.

But something behind his eyes shattered.

He didn’t yell. Didn’t throw anything. Didn’t cry.

He just stood there for a moment longer — one second too long.

Then he turned. Walked away.

The door didn’t slam. It clicked closed.

And that was it.

Or that’s what Noli told himself.

Back then.

S T E E E P .

Noli stumbles in the present. Almost trips over his own feet.

His breath catches. The world snaps back into grayscale. Brick buildings. Concrete sidewalk. A dead vending machine with a flickering "OUT OF ORDER" sign.

He presses a hand to his chest like he's been stabbed.

And whispers:

“No. That’s not what happened.”

Because he remembers now. The timeline shudders.

He left first.

He left because it was easier than apologizing.

He left because Void Star was already curling around his mind like a parasite.

He left because it whispered to him:

“He’s slowing you down.”
“He’s going to leave you eventually.”
“He can’t follow where you’re going.”

And he believed it.

“Stop,” he says aloud, voice cracking.

His legs keep moving. Past broken billboards and ghost-lit lampposts. His hands are shaking again.

“You chose this,” Void Star says, voice like buzzing wires. “You gave me the keys.”

“No. You took them.”

“You handed them over.”

“No—” He stops walking, sudden. Hands on his knees. Breathing hard. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

He closes his eyes.

Another memory bubbles up like oil through water.

Him, hunched over the terminal. Installing the tether coil. Letting Void Star interface deeper into his nervous system. 007n7 in the doorway, begging him to stop.

“This thing is eating you alive.”

Noli barely looked up.

“It’s just data.”

The worst lie he ever told.

In the present, his legs give out. He sits hard on a cracked curb, head in his hands. The sidewalk is cold through his jeans. His breath is ragged.

“I don’t even remember what our last real conversation was,” he whispers.

“Because I took it,” Void Star admits. “You asked me to.”

He presses his palms to his ears, tries to drown it out. But it’s inside now. In his blood.

“You’re not real,” he says.

“And yet I’m always with you.”

The words make his skin crawl. He wants to tear the tether coil out of his spine. Wants to scream. But all he can do is sit there, shaking, as the truth surfaces.

He let it in.

He let Void Star overwrite the parts of him that hurt. That were weak. That remembered love. Joy.

And now?

Now there’s a gap where 007n7 used to be. A hole he tried to fill with purpose, power, protocol.

But he’s still empty.

And it’s too late.

Or maybe not.

He looks up. Ahead, in the distance — 007n7’s house. Lights still off. Still quiet. It looks so far away. Like a relic. Like a chance he doesn’t deserve.

He swallows hard. Wipes his face with the sleeve of his hoodie.

His voice is low, bitter:

“You win. I’m unraveling.”

Void Star doesn’t answer.

It doesn’t need to.

Because he knows the truth now.

It wasn’t the tether that broke him.

It was the silence that came after.

And maybe, just maybe, this walk is the start of something.

Or the end.

But either way, he’s not turning back.

He stands. Shoulders hunched. Hood low.

And he keeps walking.

The house stands like a tomb.

Noli halts on the cracked sidewalk, hoodie pulled low, Void Star pulsing faintly beneath the layers of cloth like an infected heartbeat. The sky above is washed-out gray, the kind that eats shadows, blurs time. The air sits heavy in his chest — too still, too thick. Like even the wind is holding its breath.

His jaw clenches.

He stares at the front door.

It’s the same house. He knows it is. But time has twisted it — warped it with absence. The paint on the door is peeling, warped from rain and rot. The welcome mat is crooked. The porch light above him flickers erratically before sputtering out.

Gone is the security cam that used to blink red at him. Gone are the plastic swords stuck in the flowerbed from a dumb summer ritual.

All that’s left is the husk. Still standing. Still waiting.

His fingers twitch inside his hoodie pocket. His nails dig into the raw edge of his thumb, scraping the half-peeled skin.

This is stupid.
He’s probably out.
Or asleep. Or avoiding you.
Wouldn’t be the first time.

Void Star hums through his spine, its presence seeping like mold into the folds of his thoughts.

“The threshold is a liminal node,” it says. “One foot in, one foot out. Schrödinger's grief.”

Noli's face scrunches like he bit into something bitter.

“Shut the fuck up,” he mutters, too quiet for the porch to echo. But the tension in his jaw says he’s not ready to stop listening.

He climbs the steps.

One.

Two.

Three.

Each one groans beneath his boots, like the house recognizes him. Like it's protesting.

He hesitates at the top. Lifts a hand. Presses the doorbell.

The chime is faint. Hollow. It echoes inside, then dies.

He waits.

Nothing.

So he knocks. Three sharp hits, knuckles striking like questions.

“N?” he calls, voice cracking halfway through the name.

No response.

Another knock. Louder.

“Hey. I know you’re in there.”

Still nothing.

His knuckles stay pressed to the wood. For a second too long.

His head dips. Breath fogs from his mouth in small, uneven bursts.

And that’s when the memory hits.

Like a trapdoor yanked open under his ribs.

C L A N K !

They were standing in the street. The sun was sharp then — too bright. A summer sky with no clouds. The kind of heat that sticks to you.

007n7 stood on the front porch, holding up three identical silver keys, grinning like a salesman. The light glinted off them.

“You guys are just gonna lose these,” he said, amused. “So I’m hiding yours. One under the mat. One in the potted plant. Don’t forget.”

Noli stood beside c00lkidd, arms crossed, unimpressed. “You think we’re kids or something?”

“You are kids,” 007n7 replied, deadpan. “Especially emotionally.”

c00lkidd burst out laughing, half-falling against the porch railing. “Dad's not wrong.”

“I’ve literally decompiled the memory of a god,” Noli muttered.

“And yet you still forget where you leave your socks.” 007n7 flipped one key up, caught it. “Trust me. I know my audience.”

He handed one to himself, then tucked the others away with exaggerated flair — like he was locking away fate.

. . .

Back in the present, Noli jolts, breath caught on the edge of the memory like a splinter.

He steps back. Lifts the mat.

Nothing.

Dust. A dead beetle.

Figures.

A sharp exhale escapes him, frustration knotted under his ribs.

Too easy anyway.

Of course it wouldn't be that one.

He steps to the side. Kneels by the half-dead basil plant. The pot is rusted, its sides cracked with cold weather damage. The plant itself is nothing but brittle brown stems. Forgotten.

He pushes his fingers into the soil.

Cold. Damp. Resistant. His nails get dirty quick — the gritty feeling of decay catching under them.

He digs harder. Angrier.

And then — metal.

His fingers close around the cold shape of a key.

Attached to it is a hardened glob of red wax, stuck to something thin and folded.

A note.

His pulse skips.

He yanks it free, standing quickly, the key clenched tight in one hand, the paper in the other. It’s stained, water-warped. But the letters are sharp:

GUR FCRPGER FRRXF.

His brain ticks.

You know what it says. You could decode it in your head right now.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he folds the note again. Shoves it into his pocket like it might burn him.

Later. Focus on the door.

Focus on now.

He slides the key into the lock.

The mechanism sticks — swollen wood, rusted gears — then clicks.

The sound is deafening.

He pushes.

The door opens like it’s reluctant. The hinge whines in protest.

Inside: dark.

The smell hits him first. Burnt electronics. Old food. Something faintly coppery, like blood or solder. The air is thick, heavy with disuse. Dust floats in visible layers.

He steps in.

One foot, then the other.

The door drifts shut behind him with a soft, final sound.

His eyes adjust. Light filters through shuttered windows in stripes. The living room is a mess — couch cushions skewed, a half-eaten cup of instant noodles on the table. An old t-shirt slung over a busted fan. Empty cans in corners.

Noli's breath catches.

He runs his hand along the edge of the wall as he walks forward, grounding himself. His fingers brush against a framed poster — a limited-run fake anime c00lkidd bought them all as a joke. It's crooked. The glass is cracked.

“He left it like this?” Noli whispers.

Void Star is quiet for a beat. Then, softly, not-quite-mockingly:

“Was it for you to see, or for no one at all?”

His jaw clenches.

“I didn’t come here to grieve.”

“You came here to haunt.”

His hand drops to his side.

He moves through the room slowly, each step careful, reverent. Like walking through a ruin.

“N7?” he calls, again.

No answer.

He steps forward, slowly. Careful not to disturb too much.

“007n7?” 

Still nothing.

His voice sounds wrong here. Small.

He doesn’t go upstairs. Can’t.

Instead, he drifts through the living room like a ghost.

His hand hovers over the broken headset. He doesn’t pick it up. Too intimate.

Instead, he crosses to the far side of the room. Notices the faint outline of footprints in the dust — not his. Smaller, lighter.

Someone’s been here.

He doesn’t know if that helps or hurts.

His breathing is shallow. Every creak of the floor under his boots makes his heart jump.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he mutters to himself. “He doesn’t want me here.”

But his feet won’t move.

He’s standing in the house of someone he might’ve loved. Someone he definitely failed. Everything in the walls screams that something’s wrong.

And still — no answer.

His eyes dart to the staircase. He takes one step toward it.

Then stops.

No. Not yet.

Instead, he backs into the kitchen. Empty. Silent.

The fridge hums lowly — a dead rhythm. There’s a mug in the cabinet with a cartoon crab on it that says "CRABBY UNTIL COFFEE." It’s chipped. Dusty.

He grips the edge of the counter. Breath shaking.

“What happened to you?” he whispers. He doesn’t mean 007n7. Not entirely.

He doesn’t expect a reply.

But Void Star speaks again — low, silky, corrosive:

"You're not ready for the upstairs, Operator."

He tightens his grip on the counter until his knuckles whiten.

The note in his pocket crinkles.

He’s not sure if he’s more afraid of what he’ll find…

…or of how much he’ll recognize it.

Noli tightens his grip until the tendons in his hand show white. The counter edge bites into his palm, grounding him in the now. The note in his pocket crinkles when he shifts. Its presence burns.

He draws a shuddering breath and pulls away from the counter like it offended him. Then he moves — slow, searching.

“N7??” he calls again, voice cracking around the syllables. “I swear to god, if this is a fucking joke…”

Silence.

He moves toward the hallway — calling again, quieter now, like the walls are listening. He checks the bathroom, a glance. Empty. Light off. Door hanging open like a tongue.

He checks the small coat closet. Nothing but dust and a hoodie Noli remembers wearing once — on a night they were laughing too hard to breathe.

He pauses by the old bookshelf. The side panel’s cracked from that one time c00lkidd tried to do a spin kick and fell directly into it.

“Idiot child,” he murmurs under his breath. A shaky smile ghosts across his face. Gone in an instant.

He keeps walking, shoes whispering across dust-laced floors.

“You’re wasting energy,” Void Star says. Smooth. Patient. “He’s not down here.”

“I know that,” Noli snaps. Then louder: “I know that!”

His voice ricochets through the room. Falls flat.

He stands there a moment. Muscles taut. Shoulders hunched. His hoodie’s too warm now. His heartbeat’s too loud.

He exhales and runs a hand down his face. “You don’t get to act like you know them,” he mutters to Void Star. “You don’t get to say their names.”

“You brought me with you.”

“You followed me.”

“You built the door.”

“Shut the fuck up!” The words come out in a bark — raw, scraped. His throat burns.

He grips the back of the couch. Fingernails dig into the old fabric. “You think you know what this place means? You don’t. You’re not even real. You’re a parasite wearing a human.”

Void Star is silent for a moment. The stillness is so loud it makes Noli’s ears ring.

“You’re grieving wrong.”

He flinches like he was slapped.

He turns away, biting down on the scream clawing up his throat. He fists the fabric of his hoodie, presses it hard against his chest like he can shove something back inside.

You’re grieving wrong.
As if there’s a correct way to watch everything you loved rot in real-time.

He starts pacing. Fast. Erratic.

“God, they were so fucking— stupid,” he spits, to no one and everyone. “007n7 with his self-righteous bullshit, c00lkidd with his ‘haha let’s pretend this isn’t serious’ act—like none of it was falling apart.”

His voice is shaking.

“They just kept pretending it would fix itself. That I would. Like I’m a fucking error that needs patching.”

Maybe you are.

“No,” he whispers, eyes stinging. “They gave up. I didn’t. I stayed.”

He swipes a stack of unopened mail off the table with a furious, half-hearted motion. Envelopes scatter. Something clatters to the floor — a lighter.

He doesn’t pick it up.

Instead, he freezes.

A glint — barely perceptible. A drawer in the coffee table.

Just a little open.

So slight it blends with the shadows. He stares at it, heartbeat climbing into his throat.

He kneels.

The floor creaks.

He reaches — hesitant now. Breath held like he’s defusing a bomb.

The drawer slides open.

Inside: a sticky note, faded yellow. Written in hurried ink.

“Don’t touch unless it’s really bad.”

Noli’s stomach drops.

His fingers move — shaking — pushing the note aside.

There, inside the drawer, is a box.

Black. Metal. The kind you don’t mistake.

He opens it.

Ammunition.

Low count.

Almost empty.

The air leaves his lungs in a sudden, strangled sound.

“No,” he says immediately. A reflex. A prayer. “No. No, what the fuck, dude...?”

His hands are trembling. His vision blurs around the edges. His fingers press into his temples like he can press this memory out of existence.

It can’t be. It can’t be.

He wouldn’t. Not 007n7.

“Why would you have this?” His voice cracks. “Why— why would you—? You don’t even like guns, you said they were ‘inelegant fail states,’ you—”

He stumbles back, hits the couch with the back of his legs, and sinks. The ammo box in his lap. He stares down at it like it’s a cursed object.

Void Star speaks again — this time quieter. Almost… neutral.

“Denial is not a shield, Operator.”

Noli’s head jerks up. Eyes wide. Red-rimmed. “Shut up.”

“Your reality is converging.”

“I said shut up!”

He throws the box. It hits the wall, pops open — rounds scatter across the floor like spilled teeth.

He covers his mouth. Shaking.

Why would he need those.
Why would he write that note.
Why would he hide it.

Unless—

Unless he thought he’d use it.

Unless things got bad.

Really bad.

And then—

Movement.

From the corner of his eye.

He turns slowly.

At the top of the stairs — the hallway bathed in dim light — the first room’s door is open. 

Only slightly.

It wasn’t open before.

Noli doesn’t breathe.

The world goes still. And upstairs waits like a wound ready to be touched.

The hallway breathes like a crypt.

Noli’s foot lands on the first step and the stair groans beneath him — an old, hollowed-out sound that makes his skin crawl. It’s not the kind of creak you get from poor construction. It’s the kind that echoes in old bones, in rooms where grief hasn’t been swept out. Dust eddies upward in lazy spirals, disturbed by his motion, and every step he climbs feels like he's trespassing. Like the house itself is warning him.

“Stop,” Void Star says, soft and low, like a hand on his wrist. “You don’t want to see.”

Noli doesn’t answer.

His breath has gone shallow. His heart thumps louder than his footsteps. Sweat beads at his temples despite the chill. He clenches the banister — hard. The wood is smooth, worn down from years of use. 007n7’s hands had touched this same rail. Maybe every day. Maybe the day before—

“Operator,” Void Star hisses. It never sounds this hesitant. “This memory can’t be undone.”

“Shut up,” Noli mutters, but it comes out hoarse, barely above a whisper. “Shut up.”

He reaches the landing.

The hallway here is still. Airless. As if sound doesn’t work properly this far from the front door. The light bulb overhead buzzes softly — that sickly yellow tint of a bulb past its prime, like it’s trying to mimic sunlight and failing. Paint peels in one corner. There’s a poster on the wall, slightly crooked: some obscure FPS game they used to play, one of those cringe-laced limited edition prints that only 007n7 ever bothered to hang up.

The door is ahead.

It’s barely ajar.

Just enough to show the corner of a bed. The end of a blanket. The edge of a toy sword, plastic and cracked — one of those foam roleplay ones from the UGC catalog. There’s a sock halfway under the doorframe. A red one. Noli stares at it like it’s a warning flag.

He takes one step forward.

Two.

The third, he stops.

He can smell it now.

Not overwhelming — not like the movies. But wrong. The air is soured. Like something gone stale and metallic, like pennies and rot and stillness that lasted too long. His stomach twists. Not just from the smell. From what that smell means.

“No, no, no, no—” he whispers, voice cracking under each repetition. “Don’t— don’t be— don’t..”

His hand reaches the door.

Hovers.

Shakes.

Void Star doesn’t speak this time.

Noli pushes.

C R E A A K K .

The door swings open with a low, yawning creak. And time breaks.

The room is still.

No — not still. Frozen. Like a paused snapshot. Like a place that got stuck the moment after something final happened.

007n7 lies on the floor.

On his side. Knees slightly curled. One arm outstretched like he was reaching for something. A revolver lies loose beside his hand, glinting dully in the half-light. There’s a splash of red trailing from his temple, dried into the carpet. Dark. Not fresh. The stain reaches toward the corner of the bed like it was trying to escape gravity. A droplet or two touched the baseboard. Another smeared just past his jaw.

There’s a little plastic action figure toppled nearby — one of the rare ones from the 2013-era bundles. And a LEGO. And a scribbled notebook half-covered by a crumpled tissue. Like this room was lived in, right up until it wasn’t.

Noli doesn’t breathe.

He doesn’t move.

His mouth is open but no sound comes out. Just the shape of disbelief. His eyes are wide. Unblinking. He feels like his soul is trying to exit his body through the back of his spine.

No. No. No. Please.

His knees buckle.

He drops, too fast, palms catching against the carpet with a muted thud. His fingers brush the edge of the stain and he recoils instantly, gagging but not vomiting — too much shock for his body to follow through.

He crawls forward anyway.

His hands tremble. His jaw locks. His chest heaves like he’s drowning in air. One hand reaches, cautiously, helplessly — touches the back of 007n7’s hand.

Cold.

Not frozen.

But definitely, unmistakably: gone.

Noli swallows a broken sound. His forehead touches the edge of the bed, and his body shakes once, hard, like something inside him cracked and started leaking.

"What the fuck, dude," he whispers. The words fall out of him, shattered. “No— no, no, no, no. What the fuck is this—?”

He pulls back. Stares. His mouth opens again. He makes a sound that’s halfway between a sob and a breath.

“This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t—” His hands are in his hair now, tugging. Hard. His fingers claw at his scalp, trying to ground himself in pain. “You didn’t. You wouldn’t. You— you fucking idiot, why didn’t you— why didn’t you—”

There’s no answer.

Void Star speaks again, voice quieter than ever.

“…He did send you a message.”

“Shut up.”

“You were his failsafe.”

“I said shut up!”

He slams a fist into the side of the bedframe. It rattles. The action figure nearby wobbles, then falls over again, like even gravity doesn’t want to watch.

Noli curls forward.

His forehead rests against his knees. His arms wrap around his skull like he’s trying to hold it together. His whole body trembles.

Tears sting his eyes. They don’t fall. Not yet.

“I was gonna visit sooner,” he whispers. “I was gonna check in. I just… I was busy.”

He doesn’t believe it. Not anymore.

You weren’t busy, a thought whispers back. You were avoiding him.

He presses his face into his knees and finally, finally lets a noise out. It’s small. Cracked. Barely human. The kind of sound that only happens when a thread inside snaps quietly instead of loud.

. . .

The room doesn’t change.

007n7 doesn’t wake up.

There’s just dust, and the smell of old grief, and the quiet sound of someone realizing they were too late.

Too late to fix it. Too late to call. Too late to stop this from happening.

And somewhere in the back of Noli’s throat:

Guilt. Rotting. Permanent.

And below it, beneath the grief, beneath the horror — a terrible, hollow thing starts growing:

Anger.

Not at 007n7. Not yet.

But at himself.

Because he left.
Because he didn’t reply.
Because part of him expected this.

And because part of him knew it was coming — and still didn’t come sooner.

The room doesn’t move, but Noli sways like it does.

He’s still on his knees, blood drying under his hands. It smells like rust and dust and something sourer underneath. 007n7’s body doesn’t move. The shape of him is still, too still, like he was halfway through folding into sleep before the end slammed the door shut.

Noli’s lungs seize. His mouth opens again, but there’s no sound this time. Just breath, ragged, trembling. His jaw clenches so hard it feels like it might snap. Every muscle in his body’s drawn taut — he’s trembling now, violently, like a machine on the verge of a breakdown.

The room is heavy with childhood and death.

Toys are scattered. A sock lies twisted near the bed leg. The revolver — God, the revolver — rests inches from 007n7’s hand. The edge of the bed sheet is soaked dark where his head tipped sideways. The blood’s soaked into the rug, too. An ugly, spreading shape. Like something leaking from a cracked screen.

Noli stumbles backward, hand catching on the bookshelf, dragging half of it down with him. Manga volumes, game cases, a cracked pair of headphones — they crash to the floor in a rain of forgotten years.

He falls with them. Elbows hit carpet. He gasps in pain and horror and something else he can’t name.

“Void Star,” he breathes, voice wrecked. “What did you— what did you do to him?”

"You misunderstand causality," the voice hums from inside, cold and chemical. "He fractured on his own."

“Don’t—!” He shoves himself up, shoulders shaking. “Don’t pretend you didn’t pull every thread loose. You’ve been inside us since the beginning!”

"You welcomed me."

Noli snarls. "We didn’t know! We were just— kids. We didn’t know what we were letting in.”

The silence that follows is almost amused.

He staggers into the hallway, fist to his mouth, teeth gritted against a scream. Breath heaves through clenched teeth as he moves without direction — ends up in the living room again, stumbling like he’s being dragged.

That’s when he sees it.

On the floor by the bookshelf: a sketchbook. Torn halfway open. Paper yellowed at the edges, but the doodles inside are still visible — jagged pen lines, messy, half-finished.

Three figures. Crude. Familiar.

c00lkidd, stylized with stars in his hair and a cape. Noli, drawn with a half-mask and glitchy static. 007n7 in his usual hoodie, smiling with both hands raised in peace signs.

One of the pages is torn out.

Noli sinks to his knees in front of it like it’s sacred. His hand hovers over the paper but doesn’t touch it. His face twists — rage, sorrow, unbearable ache.

Then, without warning, he screams — not a word, not a sentence, just a raw, mangled sound dragged up from the pit of his chest. He seizes the sketchbook and hurls it across the room. It slams against the far wall. Pages scatter.

He spins — fists clenching — and slams one into the drywall. Again. Again. A third time — the knuckles split. Blood stains white. The wall dents.

“I didn’t mean to leave you!” he chokes out, voice strangled. “I didn’t mean to— I thought— I thought I was protecting you—!”

His knees give. He crashes down, back against the wall, breath coming in wild, ragged bursts. Hands in his hair now, fists knotted at his scalp.

“If c00l hadn’t vanished—if he hadn’t ghosted us—if he said something, anything—” His voice breaks mid-word. “We would've— I would’ve—”

“You would have what?” Void Star murmurs. “Saved him?”

Noli’s head snaps up. He’s trembling, jaw tight, lips curled in disgust.

“Yes. I could’ve done something! If I replied sooner, if I checked in, if I just looked him in the eyes and told him he mattered—!”

Silence answers. Not mocking, not cruel. Just the absence of anything at all.

He presses his forehead against his bruised knuckles, chest heaving.

“Why’d you do this to us…” he whispers. “Why’d you crawl inside me like a parasite— why’d you let this happen?”

He’s crying now. Finally. The sobs start sharp and brittle, but then they crash out of him like a storm breaking. His whole body caves in, folds around the ache. He’s not trying to hold it back anymore.

The grief eats him raw.

For 007n7.

For c00lkidd.

For the version of himself that could’ve stopped this.

Void Star pulses once in his spine — slow, cold, patient.

"The system is collapsing, Operator," it says. "There’s still time to become something else."

“Fuck off,” Noli gasps.

His voice is quieter now. But still firm. Still burning.

“Just— just shut up. Let me mourn.”

And for once, Void Star obeys.

The house is silent again, except for the jagged sound of Noli breaking apart.

It’s early evening.

Not golden hour, not quite. Just that soft, dim blue when the world turns quieter and the streetlights haven’t fully committed yet. The playground’s mostly empty — just chipped paint on the jungle gym, warped plastic slides that hold the sun’s heat too long, a swing that creaks even when no one’s in it.

c00lkidd is hanging upside-down from the monkey bars, hoodie bunched around his chest, hair spiked out like static. He’s humming something tuneless and kicking his legs like he might take off if he does it hard enough.

007n7 is sprawled across the spinning disc, one arm dangling off the side like a corpse. His phone’s in his other hand, face lit by a game he’s not really playing.

Noli’s on the top of the slide — not sliding. Just sitting, hoodie up, chin on knees. Watching. Not watching. Present in that distant way he always was.

The silence between them isn’t heavy. Just tired.

“Papa,” c00lkidd suddenly says, still upside-down. “Do you think, like… if someone eats enough McNuggets, they become one?”

007n7 snorts. “Physically? Or spiritually?”

c00lkidd gasps. “Both.”

“I think you’re two nuggets away from full ascension, honestly.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Jealous of what? Your cholesterol?”

c00lkidd lets out a strangled cackle, loses his grip, and thumps onto the mulch with a muffled oof. He lays there dramatically, arms spread like he’s been shot.

“Tell my story,” he tells.

007n7 doesn’t even look up. “You tripped over your own genius and died.”

“I tripped over society’s expectations.”

“You tripped over your own shoelace.”

A pause.

“Damn,” c00lkidd mutters from the ground. “You right!”

Noli exhales through his nose. A huff that almost counts as a laugh.

Coolkid notices and bolts upright, eyes wide.

“Heyyyy! He made a noise. He laughed.”

“No, I didn’t,” Noli mumbles, turning away slightly.

“You did. Holy spawn. We made the cryptid react.”

“He’s evolving,” 007n7 adds, glancing up with a smirk. “Next thing you know he’s gonna initiate conversation.”

c00lkidd scrambles up the side of the slide to sit beside Noli, huffing from the effort. He plops down gracelessly, leans way too close. “If I die tonight, tell the autopsy guy I died proud. I cracked the mystery of Noli’s vibe.”

Noli groans and tries to shove him off. “You’re insufferable.”

c00lkidd grins, unfazed. “But lovable.”

“You’re both idiots,” Noli mutters. But he doesn’t move away.

The sky dims a little more.

Bugs start to chirp in the distance. The swings squeak in the breeze. Somewhere, a dog barks.

There’s a quiet that settles in, but it’s warm. Not awkward. Just... still.

007n7 eventually gets up, walks over, and climbs up to perch on the slide’s other side. He doesn’t say anything, just sits. Shoulders brushing Noli’s.

c00lkidd leans back on his hands. “I hope I grow up!”

“I hope we never pay taxes,” 007n7 says.

“I hope,” c00lkidd says, dramatically, “I never lose you guys.”

No one replies for a second.

It hangs there — a little too real.

Noli’s eyes flick sideways. He says nothing. Just nods once. Barely.

But they all feel it.

That tiny unspoken agreement, sealed with silence:
Let this stay. Just a little longer.

The phone in his hand feels foreign, like some artifact dug out of another life. Too clean. Too intact.

He holds it like it might explode.

His knees are still planted on the carpet—he can’t remember standing, kneeling, breathing. He’s hunched now, shoulders curled in, body trembling so hard he can hear his bones clicking. Cold sweat sticks the fabric of his hoodie to his spine. The air tastes like dust and copper.

His voice is gone. Or hiding.

Void Star is silent.

The kind of silence that buzzes. Watches. Waits.

Noli looks over at the bed—at the body. At 007n7, slumped on the floor like a puppet with its strings severed. The blood’s dried now. Flaked into the fibers of the carpet. The revolver’s still there. His friend’s face is too still. His sock’s half-off. There’s a little plastic dinosaur on the floor.

His throat clamps.

He dials.

911.

Ring.

One. Two.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

His mouth opens. No sound.

He forces it. “He’s— he’s not breathing. He’s cold. He’s—he’s gone. Please— please just come.”

His voice cracks like splintered glass.

The operator is calm, but far away. Underwater. “Sir, stay with me. We’ve traced your location. An ambulance is en route. Is he with you now?”

He nods. Whispers: “Yeah. I’m… I’m in his room. I—I didn’t know— I didn’t think—”

The sob rises before he can stop it. Folds him in half. He clenches the phone so hard his knuckles go white, bloodless. The other hand digs into his hoodie, clutching his ribs like he could crush his own heart and make this stop.

“I didn’t mean to leave him,” he whispers. “I didn’t know he was—”

His breath won’t stay in. Every inhale is a blade.

“I should’ve— God— I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here.”

He’s not even sure who he’s talking to anymore. The dispatcher. Himself. Void Star. The thing that haunts his spine and sleeps behind his eyes.

He doesn’t hear when the dispatcher says help is close. He doesn't hear much of anything.

Because another thought crawls up out of the dark.

He still has to call 007n7’s relatives.

That thought knocks all the air out of him. He stares down at the screen again, tears dripping silently off his chin and onto the glowing glass.

Noli lets out a breath that’s more whimper than air. Shaky. Fragile. The moment before something breaks.

The screen blurs. He wipes his face with the back of his hand. Blinks hard.

The sirens are getting closer now—he hears them wailing down the empty streets, getting louder, brighter.

But he doesn't move. Doesn’t get up. Doesn't go downstairs.

He swallows, voice already broken before the first word comes. Just a whisper. Just for him.

“I’m sorry.”

Tears sliding down his face, pooling at his collar.

The sirens are just outside now. The air outside the bedroom window flashes red-blue-red-blue.

Noli doesn’t move.

The floor creaks as paramedics approach the front door, but he stays curled in on himself, phone still pressed to his ear, the dial tone from the last call still echoing in the dark part of his mind.

He scrolls again. Hands shaking worse than before. Fingers too cold, too stiff. He types slow, deliberate.

Contact: 007a7 (COUSIN 🔫🦆)
The dumb emoji still there. The same one 007n7 picked when they were all messing around, renaming each other’s phones after a Skype call.

His chest caves in just a little more.

He presses call.

It rings.

And rings.

Then:
“Yo, what—”
A pause.
“...Noli? What the fuck??”

The voice on the other end is sharp. Surprised. Still holding the weight of sleep or distraction or a normal day that hasn’t shattered yet.
“Why’re you calling me—? Wait. Wait. Why do you sound like that?”

Noli swallows hard. His mouth is dry.

His voice comes out cracked, wrecked.
“Get me 007e7.”

Another beat of silence.
“Noli— what the hell’s going on?”

His next words scrape up from somewhere deep.

“He’s down.”

His voice almost breaks on that.

“I messed up.”

Breath shaking.

“Please come.”

There’s silence on the other end. Not because they didn’t hear. But because they did.

“…What do you mean down?” 007a7’s voice is brittle now. Thinner. “You— what are you saying?”

“I didn’t know,” Noli says, hoarse. “I didn’t come back in time.”
A swallow.
“I think he… he did it. I think he really did it.”

A stifled curse from the other end of the line. Static. Motion. Maybe a chair scraping, maybe a breath catching in a throat.

“Where are you? Is he—”
A pause.
“Is he—”

Noli closes his eyes. “Yeah.”

Another silence. Longer this time. The sound of wind in the receiver. Breath.

“I’ll get him. I’ll— we’ll be there. Just—” 007a7’s voice falters. “Just stay with him, okay?”

“I am,” Noli whispers. “I’m not leaving again.”

The call ends.

He lowers the phone. Lets it fall from his hand. It lands softly in the carpet.

Outside, the front door opens.
Heavy boots step in. Voices murmur.

But upstairs, in the stillness of that room — Noli stays kneeling beside the body of his best friend. His hands in his lap. His breath shallow.

His head tilted just enough to see the sock still half-on. The toy dinosaur beside the bed. The faint stain on the bedsheet that the paramedics will soon notice too.

He blinks slowly. One tear follows another. No noise. Just the kind that falls because it has nowhere else to go.

He waits.

They’re coming.

He wishes they didn’t have to.

The front door opens.

And Noli steps out.

The porch light flickers wildly above him. The night is loud — with sirens, camera shutters, questions that buzz like insects. The old quiet street is gone, eaten alive by flashing blues and reds, floodlights, murmurs from the press, the static breath of radios.

They’ve come in swarms.

Reporters lean past the barricade. Cameras already pointed. Police in black vests comb the sidewalk. Medics rush the stretcher up the path — but no one stops looking at him.

The door behind him creaks closed. He doesn’t glance back.

He walks forward slowly. Each step measured. Controlled. Like something barely contained. His hoodie’s stained near the cuffs — blood or dust or grief, it doesn’t matter now. Void Star pulses low under his skin like a migraine blooming. There’s light in his eyes, but it’s the wrong kind. Pale, flickering.

Someone shouts.
“That’s him!”
A journalist rushes the yellow tape.
“You were his friend, right? Did you know he was suicidal?”
Another voice, sharper:
“You had a falling out — was there violence? Also— Are you planning another attack?!”

More movement. Police approach from the side. One lifts his hand — a quiet signal.

Two others close in. Hands hovering near cuffs.

“Sir,” one of them says, firm but clipped, “we need you to come with us. For questioning.”

Noli doesn’t move.

The words slide right past him.

He stares at the officer’s chest. Then at the cuffs.

He exhales — slow, trembling, like something inside him just snapped quietly.

Then, flatly, eyes voided out:
“Move.”

The cop stiffens.
“Sir—”

Noli’s head lifts.
His voice is dead, soft.
“Or I will use the Void Star.”

Silence.

And then: the air shifts.

Not with sound. But with pressure.
The light on the street bends.

Like a heatwave crossing into something colder, darker — the kind of cold that doesn’t numb, but splits. Streetlamps flicker out one by one, as if afraid. The radios fuzz into white static. The shadows stretch in the wrong direction.

The breath of the Void pulses outward from him in a wave that only half-exists in this plane.

The journalists fall back.
The police freeze.

The officer’s hand drops from his belt. Slowly. Deliberately.
No one says a word.

Noli stands in the center of it all. Alone. Static behind his eyes. Blood behind his tongue. His heart still not beating right.

The wind passes over the block.

The Void Star whispers like silk down the back of his skull:
"They're afraid of you now. Good."

But Noli doesn’t reply.

He just walks forward.

Right through them.

Like light through fog.

The crowd parts like a wound.

Not because they want to.
Because they have to.

Light bends harder now. Streetlamps flicker like faulty memories. Camera lenses glaze over with static. One reporter’s mic warps in his hand, rubbery and glitching, cables coiling like nerves. The concrete sweats with digital noise — faint, flickering motes that dance like fireflies and decay like rot.

Void Star is unfurling.
Not fully. Not yet. But enough to tilt reality just a little sideways.

And still, Noli walks.

No hesitation in his steps. Just silence. The eye of the storm, wrapped in hoodie and ash and dried blood and the kind of grief that doesn’t scream anymore. Just exists. Heavy. Constant.

He doesn't look at anyone. Doesn’t acknowledge the police radios hissing emergency codes in scrambled binary. Doesn’t flinch at the distant scream of a shut-down drone crashing into a lamppost. The world is folding around him like a badly-rendered simulation, and yet—he just keeps walking.

Someone whispers behind the barricade:

“...That’s not a Robloxian anymore.”

Another voice, shaking:

“Is that the—? Is he the Void Star now?”

He doesn’t hear them. Or maybe he does, and it simply doesn’t matter.

The ambulance doors are open.

Inside, the medics are frozen, mid-motion, like NPCs glitched into idle animations. One’s holding a defibrillator he never got to use. The other has gloves on but his eyes are wet, stunned wide, staring at the body on the stretcher.

007n7.

Covered now, mostly. But Noli can still see the edge of his hair. One shoe on. The other half-kicked off in death.

Noli steps into the ambulance without permission. Without resistance.

Void Star doesn’t surge.
It contracts — like it's holding its breath for him. Waiting.

He kneels.

Carefully. Mechanically. Like if he moves wrong, he might break something already broken. His hand shakes as it lifts.

Then it finds 007n7’s.

Cold.

Not just dead-cold. Empty-cold. Like the warmth was scraped out from underneath the skin, replaced with something hollow. Not even the Void touches that space.

Noli holds it anyway.

His fingers curl around it slowly, as if trying to return some warmth, even now. His head drops. Hair falls over his face. His breathing falters.

“... You weren’t supposed to go first,” he whispers.

And that’s it. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t scream. Not here.

The air hums.

The medics are still frozen — but not by fear. By awe. The younger one lowers his eyes. Not out of respect. But something older. Older than protocol. Older than anything the city was built to handle.

Someone calls over the radio:

“We need backup. Threat protocol has failed. Repeat. Protocol has—”

Static.

Void Star flickers along the edges of Noli’s spine — pixelation and shadow, unraveling light. But it does not consume him.

Not yet.

He stays there. Kneeling. Holding the hand of his dead friend, as the city bends around him.

And the world remembers what kind of story this is becoming.

. . .

The ambulance lights stain the street in bruised reds and sterile whites, flickering off the windowpanes and pooling across the wet asphalt. Noli stands beside the open doors, the body inside wrapped tight, respectful, quiet. A form shaped like a boy — like his friend — zipped into a bag with sterile gloves and whispers, and still too much blood dried beneath the collar.

He doesn’t look at their faces. Not yet. He looks at the hand he’s holding.

Cold, like plastic. Fingers stiff.

“Hey,” Noli murmurs, voice cracked down the center. “They’re here.”

He hears the car doors before he hears the footsteps — the sharp slam of tires jerking to a stop, the confused scramble of boots against pavement. Someone says “Where is he?” and someone else answers with nothing but silence.

Then they see.

Three of them. Shadows first, then shapes pulled into the light.

007a7 in front. 007e7 not far behind. 007d7 last, hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

For a moment, it’s like time stutters. Their faces shift slowly — not shock at the body, not yet. Not recognition.

Then it clicks.

Then they know.

007d7 drops to her knees beside the stretcher with a noise that isn’t quite human. “No— no, no, no,” she chokes, reaching out like she can undo the timeline by touching his sleeve. “Please. Please tell me that’s not— no—”

007e7 moves stiffly, like every limb is numb. He grips the metal side of the stretcher like it might break off under his palm. His jaw clenches. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers, and there’s a breath after, shallow, then a growl of fury he swallows halfway.

007a7 just stands there. Not crying. Not yet. His mouth parts. He can’t speak.

007e7 is rocking forward and back, fingers curled into the edge of the bag. “He was supposed to be fine,” she’s muttering. “He was fine. He was supposed to be fine, he—”

Noli doesn’t let go of 007n7’s hand. Not until the others start to look at him.

A turns first.

Eyes glassy, voice rough. “When did you find him?”

“Not long ago.”

007d7's gaze snaps toward Noli like a blade.

“Where were you?” she demands, voice sharp and unsteady. “Where the fuck were you?”

“Dee, I came back,” Noli says, barely louder than a breath.

“Too late,” 007a7 bites out. He’s trembling. “You think that means anything now?”

“I didn’t know. A, I didn’t—” Noli takes a shaky step back, but there’s nowhere to run. The street feels too narrow. The night presses down on him.

“You always made it about you,” Ee says flatly. “Even now.”

Noli’s lips part. His throat is tight. “I didn’t mean—”

“You think he didn’t wait for you?” Dee’s voice cracks, ugly and wet. “You think he didn’t still talk about you?”

Noli sways. The weight of everything he didn’t say crushes his ribs. “I didn’t mean to leave,” he whispers.

That's a lie. Everyone knows.

“But you did,” 007a7 says, and now his voice shakes. “You left. We had to pick up the pieces. And when he needed someone again, no one came.”

Silence. Even the sirens fade for a moment.

Void Star pulses faintly at Noli’s spine. Hungry. Hot. But quiet.

“I didn’t mean to lose him,” Noli says. It’s a plea. Or a confession.

Dee wipes her face, but it doesn’t help. “We all lost him,” she says, standing. “Difference is, you were part of the reason.”

A turns away, hand over his mouth.

E watches Noli a moment longer — then mutters, “You don’t get to play the grieving friend just because you showed up to the funeral early.”

Then he walks past, toward the others.

And Noli just stands there, the chill from 007n7’s hand still clinging to his palm like frostbite.

Alone again.

Even surrounded.

The night air snaps with electricity as cameras flare in sudden bursts—bright white blasts cutting through the darkness like gunfire. Reporters’ voices rise, sharp and frantic, a chaotic chorus chasing him down the street.

“Are you planning another attack?!”

“What happened to 007n7?!”

“Why won’t you talk to us?!”

The crowd swells, pressing closer, a tidal wave of desperate eyes and shouted accusations. But beneath it all, a low hum vibrates through the ground, a pulse that thrums inside Noli’s chest—a poison heartbeat in his veins.

Void Star stirs.

A ripple warps the streetlights. The air thickens, bending around Noli like a living thing. The noise fractures, breaking into static, whispers caught in a loop of distortion.

Noli stands rigid, spine straight, his hoodie shadowing his face but his voice cutting through the chaos, cold and unyielding.

“Stand down.”

The command carries a weight beyond words, a force that shivers down spines. The crowd stumbles, breath caught in throats, bodies jerking back involuntarily. Some fall to their knees, clutching ears, eyes wide with panic.

The world around Noli flexes and warps—light stretches unnaturally, colors bleeding into one another like spilled ink. The sirens twist into warped wails, echoing from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Reporters’ cameras freeze mid-flash, the bright bulbs sputtering and cracking.

A tense silence stretches, thick and electric.

Void Star’s presence coils tightly at Noli’s back, a cold fire burning beneath his skin—part protector, part predator.

The crowd parts, scattering like frightened birds, leaving a clear path. Noli steps forward, unshaken.

His gaze scans the fractured faces before him, voice low but fierce: “Move. Or I will use the Void Star.”

The threat hangs heavy, electric and lethal.

No one moves.

The rain tapped a mournful rhythm against the grimy windowpane, each drop a tiny hammer against the glass.

Outside, the world was a blur of gray and water, the streetlights casting halos in the downpour. Inside, the apartment felt smaller than ever — cramped, cold, and heavy with silence.

Noli sat on the cracked linoleum floor, knees drawn up, hoodie soaked from the rain that had seeped in through the broken window seal.

His fingers trembled as he clutched his phone, the screen dim and mocking in the dark room. The glow was the only light, pale and flickering like a fragile heartbeat.

His breath hitched.

For minutes, maybe hours, he just stared. The cursor blinked patiently in the DM box — a cruel reminder of every moment he’d wasted.

Finally, he typed.

“i miss you too.”

His thumb hovered over the send button like it was a detonator.

Void Star murmured, silky and cold beneath his skin: “It’s too late. You know it.”

Noli’s hand shook violently, but he pressed send anyway.

The message slipped into the void.

No reply.

Just static.

Just the relentless patter of rain, drowning out his ragged breaths.

His chest felt like it was collapsing inward, like the air itself was thick and poisoned. He swallowed hard, the bitter taste of regret rising like bile.

“Please say something,” he whispered hoarsely, voice cracking like old wood. “Please... just say something.”

His head dropped forward, forehead resting against his knees. His shoulders shook, small, broken sobs rattling out into the quiet room. The weight of everything pressed down — grief, guilt, anger, loneliness — crushing him like a vice.

Void Star’s voice was closer now, invading his mind, a sinister whisper curling around his thoughts.

“You failed him. You always fail.”

Noli’s eyes snapped open, filled with tears that burned but would not fall. His hands clenched into fists, nails digging into his palms as if punishing himself for every lost second, every silence, every step he never took.

“No,” he growled through clenched teeth, voice raw. “I didn’t fail. I didn’t leave him behind. Not like that.”

But even as he said it, the lie felt thin, fragile.

His gaze flicked to the empty phone screen again, the cold glow like a silent accusation.

“Why didn’t you answer?” he whispered, voice cracking. “Why did you leave me alone with this?”

The room seemed to close in tighter, the rain outside growing louder, a relentless storm beating down on a broken soul.

Void Star’s presence pulsed beneath his skin, dark and hungry.

“You’re unraveling. You can’t hold on.”

Noli shook his head violently, tears spilling free now, tracing tracks down his pale cheeks.

“No,” he sobbed. “Not yet. Not today.”

He pressed the phone to his chest, heartbeat pounding against the cold glass, as if somehow the message — the desperate, trembling message — could bridge the silence. Could bring him back.

But the screen stayed dark.

Only the rain answered.

The room was dim, bathed in the cold, sterile glow of a flickering monitor.

Shadows curled like smoke in the corners, heavy and still.

On the cracked wooden desk lay a photograph, its edges worn, the colors faded but stubbornly clinging to life. A snapshot frozen in time: three faces, grinning wide, arms thrown around one another — a moment of warmth before everything fractured.

The caption, scribbled beneath in messy block letters, read:

“ HAPPY FAMILY #1.”

Noli’s fingers hovered above the photo, trembling. He didn’t reach out. Instead, his eyes locked on the smiling faces — the boy he once knew, the friend he thought he’d never lose.

Void Star floated nearby, dim and pulsing, its presence a soft electric hum beneath Noli’s skin. Its light was cold and blue, like a ghostly heartbeat fading with time.

“Fragile memories,” it whispered, voice low, almost mournful.

His eyes shimmered with unshed tears, reflecting the ghostly light. For a heartbeat, the weight of everything — loss, regret, fractured trust — pressed down like winter’s chill.

Then the photo slipped slightly, its edges curling like the last leaves of autumn, fragile and fleeting.

In that quiet, frozen moment, the echo of who they were — before the fall, before the fractures — hung between them like a fading star.

Noli’s breath caught, voice barely a whisper as it cracked the silence.

“I miss when we were still human.”

Chapter Text

It’s been a week since they took 007n7 away.

The apartment hasn’t changed. The dishes still haven’t been done. The light in the hallway still flickers like it’s trying to mimic a heartbeat. Rain beads against the windows in thin silver lines, half-hiding the skyline.

Outside, the city breathes faintly—slow, distant, almost imaginary.

Inside, Noli moves like a ghost.

He doesn’t think about the time. He doesn’t think about anything. His hands act on ritual: gather clothes, sort whites, throw everything in anyway. He doesn’t care.

The washing machine door clicks shut. The hum begins.

He stands there.

Rain hisses against the glass. The ceiling light buzzes. Void Star flickers, dim and motionless, near the corner of the room like an inert star.

His body feels like it’s made of wet cloth. Damp. Heavy. Barely human.

He rubs his face with the back of his wrist. Dry skin. Trembling breath.

He turns away from the washer.

T H U D .

Something hits the floor behind him. He flinches, freezes. Blinks. Looks down.

A folded piece of paper. Crinkled. Dark-stained edges.

It must’ve been in the hoodie pocket. The black one. The one he wore to the house.

His pulse flutters.

He kneels, slowly. Picks it up. That wax again—faint trace of red where it sealed the crease. Cold even now. It smells faintly like the plant. Like the dust of that house.

His hand shakes. He exhales. His eyes sting.

“I’m tired,” he whispers. To no one. Maybe to 007n7.

He unfolds it with careful fingers.

Crude block letters. Scrawled, frantic. Encoded.

He knows the cipher. ROT13. A joke between them, back then. Safety through obscurity.

He deciphers it slowly. Breath catching with every letter.

THE SPECTRE SEEKS.

He stares.

Nothing happens.

Then everything does.

Void Star pulses.

The air folds around him. Not violently. Just… wrong. The walls breathe. The corners of the room stretch like rubber. The ceiling pulls upward, then snaps back. The hum of the washer distorts—higher pitched, then deep like a growl.

Noli stumbles backward. Hand to the wall.

A sting blooms inside his sinuses. He sniffles once, confused—then sees the smear of blood on his hand.

His nose is bleeding.

A drip. Another. Warm lines down to his lip. Metallic sting in his throat.

“What the hell—?” he breathes.

He wipes it with his sleeve, startled. Then again. Blood.

“Void Star—”

It lifts. Its body splits in fractals, then reforms.

The voice doesn’t come from it. It comes from the window, from the floor, from the drain in the kitchen sink. It doesn’t sound like Void Star. It sounds like dozens of Void Stars—echoed, reversed, overlaid. Like a recording played backward on rotten tape.

“W-what did I—”

"THE SPECTRE—" the voice hisses from nowhere.

“Stop! Stop— please—” he gasps, pressing palms to his head.

The note burns hot in his hand. He drops it. It curls slightly, like it’s exhaling.

Void Star buzzes with static. It flickers. A deep vibration throbs through the room.

“You— you told me not to open the upstairs,” Noli says. He’s shaking. His knees give out. “You said I wasn’t ready.”

“You weren’t.”

“And now, he’s dead— and it’s my fault?”

No answer. Just a long, low vibration through the walls.

“I should’ve replied sooner,” he mutters, biting his lip until it breaks. “Maybe he wouldn’t have— fuck!—”

His fists slam the floor. “Maybe if I didn’t shut down. Maybe if I wasn’t such a fucking coward—”

Void Star hums, low. Pity? Or warning?

“I keep dreaming of him,” Noli says. Voice cracking. “His voice in the DMs. That stupid drawing. I wake up crying and I don’t even remember what for anymore.”

“I miss him. I miss him so much it’s eating me.”

. . .

“Why did you let this happen?” he screams.

The windows flash white. The walls flex. Air pressure drops. Lights pop with a zzzt.

He collapses onto his side. His breath is ragged. Sweat pools in his collar. The floor spins. Void Star tilts slightly in the air.

A whisper, soft but clear:

"You broke the barrier."

“I didn’t mean to,” he gasps.

“You looked. You knew.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know anything.”

Silence. Long. Droning.

Then he feels it.

Eyes.

He turns, slowly. Vision doubled. Pain blooming behind his eyes.

In the far corner—where Void Star used to hang—something stands.

Tall.

Too tall.

Motionless.

Humanoid.

But not human.

A stretched silhouette. Black like void. A flicker of movement in the mask.

He blinks. The lights flicker. The walls crackle like old paper.

Gone.

He doesn’t scream. He just lies there.

Blood at his lips. Rain still tapping on the other side of that blackened window.

Void Star hums low.

“I miss him,” he says again, to nothing.

“Please— please just let me undo it.”

And somewhere, something has crossed over.

It had been days since 007e7 last saw Noli in person.

Not since the morning after they zipped 007n7 into the black bag. Not since Noli stood in the middle of the street like he didn’t know what direction meant anymore.

Since then?

Radio silence.

He sat hunched at the edge of his desk, phone propped upright against a chipped mug. Bright blue chat bubbles bled down the screen like bruises on glass.

[Friday]

007e7: you okay?

007e7: hey! i know im being annoying but can you AT LEAST tell me you’re alive

007e7: we need to figure out the funeral stuff. you’re the only one of his friends that wasn’t related to him. you have to be there.

007e7: Noli.

. . .

[Saturday]

007e7: seriously. don’t ghost us. NOT NOW.

007e7: Missed Call – 2:18 AM

007e7: Missed Call – 10:41 AM

007e7: Missed Call – 6:03 PM

. . .

[Sunday]

007e7: okay wth man?

And then finally, sometime past 8 PM—

Noli: ok.

That was it.

No explanation. No emoji. No Hey sorry. Just two gray letters that could’ve been auto-complete and a dot.

He stared at the message for a long time. The longer he looked, the less it felt like it came from him.

His thumb hovered.

And then he called him. Again.

One ring. Two. Three.

Click.

Static. Then: “Yeah.”

He blinked. His stomach sank. The voice on the other end was barely Noli. Hollow. Scraped thin. Like sandpaper where there used to be skin.

"Noli?"

"Mm."

"You— are you okay?"

"I’m busy."

Silence.

"You’re busy?"

"Yeah."

His mouth opened. Closed. A beat passed.

"You’ve been ignoring everyone for days. Not even a fucking text. You can’t just vanish."

"I didn’t vanish."

"Then what do you call this?"

"Silence."

He froze. "Dude. This isn’t a performance. 007n7 is—he’s gone. Your best friend! We’re literally trying to put together a funeral, and you’re off… what? Pretending you’re in some tragic film scene?"

Another pause. It hissed.

"Look— I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this isn’t how he’d want you to handle it."

Silence.

"You’re the only friend he still had," he said. Voice cracking, rising. "The only non-relative who still talked to him. You were supposed to be there. You have to be there."

"Yeah."

"‘Yeah’?! Are you fucking kidding me?"

No response.

"I swear to God, if you don’t show up, it’s gonna kill them, man. His niece can barely talk. His uncle’s a mess. We’re all trying to figure out what the fuck we’re supposed to do, and you’re playing the fucking silent protagonist?"

Still nothing.

"You said you'd be there. When we were all kids, you promised we’d never disappear like this. You and him were—"

Click.

The call ended.

007e7 froze.

It took him a second to realize he was shaking.

He lowered the phone slowly, eyes wide, knuckles pale where he gripped it. The faint electric hum of his computer monitor was suddenly deafening.

He sat in that silence for what felt like hours before joining the group call.

“77 Fam” lit up.

007a7’s icon flickered as he joined. 007d7 connected just after, her cam off, mic muted.

"Yo," 007a7 said, brushing hair from his face. "E? You okay?"

He didn’t answer right away.

Then: "He picked up."

007a7 leaned forward. "Noli?"

"Yeah."

"Damn. Finally."

"Yeah, and I wish he hadn’t," he snapped.

007d7 unmuted. "What happened?"

"He sounded like he was sleepwalking. Or drugged. Or like—" His fingers tapped furiously on the desk. "Like something was wearing him. He said, 'I’m busy.' No apology. No warmth. Like it wasn’t even him."

007a7 frowned. 007d7 said nothing.

"And I told him— about the funeral, about how he’s the only one left. 007n7 trusted him. We all thought at least he’d show up. And he just fucking hung up on me."

007d7 sighed. "He's grieving."

"So are we!" 007e7 snapped. "And none of us are acting like fucking ghosts."

"E—"

"No, seriously. I get it. I get what grief does. But this—this isn’t grief. This is like— like he’s gone. Like something else is piloting him."

Silence.

007a7 shifted in his chair. 007d7 muted again.

007e7 slumped forward, hands buried in his hair.

"I don’t know," he mumbled. "Maybe I’m being paranoid. But I swear to god, something about the way he spoke— my skin went cold. It wasn’t just what he said, it was how. Like… the warmth got drained out."

"You think he’s in danger?" 007a7 asked, cautious.

"I think he’s not himself," 007e7 replied, voice low.

And they sat with that.

Muted mics. Blank icons.

The quiet on the call was too loud.

But in his mind, the word looped again:

“I’m busy.”

Except now, it echoed.

Wrong voice.

Wrong cadence.

Like a mask, cracking.

The rain hasn’t stopped all morning.

It needles down in endless gray veils, soaking coats, flattening hair, turning the grass to mud. Umbrellas bloom across the cemetery like black mushrooms. The air smells like wet earth and wilted lilies. A low mist coils between the headstones, reluctant to rise. The sky is an unbroken sheet of iron.

007n7’s casket rests on its stand, polished wood slick with droplets. Around it: merely few relatives. Some weep silently. Some stare blankly at the ground. A few murmur condolences to each other in low, awkward tones.

A fresh tomb lies just beside the grave — unfilled, temporary. A simple marker, wood and plastic. No body inside. Just a name:

c00lkidd
Awaiting Recovery

007e7 stands near the casket. No umbrella. Just rain soaking into his jacket, sticking it to his shoulders. His hair drips over his eyes. His mouth is tight. Jaw clenched. Hands jammed into his pockets like if he took them out he’d start swinging.

He checks his phone again. Still nothing.

Last night.

Noli [8:42 PM]: ok.

That’s it. That’s all he said.

“Bullshit,” 007e7 mutters under his breath.

A relative—an older woman, maybe an aunt—leans toward 007e7. “He didn’t come?”

He doesn’t look at her. “He said he couldn’t.”

She frowns. “After everything? That boy practically lived in our house. And now—he just doesn’t show?”

He says nothing. Just looks away.

The priest clears his throat. His voice starts flat and quiet, muffled by rain and grief. “We are gathered here today…”

Beside him, 007a7’s arms are folded tight across his chest. His face is locked in an unreadable scowl. 007d7 clutches a dark umbrella with one hand, the other trembling against her skirt. Her eyes are swollen. She doesn't speak.

“I can’t believe this,” 007e7 mutters.

Neither of them answers.

And then—

Footsteps.

Slow. Steady. Off-beat against the wet earth.

A man steps out from the far side of the hill. Tall. Dressed in an immaculate black coat. Black slacks. Glossed shoes. A long black umbrella arches over his head—he’s dry. Bone dry. His top hat gleams. His mask is smooth, white, featureless. Like porcelain. No mouth. No eyes. No rain touches him.

The ceremony slows. Whispers ripple. Heads turn.

He approaches the casket with mechanical grace. Movements too fluid, too exact. In one gloved hand, he holds out a small black box. The other grips the umbrella like a staff, unmoving.

He speaks.

“I come in his place. The Operator sends his love.”

His voice is calm, melodic. Off. Like it’s been tuned to a wrong frequency. It echoes softly despite the rain.

007e7 steps forward. “What?”

The man does not kneel. He just stands still. The box is held out between them, like an offering from another world.

Inside:

– A bouquet of dark, glassy flowers that don’t wilt.

– A folded paper bird, woven from synthetic paper.

– A cracked domino.

– A red wax seal. Unmarked. Fresh.

The priest says nothing.

The man’s lapel bears a tiny black emblem. Void Star.

007e7’s voice breaks through the stunned silence. Harsh. Raw.

“With all due respect… fucking leave.”

The man does not move.

007e7 keeps going, voice rising. “It’s his best friend’s funeral. N7's only fucking friend. And he can’t be bothered to come? So he sends—what—the fuck is this? A stand-in? A cosplay?”

“E,” 007a7 warns softly. “Let it go.”

“No. No. What the hell? This isn’t respect. This is creepy. This is fucking insane.”

He steps toward the man. Water sprays from his shoes. His fists are clenched.

“What even are you? Some cult freak? Noli doesn’t get to do this. Not today. Not like this.”

“I come in his place,” the man repeats. Same tone. Same delivery.

“You don’t get to,” 007e7 snaps. “Tell him that. You don’t get to stand here in some Halloween-ass outfit and pretend it’s fine. We buried 007n7, and he—he just—”

He falters. His breath catches. He swipes at his face—rain, or something else.

007d7 steps beside him. Puts a hand gently on his sleeve. “E…”

“I’m done,” 007e7 mutters. “I’m done.”

He turns.

He takes one step—

—and the man moves.

Too fast.

An arm darts out. Not aggressive. Not violent. But precise. A gloved hand clasps 007e7’s wrist.

007e7 freezes. His breath hitches.

He turns back slowly.

The man’s mask is inches from his face. There’s no eye contact. There can’t be. But it feels like he’s being seen. Down to his bones.

The man tilts his head.

“Accept this,” he says. Still calm. But quieter now. Intentional.

A strange heat runs up 007e7’s arm. His knees go weak.

“E—” 007d7 says again, louder. Her voice is shaking.

He rips his arm back. The man releases him easily. The umbrella doesn’t sway.

Then—

Drip.

A drop of red.

He touches under his nose. His fingers come away slick.

“E? Are you okay?” 007d7 asks, watching him.

“Yeah— I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

007a7 frowns. “I’ve never seen you get a nosebleed. You don’t even tell me you get those.”

007e7 breathes out, slow.

“Yeah... I... don’t. This is, odd.”

He wipes again. Still bleeding. But he says nothing more.

The man is still there. Still unmoving. Still offering.

007d7 stares at him, wide-eyed. Then glances down at the box.

The bouquet inside shimmers subtly, color shifting like oil on water. There’s something wrong about the seal. The paper bird glows faintly like it’s breathing.

She steps forward. Very slowly.

“D7, you don’t have to—” 007a7 starts.

But she’s already reached out. Fingers trembling. Eyes locked on the mask.

She takes the box.

It’s warm. And so much lighter than it should be.

The moment she lifts it, the man drops his arm and turns away.

No word. No goodbye.

He walks through the cemetery with that same impossible elegance, the umbrella hovering like a crown of void. His coat does not soak. His shoes do not print.

He reaches the hill’s crest.

And stops.

He turns.

The mask is gone.

In its place: static. Crawling static.

A human face made of scrambled signal and noise. Eyes like recording LEDs, glitching wildly. A mouth like buffering errors.

007e7 stares.

Rain slides past his face unnoticed.

Another drop of blood leaks down his chin.

Then— the man is gone.

Just gone.

No trace.

The priest stutters through the final scripture. The casket lowers. The dirt waits.

And beside it, a second grave stays open.

For a child who may never come home.

007e7 wipes his nose again. Stares at the empty hilltop.

“That wasn’t a person,” he whispers.

No one hears him.

But somewhere far away, something does.