The elevator’s voice chimed as soon as the doors closed.

  Now leaving Floor 46

  Now entering assigned apartment

  There was a ding as the doors opened. All of our shoulders dropped with relief. We were now in the safest part of the Tower. At least for now. Frankly, I was surprised we’d held onto this place for so long. I always expected the Tower to take it away from us when we least expected. It was a small mercy that we still had it, and one we didn’t take enough advantage of.

  It had been a while since we’d been back, and so as soon as the doors opened, we collectively rushed out into the apartment.

  Damian got out first and strode over to our sentient washing machine. “Are my other clothes ready?”

  A rough pixelated face appeared on the machine’s screen and narrowed her eyes at him. “I remember when your face used to light up at the prospect of using me,” she sniffed, feigning sadness. “Now I’m just a washing machine to you.”

  “You are a washing machine.”

  “Yeah, but I have feelings.”

  Damian then noticed that his clothes had already been cleaned and neatly folded into a pile beside the machine. He snatched them up and made a beeline for the shower without saying another word.

  Misty sighed. “What has become of us?” The digital eyes on her screen then shifted to me. “And I suppose you want my services too?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Just needed a place to store my pumpkin.” I set it down on top of her and then threw myself on the couch.

  “Rude. Rude and unwarranted. Next time you want my help, you best believe I’m leaving out the fabric softener! So don’t come crying to me when you’re sick of running around in wrinkled, flat clothes!”

  I ignored her and closed my eyes. I felt I was overdue for a nap until Hugo’s tiny body landed on my chest with other ideas. He gently tapped me with his beak. “Come on. I want to see what you got for completing the quest. Take me with you.”

  I yawned. “I thought you said that place was creepy looking?”

  “It is, but I still want to see.”

  “Fine.” I grabbed hold of him and we sank into my Domain. A replica of the couch I’d been lying on was formed out of blood for us to land on. A blood couch, if you will. It was surprisingly comfortable, but I couldn’t relax. Things had been changed within my domain.

  The darkness above us had now become a night sky littered with small stars.

  “Huh, looks prettier than last time,” Hugo said.

  The stars were concerning, but there was an even more pressing issue. A large black sphere floated just a few feet above the ground.

  “Is that…?” he trailed off, but we were thinking the same thing.

  Is that a goddamn portal to wherever those things came from? How is that supposed to be a reward?

  I ran a hand through my hair and tried not to panic. “Okay, let’s think about this. The Officiator sent the reward here so that others wouldn’t see me get it. There also hasn’t been any System messages about it either, which I still don’t understand.”

  “Maybe this stuff comes from a place that was around before the System was invented?”

  “Maybe,” I replied, frowning.

  “You know there’s someone we could ask about this.”

  “I know.”

  “Someone with prior experience with void creatures and who’s not on good terms with the new Tower owner after the Officiator was kicked out.”

  I threw up my hands. “Fine! I’m calling him.”

  I accessed the menu option ostentatiously labelled god chat and sent a message to Roan explaining what had happened.

  “He probably won’t even pick up,” I murmured.

  Roan: Stay there. Do not move. Touch nothing.

  “Well, that’s concerning,” said Hugo.

  The problem was that whatever this thing was, it was stuck in my domain, and nobody had been able to access it from the outside. I didn’t know if it was even possible to invite someone in here once I was inside. Getting Roan into my domain could be a problem if we weren’t going to leave first.

  “So what do we got?” Roan asked, suddenly standing beside me.

  Never mind then, I thought to myself.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” I said.

  Roan moved around the black sphere slowly while squinting at it. Hugo and I patiently waited until five minutes had gone by before he said, “yeah, I have no idea what this thing is.”

  “What?”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I mean, it’s obviously something from the void, but beyond that, I couldn’t say. It’s strange that it's sustaining itself in here though. How are you feeling about that in your domain?”

  Truthfully, I hadn’t felt it at all. I could only see it. I moved closer, reaching out my hand, before pausing.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Hugo asked.

  Roan nodded. “It was said to be a gift and even in the Officiator’s limited state, there are far easier ways to kill Lucas. This doesn’t seem like a trap to me. Nor is it an altruistic gift. Whatever it is, it is designed to advance the Officiator’s agenda. Namely supplanting Tanver Vhar, and retaking full control of the Tower. If it has reached into the void for assistance, then they must be truly desperate.”

  “How so?”

  “Because of the dangers that lurk within.”

  I remembered glimpsing a small part of a beast larger than a planet slumbering in there and shivered.

  “So the void is a prison?” I asked.

  Roan shook his head. “No. The void abhors matter. It eats away at it. Devouring it until there is nothing left. I believe the things you saw in there were put there to die, but the void was not up to the task.”

  “What are they?”

  “I don’t know. They predate the System which was around for a long time when I was born. All I know is that they were sealed away for a reason and that bringing any piece of the void into this reality risks fracturing that seal. It’s why we have to deal with this thing in your domain now and why we need to find Daisy.”

  “So her shadow powers…”

  “It’s not the void. Only a pale imitation.”

  “That’s odd. The void creature said the same of Hugo’s voidborne spirit summon.”

  Roan nodded. “Yes, Ostorox was something I created myself. A recreation of what a void creature might look like. An experiment I donated to the Tower. Daisy’s powers aren’t a threat, but she does carry knowledge that could lead to the void’s seal being broken. That’s all I’ll say on that matter for now.”

  “What about Donald and the Source stone? Hasn’t that broken the seal already?”

  He shook his head. “From what you’ve told me, something of that size would only form the smallest of cracks in the seal.”

  “And where is this seal, exactly?”

  Roan folded his arms. “You don’t need to know that, and there is nothing you could offer me that would make me tell you. Most of the other gods don’t even know where it is.”

  “It’s your protection,” I realized. “It’s why the other gods don’t come after you.”

  He rolled his eyes at the insinuation that he could be threatened by them. “It is not the only reason. But it helps in preventing them from bothering me. Usually anyway.”

  He was referring to the black letter he’d received before. The one that he was incredibly cagey about. He just kept calling it ‘other business’ and that he’d take care of it. He’d been saying that for a while.

  I moved forward to touch the sphere.

  “Wait!” Hugo said. “We should make sure it’s safe first.”

  His ghost hand appeared with an empty soda can from his inventory, and he hurled the can into the sphere before I could stop him. It disappeared inside. We waited with bated breath to see how the sphere would react.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have to point out how dumb that was,” said Roan. “But I’m going to anyway. There’s a reason I’ve avoided interacting with it directly.”

  A blast of wind shot out of the sphere, knocking Hugo and me over, and pushing Roan back a step. The torrent of wind kept coming, and we slid back until I formed a wall of blood to rest against.

  “This was why!” Roan shouted over the wind.

  I could feel my domain straining, like the wind was pressing up against its edges. If we didn’t do something quickly, then the whole thing might collapse with us inside.

  “Make it stop!” I yelled to Roan.

  “I can’t! This was meant for you. You have to be the one to stop it.”

  I put Hugo down and stood up, only to be knocked down again. I looked at Roan with his suit flapping in the wind and his feet planted. He could’ve helped me, but was choosing not to. This was another testing moment. A way to see if I had what it took.

  I got up again and froze the blood around my feet to hold me in place. The wind was strong, but it couldn’t knock me over. I unfroze my back foot and took a step forward before locking it in place. I repeated this process over and over again. Slowly inching my way closer to the sphere.

  When I reached Roan, he gave me a small nod of approval. I flipped him my middle finger and kept trudging forward.

  By the time I got to the sphere, I was having second thoughts about touching it. Then I gasped and clutched my chest. It was like there was a vice squeezing my heart. The walls of my domain were close to breaking, and since it was a part of me, I too was close to breaking.

  Well, time to shove my hand into a weird hole, I thought.

  I touched the sphere and winced, expecting pain or something worse. Instead, I felt nothing. The wind was still threatening to bring the whole domain down, so I reached further in. Once my entire arm up to my shoulder was inside the sphere, my fingers brushed against something metal and small. It was a key in a lock. I couldn’t touch what the key was connected to without sticking my head inside, and there was no way that was happening.

  The key felt ominous, but with my domain close to breaking, it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I turned the key and suddenly the wind stopped. Instead, the sphere began vibrating. I took a few steps back and watched it change. Black marble stairs with streaks of white forced their way out, building a staircase. The sphere then built a platform at the top with a thick stone pillar on either side. Both pillars had the same symbol carved into them. The same symbol that was burned into my palm of the circle with a line through it.

  Once the pillars had been built, the sphere winked out of existence. When nothing else occurred, curiosity got the better of me and I walked up the steps and onto the platform. Nothing happened, not even when I touched the pillars.

  Roan pursed his lips. He didn’t look pleased, but refused to say why. He also did not feel inclined to move any closer to the structure. Unlike Hugo, who flew up and rubbed his talons everywhere to see if he could activate the structure. He quickly grew bored and wanted to move on. “So is it safe to say that this looks like a ‘to be continued’ situation?”

  Roan nodded. “This looks nothing like the seal, but there are some old texts I can consult for research. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  I eyed the pillars warily. “Can we really just leave it like this? What if it's some kind of gateway to unleash the void creatures on the Tower?”

  “The Officiator wouldn’t do that. It would destroy the Tower. No, this is something else. Finding out what will take time and patience. Let’s go back to the apartment.”

  I reluctantly agreed and was about to collapse my domain when I received a message.

  *Item Identified!* [Emergency bolt hole (Unique: S-Grade)] – Note: current Grade is insufficient to access.

  So the Officiator’s gift is some kind of escape hatch? It must be anticipating something bad to give me this. The lack of details was frustrating. The only other thing that stood out other than its name was that it was S-Grade. The same Grade as Tanver Vhar and only one down from gods like Roan. For someone of my level, generous wouldn’t even begin to describe an S-Grade gift.

  Hugo became concerned when it looked like I was just staring off into space. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded and brought us back to the apartment. The first thing I noticed upon our return was that my pumpkin was no longer on top of the washing machine. It was missing, but I tried not to panic. Damian was there, sitting in one of the chairs reading a book, so I figured I’d ask him. “Hey, what happened to my pumpkin?”

  He thumbed to the next page and, without looking up, said, “I think Misty moved it.”

  “And you just let her?”

  He shrugged. “What am I, the pumpkin police?”

  Roan’s head tilted to the side like he was hearing something that the rest of us couldn’t. Then he clapped his hands together. “Right, grade evolution room now. Get to the elevator. We don’t have much time.”