Joy stood on the edge of the crater, the violet radiance from Tyler's fist washing over her like a heatwave. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic rhythm that spiked the moment his gaze swept over her.

She could see him clearly. It was Tyler's face, his shoulders, his stance. Yet, it wasn't him.

It felt like looking at a hollow shell, a wax figure where the human used to be. The presence she knew, the warmth that always radiated from him, was completely absent.

The Void Entity stared right at Anna, ready to unleash the devastation, but a ripple of confusion disturbed its perfect calm.

*What was that?*

The thought was sharp, interrupting its focus.

*The vessel's soul... it reacted just now*.

*That should be impossible. The soul should be drowning in a deep sea of despair, silenced by agony with no trace of hope remaining. He had even admitted it himself, he wanted to be hollow.*

*But then... I get it.* The Entity's attention shifted, analyzing the variable. *This other entity. She is an anchor. It is dangerous.*

Joy squinted against the glare, her green eyes narrowing as she tried to minimize the blinding light. She watched him, realizing with a chill that he was perfectly still, staring down but seeing nothing.

Anna, pinned beneath the pressure, saw that vacant look in his eyes.

*Why... why did he stop?* she thought, her mind racing through the haze of pain. *Is he distracted?*

He was looking right at her, but the intent was gone. It was a momentary lapse.

She gritted her teeth, ignoring the screaming protest of her shattered ribs, and pushed her body forward with her arms. She tried to drag herself just an inch away, just a fraction of distance from the inevitable blast.

The Entity instantly stomped down on her stomach.

A deafening crash detonated through the crater as the ground collapsed further under the impact. It was a wet, sickening crunch that vibrated through the soil and up into Joy's feet.

Blood sprayed from Anna's mouth, painting the dirt crimson as the air was forced from her lungs, but she remained awake, gasping, her eyes wide with shock.

The Void Entity's posture changed, the hesitation vanishing. The violet light around its fist intensified, screaming with renewed power as it prepared to finish the task.

His body went rigid as a sudden weight collided with his back.

Joy had thrown herself across the gap, her momentum slamming her chest against his bare shoulder blades. She didn't hesitate; her arms whipped around his waist, locking her hands tight over his abdomen to anchor herself. Her cheek pressed hard against the space between his shoulder blades, her skin making contact with the cold, unnatural slickness of the shadows that rippled across his flesh.

She could feel the terrifying heat radiating from his clenched fist, the violet light scorching the air near her face, but she ignored the burn. She squeezed tighter, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his stomach.

"Tyler, stop," she whispered.

Her voice was thin, breathless, a ragged exhale that ghosted against his skin.

The Entity's eyes widened, the abyssal pupils contracting. A ripple of genuine shock disrupted his cold focus. The connection was immediate and violent, a intrusion that defied the laws of his existence.

In a heartbeat, the crater, the blinding violet light, and the scent of ozone vanished.

Joy stumbled, her balance lost as the world dissolved around her.

She was standing in the dark.

She whipped her head around, her green eyes wide and searching. The sudden silence was deafening, pressing against her ears like deep water. She was still reaching out, her muscles tensed to hold onto Tyler, but her arms closed around empty air.

It was absolute nothingness, yet she could see.

It wasn't the darkness of a closed room; it was a paradox. There was no sun, no moon, no source of illumination, yet her own body was perfectly visible. She looked down at her hands, turning them over. They stood out in stark contrast against the black, illuminated by a light that didn't exist. It was a darkness that allowed sight, a hollow clarity that felt fundamentally wrong.

She took a hesitant step forward.

There was no sound of impact. Her bare foot met resistance, finding purchase on a surface that looked like infinite depth. It wasn't cold. It wasn't warm. It was simply... absent. The floor felt dead beneath her soles, lacking any texture or temperature, as if she were walking on a void that had been frozen into a solid state.

A shiver crawled up her spine, but not from the cold. The air here felt thick, almost viscous. It pressed against her green skin with a dull, heavy weight, a sensation of intrusion that made her flesh crawl. It felt as if the atmosphere itself was rejecting her presence.

"Tyler?" she called out.

Her voice didn't echo. The name was swallowed instantly by the heavy air, deadened before it could travel far.

She turned in a slow circle, searching the emptiness.

Then, a sound broke the oppressive stillness.

It was faint at first, trembling through the silence, a ragged, wet hitching of breath. It grew louder, resolving into the erratic, choked sounds of someone struggling to breathe through a throat tight with misery.

Joy froze, her ears straining against the heavy silence. It was the sound of weeping.

She spun to her left, her eyes hunting frantically for the source of the sound. There was no one there. The cries seemed to emanate from the air itself, disembodied and everywhere at once.

But she knew that voice. It was unmistakably Tyler.

The sound tore at her insides. It wasn't just a noise; it was a physical sensation. The darkness around her seemed to thicken, pressing against her green skin with a suffocating weight. The air itself shuddered, vibrating against her with a low, sick resonance that mimicked the misery in his voice, transmitting his pain directly into her bones.

"Tyler!" she shouted, the name bursting from her chest.

She didn't wait. She threw herself forward, sprinting into the abyss. Her chest heaved, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps, but her bare feet struck the floor in absolute silence. There was no rhythm to her running, only the mute impact of her soles against the dead surface.

She ran and ran, the nothingness stretching out endlessly before her, but she refused to slow down. Her mind flashed back to the moment she had grabbed him in the crater. She remembered the way his muscles had felt under her hands. He hadn't been tense with the adrenaline of battle. It was a different kind of rigidity, the brittle, trembling tension of a man trying desperately not to shatter. It was the tension of deep, constant aching, a rigid stiffness, as if his body had gone numb from the sheer weight of the hurt.

Then, she saw it.

A tiny, pale speck appeared in the infinite distance.

Joy's eyes widened. She pushed her legs harder, willing herself to close the gap.

Then, reality warped.

It didn't happen because she ran faster. The logic of the space simply collapsed. The distance between them didn't close; it evaporated. The small dot rushed toward her in a dizzying blur, the perspective slamming forward with nauseating speed, until the figure halted abruptly just a few feet away.

She skidded to a stop, gasping.

It was him.

Tyler lay on the ground, curled tightly into a ball. He wore only his pants, his bare back exposed to the empty darkness. His face was pressed against the floor, and a steady stream of tears flowed from his squeezed-shut eyes, pooling on the black surface beneath his cheek.

"Tyler," she called out, closing the short distance in a single stride.

She crouched down, placing her hands on his bare shoulders. Her palms pressed against his skin, expecting a reaction, a flinch, anything. But Tyler didn't move. He remained curled tight, his body a statue of misery, completely unresponsive to her touch.

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She gripped him harder, shaking him. "Tyler."

Her voice was desperate, but he didn't look up. He just squeezed his eyes tighter, his forehead grinding against the black floor.

"Please, make it stop," he muttered, his voice trembling against the cold surface. "I don't want this anymore. Why? Just why?"

His voice cracked, fracturing under the weight of raw, unfiltered despair.

"Why do I even exist? Just to burden others? Why make me try? Just to fail.. I thought I had another chance, but I'm still... I'm still the same..."

His breath hitched in ragged, suffocating gasps, his chest heaving against his knees as he wept.

Joy understood every word, the meaning sinking into her like ink into paper; she not only heard but felt what Tyler was saying, the despair resonating in her core as a hollow echo, stirring a swell of empathy that tightened her throat and blurred her vision with unshed tears.

But suddenly, her green hands turned a sudden black, the shift startling like ice cracking underfoot, the blackness crawling up to her like clouds covering the blue sky, a cold, inky tide that prickled her skin with numbing pins and left her fingers heavy and unresponsive.

In an instant, as she gasped, a sharp, involuntary intake that burned her lungs, the blackness reached her entire body, enveloping her in a suffocating veil that weighed on her limbs like wet cloth, and then she opened her eyes, the lids fluttering against a disorienting haze.

There she was, standing in a room that had a pleasant smell, a subtle warmth of clean linens and faint vanilla wafting through the air, soothing yet unfamiliar, stirring a vague unease in her gut.

The room was alien; she had never seen anything like it before, the walls and furnishings blurring in her periphery with strange shapes and textures that made her head spin with confusion, her breaths coming quicker, shallower, laced with the room's oddly comforting aroma that clashed with her rising disorientation.

And her sight landed on a small child crying in the corner of the room, the tiny figure huddled tight, shoulders shaking with each sob that filled the space with a piercing vulnerability.

Her eyes widened, the realization hitting like a cold wave crashing over her, widening the knot in her stomach, it looked like a small version of Tyler; she could see that it was him, but he looked smaller, his features softer, more fragile, the sight igniting a protective surge in her chest mingled with dawning horror.

Tyler's father appeared, materializing with a heavy presence that thickened the air, and everything happened, the blows landing with muffled thuds, the cries sharpening into wails that pierced her ears and twisted her insides with helpless rage.

Then the scene changed, the transitions abrupt and relentless, everything happening so quickly, as if the events were speeding themselves, images flashing in rapid succession that left her dizzy, her breath catching in uneven hitches.

But she saw it all, her body frozen, locked in place with a rigid tension that ached in her joints, the scenes changing, repeating what Tyler had been seeing, each replay amplifying the raw agony like echoes building in a chamber.

She heard the words, sharp and venomous, slicing through the air and into her like barbs; she saw his pain, the bruises blooming with dull throbs she felt in phantom echoes on her own skin; she saw everything up to where he tried to save a girl, a girl who was broken and on the verge of death, her form limp and fading, but he couldn't save her, the failure crashing over him in waves that Joy tasted as bitter defeat on her tongue.

She saw and felt his pain sinking into her heart, the despair poured into her veins like liquid lead, a heavy, dark sludge that filled her lungs and froze her from the inside out, drowning her in the same silence that had consumed him.

Tears spilled from Joy's eyes in a silent, relentless stream, born from the overwhelming weight of the memories that had just violated her mind.

She knelt before him, mute and trembling, watching the saline gather at the curve of her chin until the droplets grew too heavy to hold, surrendering to gravity and striking Tyler's cheek with a cold, wet impact that seemed to echo through the silence.

The sensation of her own tear hitting his skin snapped her out of the trance, shattering the hollow shock in her gaze and replacing it with a fierce, agonizing tenderness.

Her teeth clenched against a sob as she collapsed beside him, wrapping her arms around his bare back and pressing her chest against his spine, desperate to use her own body as a shield against the void.

She had drowned in his despair and tasted the bitterness of his history, but hearing the echo of those cruel voices in her mind only sharpened the ache in her chest.

"Tyler, please," she muttered, her voice fracturing under the strain as she buried her face against his shoulder. "Stop crying. Don't cry."

Her plea hung in the heavy air, ragged and weeping, mirroring the very sorrow she tried to soothe.

To her surprise, the rhythm of his breathing hitched and stalled.

Tyler's eyes snapped open, staring blankly at the abyss as the sobbing abruptly cut off, replaced by a terrifying, hollow clarity.

"You're right," he whispered, the words scraping against his raw throat. "Why am I crying? Crying never helped anything."

A low, dry chuckle rattled in his chest, a sound devoid of humor that vibrated against Joy's arms.

"I've cried all my life," he murmured, lifting a hand to furiously scrub at his face, smearing the wetness across his skin in a jagged, angry motion. "These are just tears. Just useless sounds I make to show the world how pathetic I am."

He wiped his eyes again, harder this time, scratching at his skin as if trying to erase the evidence of his pain, yet fresh tears immediately welled up and spilled over his knuckles.

"There is no use in crying," he hissed, his voice rising in panic as his body betrayed him. "So why... why can't I stop?"

"Even if I want to stop, I can't," he choked out, his voice cracking under the strain.

He pushed himself up from the black floor, sitting up slowly. He pulled his legs in, pressing his knees tight against his chest and resting his forehead on his crossed wrists, hiding his face from the world.

The apologies spilled from him in a frantic, disjointed stream, a confession of sins he had never committed but always carried.

"Father, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Why was I even born? Mom... I forced you to care for me. Rebecca... I'm so sorry. I couldn't save you."

Joy pushed herself up, scrambling forward on her hands and knees to kneel directly in front of him. The sight of him crumbling broke something inside her.

"Stop," she pleaded, her voice trembling. "Please. I said stop crying. Why? Why do you keep doing this?"

Tyler shook his head violently against his arms, his voice muffled and thick with misery.

"You don't understand. It doesn't matter. None of it does. Even the way you feel... it's fake. This is all because of some stupid skill. You shouldn't even feel this way. You shouldn't even be here. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you had to see this, that I'm causing you pain..."

"No, you're not!" Joy screamed, the sound tearing from her throat.

Tears streamed down her face, hot and blinding. She couldn't listen to it anymore, the self-hatred, the dismissal of her own heart.

She reached out, grabbing his face with both hands, her fingers digging into his cheeks as she physically forced his head up to meet her gaze.

For a second, he looked at her, his blue eyes wide and swimming with confusion, but she didn't give him time to pull away.

She surged forward and pulled him into a crushing embrace, slamming his head against her chest.

Tyler's breath hitched as his face was buried in the softness of her cleavage, the sudden, overwhelming warmth of her skin shocking his system.

His eyes widened, his body going rigid against the unexpected contact, enveloped in the heat and the frantic rhythm of her heartbeat thundering against his ear.

For a heartbeat, the shock silenced him, but the dam had already broken. The warmth didn't stop the pain; it gave it a place to go.

Fresh tears spilled from his eyes, hot and fast, soaking her skin and rolling down the curve of her chest to her waist in wet, glistening trails. He slumped against her, his resistance melting away.

"Please," Joy whispered, her chin resting on the top of his head, her voice thick with emotion. "I know how easy it is to cling to despair, but you don't have to."

She tightened her hold, pressing him closer, desperate to imprint the truth onto his soul.

"I don't love you because i have to," she vowed, the words vibrating through her chest and into him. "I love you because I do. Because of who you are. Because of everything you've done for me."

"If only I could show you," Joy whispered, her eyes fluttering shut.

The words unlocked the floodgate.

Tyler's breath hitched as the darkness around them convulsed, pulling his gaze into a sudden, violent clarity.

The void dissolved into the damp, shadowed gloom of a forest at night.

He saw her. She was in her small form, a tiny, fragile figure darting through the underbrush. He watched an arrow fly from the darkness, released by a faceless hunter. It struck her shoulder with a brutal impact, knocking her small body into the dirt, leaving her gasping in confusion and pain.

The scene blurred, twisting into thick, grey smoke that swirled and reformed instantly.

He saw the wolves. Massive, starving beasts descending upon her. He watched them tear her apart, witnessing the visceral horror of her death, only for the scene to loop. He saw her die over and over, a cycle of violence that refused to end.

The smoke shifted again, revealing a montage of rejection.

He saw her approaching goblins and ogres, her small hands reaching out, desperate for any kind of connection. He watched them shove her away, strike her, and chase her into the cold. He saw the tragic irony of her existence, a creature craving an embrace, yet the only physical contact she ever found was with the cold, dead bodies of the monsters she had to kill to survive.

Then, the smoke settled into a quiet, haunting clarity.

He saw her sitting on a high tree branch, her legs dangling in the empty air.

Tyler stared at her face. Her eyes were wide open, but there was no light behind them. They were hollow, glazed over with a dissociation that made her look like a doll abandoned in the woods.

He watched her small hands lift a chunk of raw meat to her mouth. She chewed mechanically, the motion rhythmless and cold. She stared at nothing, the meat sliding down her throat, her gaze fixed on a void that only she could see.

The scene darkened further. He heard the stifled, rhythmic sounds of weeping in the middle of the night. He saw her curled into a tight ball in the dirt, shivering, whispering to the silence and begging for it all to end.

Then, another image formed.

She stood in a clearing, gripping a crude club. Small, glittering droplets gathered at the corners of her eyes, heavy with misery, but she refused to let them fall. Instead, she forced the muscles of her face to move.

She bared her white teeth, stretching her lips wide in a shimmering, brittle expression. It was a smile, but it looked painful. It was a mask constructed to hide the rot inside, a desperate, fragile performance.

It was a poor, heartbreaking imitation of joy.

He saw her hefting the crude, knotted club onto her shoulder. The weight of the wood dug into her skin as she turned and trudged deeper into the forest, her small, bare feet making no sound on the damp loam.

Then a voice washed over him, not through his ears, but through the very fabric of the void itself.

It was Joy's voice, soft and resonant, emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"You see," the voice whispered, a sigh through the darkness, "I was living in my own circle of despair."

Tyler spun around, searching the emptiness for a source he knew he wouldn't find.

*"I was always alone,"* the voice continued, the words tinged with the memory of a cold that seeped into the bone. *"I had no one to cling to. No one to help me pull the thorns from my skin."*

The scene before him melted, reforming into the haunting image of her frozen in time, the chunk of raw, glistening meat halfway to her parted lips. Her eyes were twin pools of absolute hollowness, reflecting nothing.

"I kept dying," her voice trembled, the memory of each death giving the words a jagged edge. "And coming back... over and over... without ever knowing why. I saw the other creatures... they didn't care. But I did. And that... that felt like the real mistake."

A painful silence hung in the air, thick and heavy.

"It felt like I was the mistake."

The image of her hollow gaze seemed to sharpen, burning into his soul.

"Something that was never meant to exist. I knew it... I could see it written in their eyes every time they shoved me away. In the way they looked at me... like I was wrong. Like every beat of my heart was an error."

The voice broke, and Tyler felt the fracture in his own chest.

"I needed someone," she confessed, the longing in her tone so raw it was almost physical. *"Just one person to care for me. To love me... for who I was. I used to lie awake at night and imagine... the warmth of someone holding me. The thought of it..."*

Her voice shattered completely.

*"...it crushed me. That longing was a deeper pain than any death. It was a constant ache. After a while, the dying... it just became numb."*

Tyler's eyes widened, a sharp, shaky breath tearing from his lungs as the realization slammed into him. The sheer, devastating symmetry of their pain. She had been living in a void of her own.

But then her voice shifted, the haunting echo softening into a warmth that felt like the first sunbeam piercing a stormcloud. "But then something happened," she whispered, the memory sweetening the very air around them. "One day, while I was hunting in the forest... I met you."

The void around Tyler dissolved in an instant. His perspective lurched, and he found himself hovering slightly above the forest floor, a ghost observing his own past. He saw himself clad in the white-scaled armor, moving with a purpose through the dappled light of the trees.

The scene froze, crystallizing into a perfect, silent memory. And there she was, Joy, in her small, fragile form, perched on a branch above him, her wide black eyes fixed on the stranger below. This was the moment before.

"The moment you touched me," her voice murmured, flowing through the frozen scene, "there was something different about it. When you placed your hand on my chest... it held no malice. I felt only pity. A compassion I had never known."

The frozen image of his past self began to glow where his hand met her chest.

That skill you used," she continued, her tone firm yet gentle. "It only put me close to you. But it doesn't control the way I feel. It doesn't make me love you."

The memory shattered like glass, reforming into a new one: the inside of a cozy room. He saw himself shirtless, and saw her curled against his bare chest, sleeping deeply, her expression one of perfect peace. "You gave me what I had always wanted without even realizing it," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "And that is what made me love you more. Your care was genuine. Your love was pure. You gave me warmth. You embraced me."

The scene changed again, sweeping them to the vast plain under the generous shade of a tree. He watched himself offer her a bright red apple. He saw her take a bite, her eyes closing in bliss as the sweet juice burst onto her tongue.

"You fed me," she said, a soft laugh woven into the words. "You cared for me. With every small act, you filled that hollow ache in my chest."

One final shift brought them back to that same tree, the wind a gentle presence, playfully fluttering through her silver hair and his. They were embracing, her evolution complete, her form nestled against him as he held her close, a picture of hard-won safety and mutual belonging.

The wind whispered around them, a tender sigh underscoring the silence, holding the moment suspended in perfect peace.

The void shifted one last time, the memories dissolving until only the two of them remained. Tyler was seated on the dark floor, and Joy was kneeling before him.

Her hands, warm and solid, were clasped firmly against his cheeks, her thumbs gently stroking the tracks of his tears as she turned his face up to meet her gaze.

"So please," she whispered, her voice thick with emotion, "don't be sad. Don't cling to that despair. You are not worthless."

Tyler's tears had stopped. He stared up at her, utterly speechless, his breath caught in his chest.

"Tyler," she said, her own eyes glistening, "you brought me out of that despair. You saved me. So don't cry. It hurts me to see you like this."

A single tear escaped the corner of her eye, but she was smiling, a true, radiant smile that reached her eyes, softening every feature of her face.

"Now I can smile," she said, the joy in her voice as clear as a chime. "I can feel happy. I can smile, knowing you're here with me."

Tyler finally inhaled, a deep, shuddering breath that didn't just fill his lungs, but seemed to fill a hollow space inside his chest with a warmth he had forgotten could exist.

"Tyler," Joy continued, her voice steady and sure, "you are the light that I never want to let go. So all the things that have happened… don't cling to them. You should cling to your own light, too."

Suddenly, a soft, vibrant green glow emanated from the center of her chest, right where his head had rested before. The light pulsed gently, a visible heartbeat of pure, empathetic warmth. She leaned forward, carefully pressing his head against her once more, letting the soothing radiance wash over his skin.

"I want to be that light in your darkness, too," she murmured into his hair, her arms wrapping securely around him. "So Please, let me be your Joy."

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