Before Space – Eons Ago #3
Civilizations flared to life, bright, hopeful, then gone. The Wraith spread unchecked, blackening system after system, until only ruin remained. And then, worst of all, came the nothing. A cold, dead absence where even memory couldn’t survive.
Her lungs stuttered, halted in recognition.
It reeked of betrayal, and of her father's pact with the Outsiders.
Yet, it was the next vision, slamming through her body, that stole her air and locked her limbs as if gravity had multiplied in an instant.
Her ship, broken.
Her crew, scattered. Dying. Over and over again.
She almost faltered.
But then—like a single candle in endless dark—she found it.
A thread of survival.
A chance.
She saw the Silanda make it. Saw her crew reach the refugee base. She saw hope.
And it was enough.
That sliver of possibility carved the final fear from her hearts, leaving only resolve.
The time we had made everything else worthwhile. A final thought to her mate, before she called the Balefire.
If she hit the tear perfectly, and the Balefire opened the fissure, the following detonation from the core, even without the ship to heighten its power, would blow it wide enough and fast enough to suck in all the Wraith before they could get away, and before it closed again…assuming it closed.
The Wraith would be swallowed whole in a one-way descent into nothingness. And she would fall with them. Not gladly. But without regret. At least if she got it right and didn’t destroy everything she was trying to protect instead.
Focus. She forced her thoughts on the magical weave.
Balefire was no ordinary weapon.
It was a cataclysmic force, the antithesis of existence itself. It didn’t simply destroy.
The best analogy she could conjure was that of a spider’s web, with each strand representing a life, an event, a choice. Balefire didn’t sever threads. It burned them out completely, as if they had never existed. And when that happened, the surrounding pattern often unraveled with them.
It wasn’t just capable of annihilating a town or a planet. It could tear out entire swaths of the Weaving. A careless application could become a wildfire of unmaking—ravenous, uncontainable, and irreversible.
And here she was, at the end of existence, surrounded by soul-hungry monstrosities, trying to figure out Balefire on instinct alone.
She had no training, no inherited right, no assurance that this would work.
She only knew about it because she’d overheard her father late at night, speaking to his most trusted advisor in the tone he reserved for forbidden truths.
There was every chance she would fail.
More than that, she would likely Balefire herself into oblivion in the attempt, completely unraveling her own thread in the process.
Though, strangely, that thought offered a sliver of peace.
If she erased herself, her mate might survive the loss.
Starlit linings.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” she murmured, her voice steady despite the chaos inside her. “Even if it means I never existed, at least I did something good first.”
Stopping mid-flight, she held her wings still in the vacuum and released the veil that had kept her hidden. The magic unraveled from around her in streaks of vanishing Will, exposing her golden form to the enemy as she began pulling energy into her scaled palms.
Balefire.
She couldn’t summon it through her throat the way a true dragon would have. Her long-time preference for human form had stunted that reflex. But she was far from sane in this moment, anyway, and practicality had left her hours ago. She would channel it in any way she could.
The black fire bloomed.
The Wraith didn’t notice her. They were still focused on her vanguard—the few remaining fighters who had kept them clustered near the tear.
She blinked, and one of the Wraith’s skirmishers broke formation, darting after her last defender. It was a lone one-seater, brave and relentless, still dancing through the crossfire.
The enemy locked on, and a milky white beam lanced from its weapon, piercing her fighter's hull.
The death hit her, sharp with fear and searing pain, that instant of awareness before it all went dark. The connection snapped, and she was utterly and completely alone, except for the fire raging in her hands, demanding an answer.
Please work. She squeezed her eyes shut as the Balefire grew hotter and heavier, sucking radiance from the stars and dust from the fractured remains of destroyed ships.
She couldn’t hold it much longer.
Her limbs trembled, muscles locking under the strain. One heartbeat more, and it would consume her.
Now. She prayed to any who would listen and hurled the Balefire forward.
It tore through space, a streak of silent black flame aimed straight for the Tear.
There was no bang or flash of light, or satisfying roar as one might expect from a weapon meant to end worlds.
Instead, there was only a feeling.
Her body convulsed, muscles seizing in a brutal heave, but nothing came—just dry, hollow gagging, her stomach too empty to offer anything up but pain.
The wrongness radiating from the impact was sickening, marrow deep.
And then. Then, the true horror began as it started to unravel the edges of the Weaving itself, the very foundation of life, order, and everything that stood in contrast to “nothing.”
Great Mother.
She understood, now.
She’d already known that Balefire was forbidden for very good reasons, but now she felt it, viscerally. Deep in her bones, and in the parts of her soul that remembered what it meant to be a Wise One, she understood.
Balefire should not exist.
It was anathema to the very principles her kind had upheld and protected for millennia.
Even pure Darkness contained the potential for light, for rebirth or reflection, but Balefire was worse.
It exposed what lay beneath the Weaving—the absolute emptiness, a place without potential or shape or meaning.
It was nothingness without end, madness with no sound.
And yet, she had summoned it.
“What have I done?” she gasped as the Wraith finally began to notice her presence.
She shuddered.
They probably found the widening tear comforting, the soulless bastards. But their surprise at seeing a Wise One materialize in their midst might’ve been amusing if she could’ve seen their faces. If they had faces.
A dry, slightly unhinged laugh stole past her lips.
Arseholes. One of her favorite human insults.
Drawing back her claws, she launched the energy core forward, muscles coiling in a perfect release.
It was almost over.
The Wraith didn’t move at first. One small dragon—alone, glowing gold, clearly insane—wasn’t enough to warrant panic.
But then they saw the core arcing through space, spinning toward the tear.
She watched as the lesser Wraith rushed to intercept, swarming protectively while the higher-level ones fled outward, not yet realizing it was already too late.
The core struck and, this time, the universe answered.
A white blaze tore through the battlefield, blinding and final.
Pain followed, slicing through her body in a pure, incandescent wave.
And then, there was nothing.
She floated in the absence.
Am I dead?
It felt like death. Which, honestly, would’ve been a pretty anticlimactic end to the story. She didn’t even know if she’d succeeded. Had her crew survived? Were the Wraith trapped?
There was only silence and uncertainty.
Then—more pain. Sickly green light split through her mind. She couldn’t move or even open her mouth to scream.
She tried to pull away from it, to rise from whatever hell had taken her, but there was no release. Only endless agony.
Time stretched. How long? She couldn’t tell.
Eventually, she managed to reassemble the fragments of her thoughts long enough to open her eyes. And what she saw shattered what little peace she had left.
She wasn’t dead. She was very much alive. Suspended in a floating orb-like construct, her limbs, neck, and tail were stretched to the brink, held by an invisible, electric current, stinging her constantly.
The Wraith were there, too, their voices rasping around her, murmuring with anticipation. Shadows leaned against the orb as greedy eyes watched her.
Terror dawned. They were feeding off her. She was keeping them alive in this Emptiness.
One of the creatures stepped forward, its taloned hand breaching the orb’s surface. There was no resistance, just the sickening glide through something half-formed and wet. Her muscles flexed, trying to flee, but escape was beyond her.
She felt the intrusion then, not as pain at first, but pressure—unnatural and precise—cutting through her sternum, slipping between bone and sinew, until ice closed around one of her hearts.
It squeezed, and agony ripped through her, bowing her spine and dropping her jaw in a soundless cry. Blood thundered in her ears, and still the cage held, crushing her. Her second heart stuttered, fighting to compensate, every beat of it sending shards of torment knifing through her ribs.
Strands of her life force unraveled, drawn from her in bright, burning threads as shreds of her soul were ripped free, one by one. But the orb pulsed in rhythm, sending fresh waves of lightning crackling through her nerves, spurring her body to fix itself.
And when that Wraith finished, another took its place. Then another. On and on.
No end.
Each cycle brought new anguish, and the orb continued to revive her despite the damage.
It was like drowning, over and over. She would surface only long enough to gulp the air before being pulled under again.
She couldn’t die. The orb wouldn’t allow it.
It was feeding her to them, piece by piece.
And she was utterly helpless to stop it.
Her head hung as another taloned hand worked its way past her spine, lips pulling back in face of the torment.
The plan had worked.
The Wraith were no longer part of the Weaving.
She didn’t know where they were now, or how she had managed to survive. The Weaving, which had always hummed beneath her scales with its subtle ring of life and continuity, was gone, absent now.
But the plan had worked. If she could have laughed, she would have.
The pain didn’t care. It continued without pause, stripping her with every pass.
Time did not exist here. It might have been hours, days, or longer.
It went on and on, until, one moment, it didn’t.
No! Her whole body convulsed, splintering the orb’s hold.
In an instant everything paused, and the half of her soul that belonged to her mate disintegrated within her.
The agony that followed could not even be classified as pain. No word in any language ever spoken could capture it. Every cell in her body raged against her, each one screaming in isolation, as if she were being disassembled molecule by molecule.
It was beyond any construct of understanding.
One moment, her whole soul had been there—battered, yes, but intact for the most part, slowly regenerating the parts siphoned by the Wraith.
It had cradled her through the torment, offering flickers of warmth: the memory of a gentle hand on her shoulder beneath foreign stars, laughter blooming in the hush between battles, promises spoken not as hopes, but truths.
That presence had been her last shield. Fragile. Sacred.
It was a tether to something unbroken, something still hers in the midst of the nightmare.
And then, it was gone, torn from her spirit as if it had never belonged.
What remained was nothing but shredded tatters—an exposed, weeping nerve, scouring raw through every corner of her being. It shattered what was left of her composure, her sanity.
Her mate was dead.
Manic laughter erupted from her throat as the truth hit, rattling through the orb, high and broken, bouncing off the translucent walls in shrill, looping echoes. And the Wraith flinched.
She wouldn’t be able to avenge her mate, but it didn’t matter. On the other side, their two halves would be joined once again. She would see him again soon.
At least, this torture would soon be ending.
With his death, the bond they shared would be severed completely, releasing her from this hell. Death would come at last.
But it did not end. The orb fulfilled its purpose with ruthless efficiency, keeping her alive while the Wraith continued to feast.
She sagged in the restraints as what little remained of her essence strained to rejoin what had been taken, reaching for its other half.
But the orb held it in place, trapped within her body. And when it failed, it fell.
Her soul drifted down through her like ash caught in gravity, trailing flickers of what once was—peace, memory, light—until even that faded. It sank to the deepest part of her, hiding. And there, it stayed, curling in on itself, decaying inch by inch.
What had been pure turned fetid. Its fractured root system buried into her core where it waited, silent and ruined, seeping venom through every breath, every beat.
Exposed tissue twitched deep inside her, spasming with no relief. Her nerves fired in endless succession, stripped raw and screeching. And at her center, a cavity yawned open—wide, wet, and gouged too deep—that swallowed everything and kept digging.
It was an endless snarl, boiling in her stomach.
The orb may have kept her alive. But Rhynna, and everything she had been, ceased to exist.
She would escape. Not today. Not whole. But one day. And when she did, she would find the one who condemned her to this. She would tear truth from flesh, name from bone.
And if a few worlds burned along the way, so be it.
Let them feel her pain. Let them choke on it.