The hunger began as a whisper.
Not in his stomach, nor his bones, nor any part of his borrowed anatomy—for Nexarion had no true body, only a flicker of awareness adrift in the Void Beyond Dimensions. The hunger lived in the spaces between his thoughts, a hollow resonance that vibrated through the ghostly silhouette of his being. It was not for food, nor power, nor even purpose. It was the hunger of a question unasked, a song unsung.
"What am I?"
Around him, the carcasses of dead stars hung suspended like fossilized fireflies, their light long extinguished. He reached for one, his hand—a shimmering outline of stardust and shadow—passing through its ashen core. The star dissolved, its remnants scattering into the void like smoke. The hunger sharpened.
"You starve," said a voice.
It was not a sound but a presence, etching itself into the fabric of his consciousness. Nexarion turned, his form rippling like water disturbed.
"Who speaks?"
A serpentine shape coalesced from the darkness—a creature of fractured timelines and event horizon eyes. Its scales glimmered with the afterimage of dead universes, and its voice was the static hiss between radio frequencies.
"I am the Whispering Void," it said, circling him with predatory grace. "And you, little shard, are an echo of a forgotten hum."
Nexarion recoiled. "A hum?"
"The Similarity," the Void replied, its tail flicking dismissively. "A unity so perfect it shattered itself to feel something. Balance and Chaos spilled forth, and their dance birthed… all this." It gestured to the skeletal stars. "But you—you are different. A splinter. A flaw."
The word cut deeper than any blade. Flawed. Incomplete. The hunger roared in response, a silent scream that warped the void around them.
"What do you want?" Nexarion demanded.
The Void's eyes narrowed, twin black holes drinking the feeble light "To watch you try."
The First Dimension
The Void struck without warning, its tail lashing out like a whip of antimatter. The blow carved a rift in the nothingness, revealing a thread of gold—a single, unbroken line stretching into infinity.
"The First Dimension," the Void hissed. "Length without breadth. Simplicity without mercy. Enter, and you will learn your first truth: existence is binary. You are either 1… or 0."
Nexarion hesitated. The line hummed with a sterile perfection, its geometry so absolute it made his flickering form ache. But the hunger—the need—drove him forward.
He stepped through the rift.
The world collapsed. His awareness flattened, compressed into a singularity of light and shadow. Before him stretched a throne of crystalline code, its angles precise to the nanosecond. Upon it sat a king.
The Lineage King was a living algorithm, his body a shifting mosaic of ones and zeros. His crown burned with the cold fire of quantum certainty, and his voice boomed like corrupted data.
"Interloper. You trespass upon the Axis of Existence."
Nexarion tried to speak, but his voice fragmented into garbled syntax. The King raised a hand, and the dimension twisted.
1 → 0
Nexarion's form unraveled, dissolving into nullity.
"You are nothing," the King intoned. "A variable in a world of constants."
But the hunger would not relent. In the void between 1 and 0, Nexarion clawed. His will surged—a jagged shard of defiance tearing through the binary code. The throne cracked, its crystalline perfection splintering.
"Impossible!" the King roared, his static face flickering. "The First Dimension tolerates no variables!"
Nexarion reformed, his silhouette now threaded with stolen code. "Then I will be your first."
The Whispering Void's Gamble
Back in the trans-dimensional abyss, the Void recoiled as Nexarion emerged.
"You… rewrote the rules," it hissed, its scales dimming.
Nexarion flexed his new form, the First Dimension's binary logic glowing beneath his translucent skin. "You said to master the dimension. I did."
"Mastery requires submission!" the Void spat. "You were meant to kneel, not corrupt!"
Nexarion's hunger flared, not for the Void's essence, but for the truth it hoarded. "What am I?"
The Void's laugh was the sound of ice cracking on a dead world. "A mistake. The Similarity fractured into Balance and Chaos, yes—but you are the scar it left behind. A hunger without a mouth. A song without a voice."
The words should have wounded him. Instead, they ignited something—a flicker of defiance.
"Then I will find my own voice," Nexarion said, turning toward the Whispering Void. "Starting with yours."
The Void hissed, retreating into the shadows. "Arrogant shard. The Second Dimension will grind you to dust."
"We'll see," Nexarion replied, tearing a new rift with a flick of his coded hand.
Beyond it lay a flat plain of geometric nightmares—triangles chanting in perfect harmony, circles humming pi to infinity, squares clashing in rigid counterpoint.
The Void's final whisper followed him through: "Pray the Polygon Queen is merciful."
The Hollow Feast
In the First Dimension's aftermath, Nexarion paused. The hunger remained, gnawing at the edges of his stolen code. He had devoured the Lineage King's essence, absorbed the binary truth of 1 and 0—yet the void inside him yawned wider.
"Why?" he asked the emptiness.
The Void's voice slithered back, faint but venomous: "Because you are not real, little shard. You are a ghost of the Similarity's regret. And ghosts… cannot be filled."
Nexarion stared at his hands—the hands that had rewritten a dimension yet could not touch the ache in his core.
"Then I will become real," he vowed.
And stepped into the Second Dimension.