Slowly drifting through the endless nothingness in her fox form, Aurora’s violet eyes were glazed over; any hope of seeing her parents again, or even her home, lost. 

And then there was a change. Something directly above her emitted some sort of energy fluctuation, which passed harmlessly through her body. After a few moments, Aurora’s head slowly upwards, catching sight of a thin, dimly glowing gray line, which seemed to stretch on infinitely. Then, the line gave a brief pulse and fell inert, ceasing to emit any light and vanishing from view. Aurora’s brain, or whatever she has now that counts as a brain, took a moment to process that something had changed, that something actually happened in this existence-forsaken place.

When Aurora realized that something just happened, her eyes seemed to grow slightly less dim, regaining a speck of their vibrancy as they focused on where the gray line had been just a moment ago. Aurora stared, and stared, and stared at that empty space, unsure if that was even where the line was in the first place, until it began sprung back into view, emitting a faint light as it was rapidly yanked to one end, almost as though someone on the other end let go of it, like a tape measurer. Aurora kept her eyes fixed on that position for another few minutes, in hopes that she might see something change again before she returned to wrapping her head around everything that just happened.

— — — An estimated 3 hours later — — —

Aurora’s head jerked downwards, completely alert as she felt another energy fluctuation, albeit significantly weaker than the first one she noticed. As she gazed at the gray tendril, which stretched on far further than she could see, Aurora began moving towards it. Or at least, she tried to, and then realized that she had absolutely no idea how to move closer to it, or how to move around in the Void at all. 

Aurora watched from a distance as the line emitted a pulse of energy and dimmed, vanishing from sight off in the distance. Though almost immediately after, rather than glowing again and being yanked in one direction, this line emitted another small pulse of energy and then proceeded to rapidly crumble apart, dissolving into the Void.

“What are those…” Aurora wondered, feeling like she could almost put her finger… or rather, paw? on it. “Also, how do I move around? If even non-sentient Horrors can flood into a forming inner realm like my dad mentioned, it can’t be that hard, right?”

Pretty soon, Aurora was successful moving around like a drunk elephant! All she ended up having to do was eject some Void mana from her body in the opposite direction she wanted to go, and then she began moving forwards. 

“Well, while I wait for a new one of those line things to appear, I should probably figure out what changed with my illusion affinity.” Aurora thought.

Aurora then conjured up the simple functions of an illusory light in her mind’s eye as she had done so many times before, including its brightness, its stability, location, and so forth. Then, Aurora poured mana from her I*?u$i•n mana pool into the spell. However, rather than promptly popping into existence and illuminating her fox form, the light in her mind’s eye simply… stayed in her mind’s eye. It didn’t move at all; nor did it even change in the slightest. Aurora attempted to disassemble the construct in her mind, and rather than immediately vanishing, she felt her mana slowly begin to flow back into her mana pool. It was as though her spell was complete, and properly formed at that, but she couldn’t actually cast it.

“Is this what my new affinity does? It just casts a spell in my mind?” Aurora choked, and would have been weeping if she physically could from the idea of never using her beloved illusion affinity again, that she inherited from her parents, inherited from her Kitsune race as a whole. As Aurora sobbed, with no tears flowing from her eyes, she recalled everything she had used her affinity for in the past. From pranking others her age, to trying to get her illusions to cast a shadow to make illusion shadow puppets, and even training it with her sword mastery. 

As Aurora sobbed, she desperately tried to will the spell out of her mind, still denying what was happening. In her desperation, Aurora tried, and tried, willing for the spell to materialize, and then she pushed. Rather than remaining in her mind’s eye inert, it was as though she poked a hole through a plastic film containing water. The spell immediately launched out of her mind, and a small glowing ball materialized instantaneously above her shoulder.

Aurora’s mouth fell open as her tails started rapidly waving from side to side, and she immediately stopped applying mental pressure to the spell; it vanished from existence instantly. “Oh thank goodness,” Aurora thought, dearly relieved that her affinity wasn’t mutated beyond recognition. The muscles in her body… or, well, her entire energy-composed body went limp, all tension leaving it, and she would have collapsed to the floor if there was one. “On the bright side, while this is definitely harder than before to cast, I guess I can construct a spell well before I actually have to cast it. And, well, I can still use illusions with swordsmanship…”

Aurora just sat there once again, floating in the Void, processing what just happened. Aurora sat there for quite some time before she thought about the decent list of things she needed to figure out. First and foremost on the list was whether she could use those gray lines to escape, but none of those were anywhere in sight. Instead, Aurora looked to her Void affinity, seeing as that would likely help her survive in this endless abyss. Aurora did expel Void energies previously to move; but that was just throwing mana out of her body, not casting or manipulating it into any sort of spell. So, she decided to change that. Aurora composed a basic spell she learned that works with most affinities; an energy bullet.

After swiftly constructing the projectile in her mind’s eye, she began funneling her Void mana into the spell, and this time, it was unsurprisingly stuck in place in her mind. “I guess that the corruption of my illusion affinity was just it… somehow taking on some of the properties of Void mana?” At least, that was what Aurora assumed as she took the spell and pushed it into existence, after a couple of tries. The spell then rocketed off in front of Aurora, as she tried her best to maintain the pressure that kept it in existence. 

Aurora then decided to try a slightly more complex spell; an energy slash that would be emitted from a swipe of her paw. As she constructed the blade in her mind’s eye, taking particular care with the edge and the component to make it stay attached to her paw until she swung it, Aurora prepared to force it into reality when she then felt an explosion of energy form on her left side, swiftly traveling outward. Though this time, it wasn’t a thin gray line, which was quite apparent when she looked down slightly and to the left, as she watched an entire metal, steampunk city spring into existence. Large rusted metal gears rotated slowly on the side of silver buildings, and bursts of fire and steam emanated from various metal pipes atop the buildings crammed together. Then, the edges of the city seemed to expand, even more buildings rapidly springing into existence where there was only Void before.

If somebody told Aurora that would be a good place to investigate, to see if she could learn something, she would most likely slap them on their face. The moment the city materialized, she didn’t even try to go towards it. Rather, she immediately began propelling herself away from it. Aurora’s parents had told her enough about how those A-rank and above advance for her to know what that is; they advance by creating and expanding an inner realm, forming it in the Void. Any and all inner realms are only present in the Void during formation and expansion, when they need more space. Otherwise, an inner realm is contained within the body of the entity it belongs to, allowing for them to draw on it for power, store things inside, or whatever else they choose to do with it. They are completely unassailable by anything when not undergoing an expansion, other than under extremely rare circumstances, such as extremely expensive methods of torture.

The reason Aurora hastily fled from the city-sized inner realm, though, was not due to the city- sized realm being the hallmark of an S-rank entity. Well, at least not entirely. The main reason was because of how when a shockwave of energy rippled out from the city at least 40 kilometers away from Aurora, the Void came to life.

As the remnants from the ripple of pure S-rank energy belonging to a powerhouse passed over Aurora, she didn’t notice the many Void Horrors that came under the illumination of the steampunk city with the appearances of Lovecraftian abominations. Aurora’s attention skipped straight over how they all rushed for the figure of a silver basilisk floating in the center of the city. Rather, Aurora’s focus went to a completely different matter.

As soon as the shockwave of energy passed through Aurora, her soul, no, her very essence began railing against the confines of her body, screaming at her to consume, to devour, to feast on what lay in front of her. Pitch black, liquid Void began pooling within her fox snout as she began salivating. She stared at the silver basilisk now covered in gashes leaking violet ichor, mobilizing all of its power and that of its realm to butcher and drive off the Void Horrors, which perished like moths flying to a bonfire. 

And then Aurora began propelling herself towards the basilisk, significantly slower than the surrounding abominations. “After all,” she thought, “I hunger.” As Aurora slowly moved towards the basilisk, she was captured by the promises of escastay her very essence offered her; after all, all she had to do was devour the essence of that basilisk, and she would be sated.

Then, with some drool floating from her mouth, Aurora’s eyes were drawn a shadow shaped like a dragonkin, standing at the periphery of the city. Almost more of an outline than a real thing, it was hunched over a pile of Void Horror corpses, the multicolored monstrosities squashed like bugs. The inky black shadow’s head snapped upwards, and its empty eye sockets pointed straight at Aurora.

Its mouth moved as Aurora moved closer and closer, a word suddenly resonated throughout her head as the creature licked its shadowy lips, its head slowly rotating to face the basilisk. “Mine,” it conveyed in a rough, masculine voice, as though it was starving and staring at a full course meal, hot and steaming in its face. 

The sheer desire it conveyed, in addition to the small portion of Aurora still thinking rationally enough to realize that attacking the S-rank silver basilisk would be a horrible idea, even without the sentient Void Horror there, pushed Aurora over the tipping point. Aurora began rapidly propelling herself away from the steampunk city, pushing back the screams, the hunger, the desire from every fiber of her being, as though her soul would leave her body to charge towards the basilisk.

As Aurora continued rebelling against every fiber of her being that told her to turn around and feast, she kept going, and going, and going, until the compulsions… stopped. As she turned around, fully in control of her actions again, Aurora saw the Void Horror from earlier holding up the silver basilisk by the neck with one hand, its head bent far further than natural. And then the entire city, all the complex gears and moving parts, along with the corpses strewn throughout the cramped streets collapsed, erupting into a fine power which was pulled into the sentient Void Horror like a black hole. Then, the Void returned to pure darkness once again.