In a nameless domain floating beneath an endless night sky walked a figure clad in ivory armor─Zero, half-mortal, half-voidsent. Around her, inexplicable structures piled haphazardly one atop another bespoke a simple truth: that the master of this place was lost to reason. Indeed, the horde of voidsent lurching towards her from the shadows seemed incapable of mortal speech, driven only by an insatiable hunger for aether.

I had hoped for an exchange of words...but if it is to be blows, so be it.

Centuries wielding the reaper's scythe had not served to dull her swordplay, and with graceful strokes she felled the encroaching creatures one by one. The last was larger than the rest, but dispatched in a similarly effortless flourish of steel. Zero sheathed her blade.

Our host, no doubt.

Having watched the battle to its conclusion, an incongruous creature drifted forth─a nixie summoned by Zero's friends from another world. In this realm ravaged by Darkness, it made for a precious companion. One well worth the regular morsels of aether required to maintain its presence.

But as she lifted her hand to stroke the familiar's head, a stygian pool of aether welled up beneath its floating form, from which a shadow reared, bent on devouring it.

“Damn it all!"

Even as Zero clasped the hilt of her blade, she heard a peal of thunder, and looked on bemused as the dark denizen was unmade by a timely bolt of lightning.

"Careless to let your guard down, Zero."

Vestiges of the levin spell crackled along the gauntleted fingers of a massive figure encased in heavy black armor. Another companion of Zero's. Or, rather, a "comrade."

"Much obliged, Golbez."

He nodded. That the two of them could share such a nonchalant exchange was still bizarre to her.

"'Twould seem our hopes for this domain have come to naught," he began. "None here possessed even a modicum of intelligence."

Casually, he stretched out an arm to absorb the misty residual aether of the vanquished. Though he wore the armor of a mortal, Golbez had long since joined the ranks of the voidsent, and thus was bound by the rule which united them all─devour or be devoured. The natural law of the void.

Yet in the act of feeding, Zero saw him hesitate, and he turned to face her.

"Aether is here for the taking."

"I desire it not," she replied with a slight shake of the head. "Ambient aether is enough to sustain me."

Golbez regarded her in silence for a moment.

"If that is true, then you possess a strength unlike any other in this world─and a temperance to match. Wherefore do you deny yourself that which we all crave?"

"I dislike the feeling. Of merging one's soul with another."

"So you have fed before."

Zero turned away, wishing she still had the brim of her hat to hide behind. But Golbez's words hung stubbornly in the air. At length, her lips parted, and she began to speak of things long past...

Zero's mother was a memoriate─a warrior who sealed away the power of eidolons, creatures of great malefic power. In a battle against one such fiend, she had been bathed in a surge of Darkness, which had tainted the kindling life in her womb, condemning her child to be born a daughter both of man and the abyss.

All Zero remembered of her mother was a single bedtime story. The story of Zeromus, a hero who had appeared when the world was at its darkest to restore the boon of Light. And though Zero knew the tale to be little more than a fantasy, it was burned within her breast.

Even as time passed, even after her mother was slain in battle, even after Zero could no longer remember the lines of her face or the color of her eyes, the tale remained etched in her heart. But reality is not as merciful as tales. For when the final eidolon was at long last laid low, it did not herald an era of peace for mankind, but one of new conflict.

Seduced by the very power they had once sought to vanquish, many former heroes turned their gaze upon their fellow man, their hunger for strength beyond sating. And thus the memoriates who yet clung to the Light, like Zero and her mother, set forth to defeat these traitors, not for the glory it might bring, but for hope.

Alas, the memoriates of Darkness were strong, brutal, and above all else, numerous. Only alongside stalwart allies could the likes of Zero hope to prevail against the corrupt. Yet how could she place any faith in fellowship? She who had been ostracized as an aberration from birth, a child half-mortal and half-voidsent. She could not. And when at last a pair of knights bid her join them, she would not, her heart having long since become closed to the dream of companionship.

If only I had given them a chance... If only I'd been stronger...

Her defeat was not long in coming, the sheer number of her adversaries having rendered it inevitable. And it was in the very hour of her defeat, as she lay stricken on the battlefield, that it happened─the stars were blotted out in the heavens as a pall black as pitch enveloped creation, and the world broke.

Yet her tale would not end there. For when the Flood of Darkness came crashing down, she was swept through a tear in reality unto the rift, in what would prove a peculiar mercy. That place beyond time served to preserve her as she was, and saved her from the calamity which befell her home, whose fate she would discover when she found her way back through the faintest of fissures.

What greeted her then was unrecognizable: a scene of destruction absolute. The earth had rotted away, and in its place distorted isles of substant Darkness now floated in a starless sky. No familiar forms of life remained, only corrupted monstrosities, hostile to man.

Her body weak from an eternity in stasis, she trudged along, scanning this unknown territory. Yet the more she looked, the heavier resignation weighed upon her. She would not find any living in this wasteland. Everyone was already dead.

It was then that she heard a sound─a familiar sound. A voice.

"Someone...please... Help me!"

She flew. With a strength she didn't know she possessed, Zero flung herself towards the cry. No sword, no shield, no plan of attack─but if someone yet lived, if someone yet called out for succor, she could not abandon them. There was yet hope.

"Where are you? Tell me!"

"...Me?" the voice whispered. "I'm here."

Only by a hair's breadth did she manage to evade the descending claw. Rolling, she whirled to meet her attacker.

A gruesome face leered back at her. Nay─not a face. For the abomination had neither eyes nor nose, only a grinning jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth.

"How strange... A meal that chose to keep its mortal shape."

These sinister words spoke all. Zero's heart sank as she understood what had become of mankind.

"...Then I am the last."

"Yet hardly the least," came the smirking reply. "For in devouring you, your strength will do much to greaten mine!"

The beast howled and drew back one of its great claws, primed to finish its prey. Yet the thought of fleeing never crossed Zero's mind, defenseless though she was.

Even if this world has ended... No, because it has ended, I cannot!

As if in answer to her determination, the ambient Darkness began to stir. Swirling, bending, lengthening...until Zero felt the weight of a great scythe within her grasp. Surprise seized her for only a moment before she clenched her hand, and swung reflexively at the horror above her, cleaving the wailing creature in twain.

Foe vanquished and strength spent, she fell to the ground.

"Aether..."

Instinct guided her trembling hand as she reached out, gathering the creature's dissolving essence and absorbing it. An instant later, she felt her body begin to heal, a strange new energy imbuing her limbs. Power. More power. This was what the beast had spoken of, then. This was what it meant to "devour."

A wave of disgust washed over her. Dizziness and pain scattered her thoughts, her body convulsing as if fighting to expel something vile.

A second voice echoed in her head.

"More, damn you. More! Only once I have been devoured will I─will we be complete!"

"What...? No..."

The voice of her vanquished foe now harrowed her consciousness, as if boring into her very being. Death itself, then, had also become distorted─no longer did souls return to their source, to be cleansed before rebirth. They were simply bottled by those who devoured them. And thus began a battle of wills, during which the stronger would bring the weaker to heel. She had to fight.

A chuckle reverberated behind Zero's eyes. "Stubborn one, aren't you? And pure... So intact in self and purpose... Let's see what's in you, hm?"

The creature pressed further into her mind, freeing memories she had long since locked away. Of the lonely child pale as snow. Of her mother's face. Of...

"A statue? Of whom? Why would you treasure such a pitiful, ugly thing?"

Zero fought. Yet try as she might to resist the fiend, she and it were now one and the same. She could no sooner stop her own thoughts than she could keep it from knowing her innermost secrets.

Zeromus. I wanted to save the world like Zeromus did.

The creature howled with laughter. She could see the faceless monstrosity again, its grinning jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth.

"Simple fool... You really don't know how the story ends, do you?"

But now that the thoughts of that vile voice permeated her mind, she found that she knew only too well. Zeromus did indeed save the star...only for his fellow man to cast him out in fear of his all-conquering strength. A hero turned pariah.

Perhaps her mother hadn't known the tale's end. Or perhaps she withheld the truth to protect her voidsent daughter. Whatever the case, knowing it now did nothing to shake Zero's conviction.

If the Light to save mankind makes me an outcast, then gladly shall I become one!

Thus, with clear resolve did she purge the lingering rancor from her thoughts. Her mind grew quiet, as though it had never been host to another, nor did she ever hear that dreadful voice again. Brought to heel, it would seem.

But being forced to face her innermost thoughts left Zero disconsolate.

How am I to save mankind, when no one is left to save?

Thus did her aimless journey begin. Countless times others came to claim her soul, and countless times she tore them asunder─but never again would she consume their aether, even if it meant starving to death. Rebirth was but a small inconvenience, after all. And so it went on. For thousands of years she traveled, losing herself piece by piece, until one day...

"...I'd completely forgotten," Zero concluded. "But I remember now─thanks to you, Golbez."

Having listened to her tale, her comrade responded in his ever-dispassionate tone.

"So long as one possesses sufficient strength and fixed resolve, one need not fear dissolution, even should one be consumed. I would never lose my sense of self. You must have harbored some lingering doubt."

Zero shook her head.

"Not doubt, exactly. More...an unreadiness to accept myself. To accept that someone as weak and alone as me could dream of becoming a hero."

She raised her head and gazed upon the endless sky.

"I always wondered about that statue in the center of my domain. Now I finally understand. Broken and timeworn though it is─feared and ostracized though he was─Zeromus ever lived within my heart as a hero who wished to save the world. As I do."

The armored figure appeared to consider this for a while.

"Then I, too, shall devour others no more. I do not believe the practice contradicts my desire to save our home...but mayhap in forswearing it, I will come to know who I truly am as well."

Zero's eyes widened at his words, and she felt the beginning of a smile tug at the corner of her lips.

"Then let us move on. We may find allies in this vast world yet."

And so the pair set off again, trailing a nixie forged by bonds of the past, with hopes for the future and for a world made whole once more.