Ciara

In the beginning, she was nothing. A drop of empty darkness amidst a sea of empty darkness. She was not a she, a they, or even an it. She simply was, nothing more than a drop in a mass collective.

The darkness existed alone. Vast, empty, nothing existing but itself. This is how it began, as all must begin.

Eventually, the dark void became aware of another existence. It watched as threads were woven, the fabric of its simple reality altered. The Void was there as Light came into existence. With light came colour, brighter and more vivid than the Void had ever known. Following colour was sound, a sharp tone in contrast to the Void’s empty silence.

And then came Souls.

The souls were the strangest things the Void had ever encountered. They were multitudes of shapes, colours and sounds, each one different from the last. But that was not what intrigued the Void. What caught its attention were the stories each soul told. Stories of existences the Void had never seen, tales of things It had never known.

Soon after the souls, Life was born. Souls disappeared from the Void and It watched as they were recreated, living out the stories told within them.

Over time, souls came and went. The Void served as a resting place for those in between lives. The empty darkness remained at the edges of life, serving as a reminder to the living of just how short, how precious their existences were.

That is, until she disrupted everything.

It began as a child. Eventually, her glimmering red soul came to rest within the darkness. Not an uncommon occurrence, but an interesting one nonetheless. It was that which drew It in. The bright crimson of the child’s soul was dazzling in a way It had not seen before. And the story the soul told it was one of potential, one of magic, and one of a costly mistake. The child’s sister had taken ahold of magic she did not know she possessed and killed her. An accident. A tragedy. It was of no surprise to It when magic came, attempting to retrieve the red soul. Rather than simply observe, as the Void had for the duration of Its long existence, It took hold of the soul, directing it back to its former life.

The Void kept watch over the red soul after that. The power and potential it had whispered of intrigued the darkness greatly. Almost as interesting to It was the oceanic blue soul linked to the red.

Eventually, It became aware of a disturbance caused by the blue souled-one, now a full-grown Ridgeback. It watched this event with interest, although the Void knew what would happen, according to what It had seen in the red soul so many years prior.

Which is why it came of great shock to the Void when the blue dragon consumed darkness, forever altering her power, her destiny, and her soul.

The Void itself was a passive entity, serving as a resting place for souls in-between lives. It reminded dragons of the fragility of their existence. It had overseen creation itself.

It would not allow the actions of one insolent Ridgeback to bring down the balance of Everything.

This is how she came into existence. The Void shaped part of itself into a form; vaguely female and Imperial in shape, with Its cloudlike-darkness forming Its body. It had no name, no identity, only one given purpose: stop the girl of the blue soul.

It plucked the dragon from her plane of reality into Its own. The blue-souled one tried to fight against It, but she was no match. It had the power of Everything.

After separating the dragon’s body from her soul, It attempted to repair the darkness and move it along to its next life. But by consuming pure darkness, Its darkness, she had permanently damaged the soul. After hers, it would have no next life and no resting place within the Void. Its very existence would cause great chaos and mass destruction. The soul no longer had its original ocean blue glow, but a dim one. Threads of black swirled within it as ink dropped in water.

As It contemplated, the darkness slowly grew within the soul. It would only be a matter of time before it corrupted it completely. Not even the Void knew how a soul touched with Itself would affect the balance of light and darkness. Returning the soul to the original body would be useless. It would only serve as a vessel for whatever chaotic entity now belonged to the soul.

There was only one feasible solution: remove whatever darkness It could and combine the remainder with another, equally powerful soul. The owners of the two souls would exist sharing one body, originally belonging to the equally powerful soul. The body hosting the hybrid soul could not be allowed to age, lest the soul separate at the end of its life and render Its effort for naught.

Of all the souls in existence, there was only one in equal power to the darkened soul.

The Void’s form pulled the dragon with the crimson soul into Its reality. She, unlike her sister, did not react with aggression. She felt sorrow at her impending fate.

Everything went perfectly.



The Void did not use Its form again, until centuries later when the crimson-souled one tore a hole in the fabric of her reality. This time, It crafted Its form to be more Nocturne-like: small, definitively female, Its absence of colour showing in her skin and eyes. Gifted with talons crafted from Itself. Wielding the power of Everything.

It called Its form “Ciara”.