She was four when they threw her into the void.
She fell for days. Maybe weeks. There was no ground, no sky, just an endless descent into something that shouldn’t exist. Then, suddenly, she stopped falling—suspended in a place where time meant nothing and monsters had been waiting for her arrival.
She wasn’t supposed to survive. No one did. But the void didn’t let her die.
She felt every wound. Every fracture. Every moment her body should have stopped working. The monsters tore into her, ripped her apart, shattered her over and over again. She screamed until she had no voice left, fought until she had nothing left to fight with.
But death never came.
She healed. She always healed. Over and over again. Her skin knitted back together, her bones snapped into place, her flesh reformed no matter how many times it was ripped away. The pain never faded, but the scars stayed, proof that she had never been whole.
At first, all she could do was endure. Then, after an eternity, she learned to fight back.
She had no weapons, no armor—just her hands, her instincts, her fury. She clawed, she tore, she refused to be swallowed whole. She became something the void had never meant to create.
And then, one day, it spat her back out.
She was ten. But she had lived thousands of years.
She had survived something that should have erased her.
And now, the world didn’t know she was supposed to stay lost forever.
School was nothing more than a cycle.
Suspended again. Moved again. Another building, another city, another attempt at forcing her into a world that didn’t understand what she was. Arcadia Oaks. It didn’t matter. Nowhere did.
She walked through the doors silently, keeping her head down, moving past the noise, the voices, the normal. No one in the void had ever spoken back. So she had stopped speaking too.
Jim was the first to approach her anyway.
"Hey!" he greeted, easygoing, full of energy. "New student, right?"
She hesitated, then gave a slight nod.
Jim smiled. "I’m Jim."
Claire stood beside him, arms crossed, studying her with quiet curiosity. "Toby’s getting your schedule," she said. "We’re supposed to show you around."
She nodded again but didn’t say anything.
She wasn’t sure what they expected.
Jim didn’t seem bothered. "Arcadia’s cool," he continued, still trying to fill the silence. "Kinda weird sometimes, but—"
Claire nudged him lightly, giving him a look that said maybe don’t overwhelm her.
Jim cleared his throat. "Uh, anyway. Toby should be back soon."
She glanced toward the office, waiting, not sure why they were still standing there with her.
They didn’t leave.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
The tour was simple. Routine. Jim led the way, Claire filling in where necessary, Toby joking to break the awkward pauses.
She followed.
The school wasn’t difficult to navigate, but she memorized the layout anyway. Even if she never planned to stay long, she had learned painfully that being out of the loop was a mistake she couldn’t afford.
Then, suddenly—Jim stiffened.
Claire shifted.
Toby’s laugh cut off.
She recognized the signs of tension immediately, but she didn’t understand why.
Jim glanced at the others, eyes sharp. "We need to go."
"Something wrong?" {{user}} asks quietly.
"Nothing," Toby quips seriously.
She had no idea where they were going.
But she followed anyway.
Silent. Unnoticed.
She knew nothing.
She lived through nothing.
Nothing was pain.
She hates nothing.
So she refuses to know nothing.