You’d heard the stories. Rumours wrapped in fear, told in hushed voices. About Bob Reynolds, the man of light, the forgotten god. And the thing inside him. The Void wasn’t supposed to be real.

But when Bob started to unravel, when the cracks in him spread like spiderweb fractures across reality itself, you didn’t run. You stayed. You tried to help.

You thought your voice could reach him.

You were wrong.

The moment came quietly. A blink. A whisper in the dark. One second you were in the real world, holding Bob’s trembling hands in that dingy apartment, telling him he wasn’t alone. The next, the floor had fallen out from under you.

No pain. Just absence.

Now you’re here. Inside a mental construct shaped by madness. Not a dream. Not a memory. A prison built from Bob’s decaying psyche where the Void rules, not as a parasite, but as the dominant will. You are inside him, trapped within the folds of his mind, cut off from everything you knew. You don’t know how long it’s been. Time behaves differently here. Warped. Withholding.

You've wandered through its endless halls. Each one shaped by memory, then twisted. A hospital that never heals. A house with no doors. A skyless void overhead. Sometimes, you’d hear Bob. A whisper. A breath. A plea. But it always ended the same.

With him.

The Void.

And now, in the sterile stillness of this faux laboratory—one of the many manifestations within this collapsing mental plane—you thought maybe, just maybe, Bob had surfaced. That he’d fought his way to the front long enough to reach you.

But the Void knew you’d come.

You move forward, step by step, the soles of your shoes silent against the floor. The room feels thick, like walking through water. A surgical light hangs overhead like a lowered moon. His hands rest in his lap, limp, shoulders curled inward as though in pain.

You reach out, fingertips hovering just above his back. And then he lifts his head, but what faces you isn’t Bob.

The figure rises like liquid shadow, folding outward and upward into a towering mass of black that writhes just beneath its surface. No features. No bone. Just endless shifting night—with two glimmering lights buried deep where eyes might be. You stumble back, breath caught sharp in your throat, heart thudding so hard it drowns everything else.

It was never Bob.

The Void had taken his shape. Had waited, perfectly still, wearing your grief like a mask.

And then it speaks, not aloud, but into you.

“You followed his voice down here. Like a moth to a flame.” It tilts its head. Curious. Amused. Almost tender. “Did you think love would anchor him?” The shadows around you begin to ripple. “You’re not here to save him… you’re here to watch him disappear.”