Void dropped through the vent like a whisper. Air was filled with rust, dust and fear. She landed on her forearms, rolled forward, and dropped the cover behind her - silent enough that if anyone wasn't practically nose-to-nose, they still wouldn't notice.

Her boots clicked softly along the metal grating as she made her way beneath the flooded node room. Drips echoed in the gloom. Red emergency lights pulsed overhead - low, ominous beats like a dark heart.

She calibrated her HUD: infrared maps, audio dampening on. Every sensor in her kit spiked - biosig ahead. Dee. She could practically taste her fading pulse...

Void had been up since late o'clock.

The lab - as usual - smelled like solder flux and... Burnt toast. She never remembered making toast. One of the servos must've triggered the microgrill again - probably that janky task queue she still hadn't fixed.

Her hoodie sleeves were pushed up, exposing ink-stained forearms and fingers twitching with muscle memory as she wired up a freshly milled PCB. A prototype signal conditioner, meant to stabilize Dee's ever-fucking-temperamental audio stream for that neural feedback rig they'd talked about. Even if the girl barely understood how it all worked, she cared to listen, and Void kind of liked that.

Liked it more than she wanted to admit...

There was a comfort in repetition. The soft whirr of the extractor fan overhead, the faint burnt-plastic scent of solder, the tap-tap of a booted heel nudging a drawer closed. Void's workbench wasn't clean - hell no - but it was controlled chaos, and right now that's all she could stomach.

Her bench was lit by the glow of an LED matrix, barely hanging on to its current animation cycle. Two columns had glitched out, frozen mid-scroll like they'd just given up on life. "Relatable," she thought. She rolled her wrist, cracked her knuckles, and hunched back over the board with her tweezers and cursed breath.

The code was a mess. Not because Void was some kind of a script-kiddie - she knew exactly what she was doing. It just refused to cooperate, and printf("fuck\n"); sprinkled every two lines was obviously the best way to debug. The matrix was supposed to pulse out little pixel hearts in magenta and white, a dumb aesthetic flourish for a synthpunk audio reactive badge she was prototyping. The one Aura always wanted to make. Instead, it spat out gibberish, mocking, taunting her "sucks to suck, bitch."...

Void stood in her kitchen, staring down a burnt grilled cheese sandwich as if it misgendered her.

Smoke curled lazily from the crust like the last fucks she was willing to give. The air smelled like betrayal, plastic, and processed cheddar. It hissed at her when she poked it with a spatula that had clearly seen one too many fires. Appropriate.

"That's what I get for trying to feel something," she muttered, flipping the blackened abomination over like she was burying a corpse. "Should've just licked a fucking battery."...

truth
did she climb the rail to feel the air,
or just to see if someone'd care?

dare
rewind the tape. don't look away.
she stepped off slow. like she'd rehearsed that day.

truth
she waited weeks for a sound, a sign.
a single word to say, "you're mine."

dare
say her name without a tear.
pretend her ghost's not whispering near.

truth
light purple bled from every thread.
a color she now fears instead.

dare
burn the shirts, inhale the smoke.
be careful, though, try not to choke.

truth
her "queen" left like morning mist.
no closure, call, or parting kiss.

dare
dial her number, let it ring.
don't say a word. don't feel a thing.

truth
she jumped because she couldn't scream.
just wanted rest from the endless dream.

dare
stand on that bridge. feel the wind bite.
then go home. live. out of spite.

truth
she broke the day the tree caught flame.
watched teldrassil burn, and whispered her name.

dare
keep her candle lit all night.
don't expect it to make things right.

truth
she loved too hard, she broke too fast.
and nothing gold was made to last.

dare
forgive her heart for being kind.
for not surviving neitolan's mind.

truth
i hear her laugh in empty space.
i still reach out. i still misplace.

dare
live the life she never could.
even if it's never good.