The cycle began anew. "Another day, another disappointment," she thought.
The sun slithered through the slats of the blinds, casting pale lines across the floorboards and up the edge of Void's bed. Her bedsheets had slipped halfway off in the night, tangled around her legs like a net she didn't even bother escaping. She stared at the ceiling, eyes dry & aching, lips slightly parted as if a piece of her still expected breath to feel like something other than a chore.
Her phone buzzed against the pillow. She didn't look.
Again.
Probably Keira. It was always Keira these days - showing up in texts with her dumb jokes, midnight selfies with oil on her cheek: she didn't know it made Void's stomach twist. Promises to drop by. Invitations to go hardware-store-hunting. "We could steal a trolley again," she wrote last night. "I need a new motor and maybe a reason to exist. Oh wait - I think I'm now talking to the latter."
Void had smiled at that. Briefly.
The buzz stopped.
She closed her eyes.
The thing inside her chest didn't feel like pain. It resembled rot more than anything else. The sense that she was this adored, admired, beloved version of herself to everyone around her - but only in the same way you'd love a myth. A ghost. Sure, you can adore a ghost. But you don't exactly like it. You don't choose it. You just mourn it and move on.
Keira was down bad - Void knew that. But she's always felt Keira loved the parts she projected - the fierce, bitchy, beautiful mess who always had a comeback, a trick, never went in without a fucking plan. Not this- this sluggish thing that couldn't even be bothered to brush her hair after waking up.
Another hour passed like that. Maybe two.
Eventually, she got up.
Her movements weren't a decision - it just happened, like gravity looked at her and decided to stop trying to hold her down out of pity. She uncrossed her legs with all the grace of a broken puppet, limbs stiff and alien. Her body ached in that dull, behind-the-eyes kind of way, like sleep deprivation had curled up inside her skull and set up house.
She drifted through the room like she was underwater, slow and directionless. One sock on. A strap of her bra detached from its core, hanging like a broken wire off a power line. Her foot dragged across something on the floor - a sharp little piece of 3D-printed plastic. It sliced right into the ball of her foot, left a bright, wet sting behind.
She looked down.
Blood welled up. Not a lot, but just enough to prove she was still made of something.
She carried on unbothered.
The pain didn't register - not in any meaningful way. It was just... There. Background noise. Less offensive than the constant TV static buzzing in her brain. A smear of red followed her across the bare synthetic floor panels, dotting the matte-gray tiles like punctuation marks to a sentence she couldn't finish.
The blood slicked under her heel as she moved, slow and shambling, like a sleepwalker too far from the dream to care about the consequences. Each step echoed faintly, hollow against the hard surface - as if the room tried to empathize with her.
The bathroom mirror caught her as she passed.
She paused.
Stared.
The reflection was almost cruel. Sunken eyes rimmed in blue like a failed painting, lips cracked and peeling, a zit blossoming on her jaw like even her skin wanted her gone. Her hair was matted on one side, flattened like she'd slept in a ditch. She looked like a girl you'd skip over in a lineup of suspects - not because she seemed innocent, but because she already looked punished enough.
She touched the mirror with her fingertips.
Cold glass. No magic.
Just a quiet girl with bleeding feet and heavier thoughts.
Void blinked once. Then opened the drawer.
She pulled out the same box she hadn't touched in months.
The one buried beneath layers of wires, expired receipts, and the kinda junk you tell yourself you'll sort through someday. She'd told herself she threw it out. Had even believed it for a while. But there it was: still there, right where she left it. A cursed bookmark in a chapter she never really stopped re-reading.
She held it in her lap for quite a while before opening it. The weight of it wasn't physical - it was memory. It reminded her of Aura, of that December day when the girl she used to be waded into a river, not trying to die, just trying to stop feeling like she already had.
That box was Aura's legacy. Her quietest scream.
Void opened it.
The blade was still tucked beneath gauze, as if it had a right to sit beside things meant for healing. The metal caught the dim light with indifference. It wasn't sharp enough to kill on its own. That wasn't the point - it wasn't about drama, or death. It was more about control. Proof. Proof that she could still make the uncaring reality budge. Proof that she could draw a line where the pain stopped being invisible.
She turned the tap on in the bath.
Void let the water run until it was hot enough to sting, then sat on the edge of the tub, both limbs exposed and ready to go. Her arms were pale under the bathroom light, skin stretched over old whispers. Faint scars like faded ink - easy to miss unless you knew where to look. Most people didn't - they saw eyeliner, overwhelming confidence. They saw chaos surrounded by confetti and called it resilience.
But she knew.
These weren't attention-seeking wounds. They were just exit wounds from the gunfire left by countless emotional assaults no one else noticed. Not enough to be "the problem." Enough to keep functioning, to quiet the noise when it got too loud to think.
And today, the noise was deafening.
It wasn't really sadness. Neither grief nor even anger. It was emptiness. Like everything had been scraped out of her and replaced with fog, her limbs felt too light, and her breath felt like it belonged to a completely foreign body.
She didn't feel like her life was about to end or anything like that.
She felt like she'd already been dead for a while and just forgot to show up on her own funeral.
There was not a single emotion on Void's face at that moment. Her expression was eerily neutral, like she was brushing her teeth or making tea - just another task, another box to tick on the ritual of being alive while feeling anything but.
This wasn't about punishment or ending things. Void already knew not even Death is interested in her.
It was about making the inside match the outside. Transmutation of the ache into something visible. Something hers - if she couldn't be loved the way she needed, at least she could bleed on her own terms.
Buzz.
Because if she was going to keep pretending, then she needed a release valve.
She positioned the blade, breathed in sharply - and began.
The blade felt colder than it should have. Stainless steel, thin as a whisper, dulled at the edge from years of hiding but still sharp enough where it mattered. She pressed it against her skin: not hard, enough to cut. Just testing. Her pulse beat beneath it like a warning, or... Maybe a dare.
She didn't brace herself - there was no need to.
Her wrist was already familiar with this conversation.
The first slice was just below an old scar, horizontal. Measured. The blade sank in slow, parting skin with sickening precision. The nerves stung awake instantly - sharp, electric - and a thin line of red followed after, welling up obediently. The pain bloomed bright, then softened into warmth.
Her jaw clenched.
But she didn't stop.
Buzz.
She waited. Let the line bead. Watched the drop curve over her skin and fall into the bathwater with a faint ripple.
The second cut went above the first. Slightly deeper, perhaps emboldened by the first "success," she pressed the razor down with more certainty this time, dragging it slowly - like she was letting an old friend revel in the moment. There was no rush. The sensation hit sharper, more urgent, like glass being pulled across a membrane designed to withstand anything. Blood followed quicker this time, racing down her arm in a lazy zigzag before it hit the water. It stung.
She blinked. Her hand twitched this time.
Regardless, she didn't make a sound.
This wasn't for show.
The third took more effort.
She switched wrists, flipping the blade in her fingers with muscle memory worthy of a pianist. She angled it diagonally now, digging the tip in first - letting it bite in before dragging. This one hurt - really hurt. A white-hot scream under the skin, sharp enough to draw out a sudden hiss through clenched teeth. Blood followed fast, not waiting to bead this time. It poured.
That one left a tremor in her shoulder. A desperate call of her body begging her to stop.
She ignored it.
Buzz.
Her hands were slick by now. She wiped them on the towel at her side, barely noticing the red smears across it. Her chest was tight, but not with panic or fear. Just an enormous weight she was unable to shake off.
The fourth was the last. The most intentional. Clean, vertical. Along the softest part of her inner forearm: dangerous territory. She hesitated for a split second, just enough to acknowledge the risk. She then proceeded to finish the ritual.
The blade opened her like a zipper.
The sound was almost inaudible - a soft tear, like paper under strain. Blood surged out immediately, hot against the bathwater. The pain came slow, then fast. A roaring sting that made her exhale through her teeth, nostrils flaring. She dropped the blade onto the bath ledge, then - nearly lifelessly - slid into the water, then watched it go from pink to red in wide swirls.
Her hands trembled now.
The ache was spreading - up her arms, into her jaw, behind her eyes.
The heat of the bath made it worse or... Better. She wasn't really sure.
All four slices were visible now, fresh and red, trembling slightly as her muscles tensed beneath them. The bleeding was steady. She counted the lines, like tally marks on a prison wall.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
She was here.
She had proof.