POV: The Void

The child does not push against me, he listens but I expected resistance.

I expected the familiar tightening, the instinctive recoil that living things perform when they sense me near. It is a universal constant of biology: the flinch comes first, then the denial, then the desperate, frantic reaching for names and prayers and weapons. He does none of it.

“You’re not loud,” he says, glancing around the grey expanse. “Just… wide.”

I pull closer, compressing my presence ...