The Fine Print of Existence

The honeymoon period ended on a Tuesday.

Vesper was cleaning Syzygy’s desk—a slab of meteorite—when she found the contract. It was the deed from the auction house, glowing with binding runes.

She couldn't read Eldritch, but she could read the diagrams.

Figure A: A Human Soul (Her).

Figure B: The Singularity (Syzygy).

Figure C: Consumption.

She traced the lines. It wasn't a marriage contract. It wasn't a servant's contract. It was a fuel injection schematic.

"A sacrifice," she whispered.

The air pressure in the room dropped. Syzygy materialized behind her.

"Vesper," he said. His voice was devoid of the warmth he had been simulating lately.

Vesper turned around, holding the paper. "You didn't buy a decorator. You bought a battery."

Syzygy moved closer. The static was erratic, jagged. "The Void is destabilizing. It grows hungry. If it is not fed a soul of sufficient density—a soul hardened by cynicism and despair—it will collapse. If it collapses, the universe folds in on itself."

"So you eat me," Vesper said. "To save the world."

"That was the plan," Syzygy admitted. "When I bought you."

"And now?"

Syzygy stopped. He looked at her. He looked at the library she had organized. He looked at the screaming flower in the corner. He looked at the human woman who had looked into the abyss and told it to wipe its feet.

"Now," Syzygy said quietly, "I find I have lost my appetite."

He waved his hand. A tear in reality opened next to the desk. Through it, Vesper could see the skyline of a city. New York. Rain. Neon lights. Noise.

"Go," Syzygy said.

Vesper looked at the portal. "If I leave, what happens to you?"

"I will unravel," Syzygy said simply. "I will lose my form. I will become the storm again. But I will hold the collapse back for as long as I can. A few millennia, perhaps."

"You'll die," Vesper said.

"I am the Void," he replied. "I cannot die. But I will cease to be... *Me*. I will cease to be the entity that knows how you take your tea."

He turned away from her. "Go, Vesper. Before I change my mind. My hunger is old, and it is difficult to deny."

Vesper looked at the portal. It was freedom. It was her old life. It was bills, and loneliness, and the constant feeling of being undervalued.

But it was safe.

She looked at Syzygy’s back. He was shaking. He was fighting his own nature to let her live.

"You're an idiot," she whispered.

She stepped through the portal.