Chapter 16

        Screaming into the void had long since lost its appeal. Violet floated in the endless darkness, her frustration building with each passing moment. How long had she been here? Time seemed meaningless in this empty space within her own mind.

        "I hate you," she whispered into the darkness, though she knew Bahumura wasn't listening. He was too busy using her body for whatever destructive purpose he'd set his mind to. Her hands clenched into fists as she thought of her mother, of her father wounded in the Eternal Sanctum, of her separation from Chris, of everything this ancient evil had stolen from her.
        
        The darkness around her rippled, responding to her emotion. Violet paused, focusing on the disturbance. Another wave of anger rolled through her, and this time she saw it clearly – the void shifting like disturbed water, colors bleeding into the blackness.
        
        A memory surfaced: her mother's garden in the Eternal Sanctum. Without conscious thought, the space around her began to change. Stone pathways materialized beneath her feet, night-blooming flowers pushing up through cracks in the ancient rock. The air itself seemed to thicken with familiar scents.
        
        "How interesting." Bahumura's voice slithered through her creation. "You're learning to shape the prison of your own mind."
        
        The garden's edges began to darken, but Violet held firm, maintaining her construct through sheer will. "Why do you hate everything so much? What could possibly drive someone to such endless destruction?"
        
        Laughter echoed through the space as Bahumura took form before her – a mass of shadow with burning yellow eyes. "Hate? You understand so little, little princess. I don't hate everything. I simply wish to remake it all properly this time."
        
        "Because Onu'rah rejected you?" The words left Violet's mouth before she could stop them, knowledge she shouldn't have possessed.
        
        The garden trembled as Bahumura's rage flared. "You dare—" He stopped, those yellow eyes narrowing. "Ah. You're seeing my memories, aren't you? How... unfortunate."
        
        The garden continued to solidify around them, growing stronger with Violet's rising confidence. Another memory flashed through her mind – Primordia as it once was, a realm of pure light and endless possibility. Gods walked its paths, creating and shaping reality with casual grace. She saw what she somehow knew to be Noma, brilliant and distant, forever focused on his work. And there was Onu'rah, her beauty almost blinding, crafting wonders to catch his attention.
        
        "Stop that," Bahumura snarled, his shadowy form rippling with agitation.
        
        "I can see you watching her," Violet pressed, the memories flowing faster now.
        
        "Following her like a shadow, burning with— wait." She paused, understanding dawning.
        
        "You didn't just want her. You wanted what she had. Noma's attention."
        
        "ENOUGH!" The garden shook as Bahumura's rage exploded outward. "You think you understand? You see fragments and think you know me?" His form expanded, threatening to engulf the space. "I was half of everything! Before Noma, before creation itself, I was part of Nomura. Equal to Noma in every way!"
        
        The truth crashed through Violet's mind like a tidal wave – the original being, Nomura, splitting into two halves. Light and darkness, creation and destruction, Noma and Bahumura. But something had gone wrong in that divine division.
        
        "He got everything," Bahumura's voice dropped to a venomous whisper. "The power to create, the love of others, even our original purpose. And I got..." his form swirled in bitter demonstration. "The void. The darkness. The pieces nobody wanted."
        
        "So you destroyed it all?" Violet challenged. "Burned Primordia, killed countless gods, nearly wiped out Onu'rah – all because you were jealous?"
        
        "I tried to rebuild it!" Bahumura roared. "To make it better, stronger! But they wouldn't let me. Instead, they stripped away my form, reduced me to this." His shadows coalesced into a shapeless mass with burning yellow eyes, a cruel mockery of his original divine form. "Do you know what it's like, little princess, to be a god without substance? To only exist fully when inhabiting another's flesh?"
        
        Another memory surfaced – Bahumura's countless attempts to destroy Solaris, each time thwarted by the Elyndrians and those before them, each failure driving him further into madness. She saw a wave of destruction he triggered, meant to wipe the planet clean. The strange focus the Builders had on that world, as if it held some secret even they didn't fully understand.
        
        "If I cannot create," he hissed, "I will recreate. And now that precious Noma has vanished like a coward, I'll remake everything as it should have been from the start."
        
        "You're not the first or the last, you know," Bahumura continued, his form swirling with dark pride. "Long before your precious father existed, eons before the Eternal Sanctum, I learned to possess others in Primordia itself. So many gods, so easily corrupted..."
        
        Another memory crashed through Violet's defenses – scores of lesser gods falling to Bahumura's influence, their divine forms twisted by his darkness until they destroyed themselves and each other. The memory carried a sharp edge of pleasure; he had enjoyed watching divinity tear itself apart.
        
        "Is that why they really destroyed your true form?" Violet asked, maintaining her garden while pushing deeper into his memories. "Not just because you attacked Primordia, but because you corrupted other gods?"
        
        "Corrupted?" Bahumura laughed, the sound like breaking glass. "I showed them truth. That creation itself was flawed. That Noma's perfect realm was built on lies." His form shifted, momentarily taking the shape of one of his ancient victims. "They called it corruption. I called it enlightenment."
        
        More memories surfaced – Bahumura watching from the shadows as Obel'jon created the Builders, as the layers of reality expanded outward from Primordia. His growing facination with Solaris intensified as she delved deeper into his memories. She witnessed him in the planet's earliest days, moving unseen through its pristine landscape. Then came the moment that changed everything – Bahumura, reaching deep into the planet's core, planting a seed of pure corruption.
        
        "Shaogog," Violet whispered, recognizing the being of immense power that emerged from that seed. "You created the First One." Violet was pulling more knowledge from Bahumura than he realized. With the help of Valmir and Dakon, the Elyndrians had only recently dealt with Shaogog.
        
        The memory shifted, showing the Builders' panic as they discovered what Bahumura had done. One layer after another they added to the planet's surface, desperately trying to bury his corruption deep enough that it could never reach the surface.
        
        "Why Solaris?" Violet pressed, sensing his thoughts turning to that familiar world. "Of all the realms, all the planets the Builders created, why do you always return there?"
        
        "Because it's wrong," he snarled. "Can't you feel it? That world pulses with power it shouldn't have. The Builders poured too much into it, layer upon layer, secret upon secret. It's a wound in reality, a chance to—"
        
        He stopped abruptly, realizing he'd said too much. But Violet was already following the thread of his thoughts, pushing deeper into memories he'd rather keep hidden. She saw him testing the boundaries of reality around Solaris, searching for weak points, for ways to unmake creation itself.
        
        Then she dug deeper, beyond his facination with planet Solaris, finding something else. A memory tinged with genuine fear – Bahumura in his Dark Avatar form, backing away from the edge of Baskar Isle as Chief Milama's power pushed him toward the abyss below. The profound terror of that moment echoed through his being, a fear deeper than any Violet had sensed before.
        
        "Oblivion," she whispered, understanding dawning. "You're afraid of it. All of you are – even the gods themselves fear what lies beneath the Void Realm."
        
        "Be silent!" Bahumura's form exploded outward, but Violet caught the tremor in his voice. For the first time, she felt him truly rattled.
        
        "That's why you backed away on Baskar Isle," she pressed, holding onto this revelation. 
        
        "Not because of Milama's power, but because you feared falling into the abyss. True oblivion..."
        
        "You know nothing of the abyss," Bahumura hissed, but his shadowy form contracted, drawing in on itself defensively. "Even in my original form, even at the height of my power, none of us dared venture below Primordia. There are things better left unknown..."
        
        Violet seized on his moment of weakness, pressing deeper into his memories. She saw fragments of ancient discussions – Noma and Obel'jon speaking in hushed tones about what lay below, Onu'rah turning away from the edge in terror, even Vol'nash refusing to extend the Infernal Chasm any deeper for fear of breaching that forbidden space.
        
        "The great destroyer," Violet taunted, her confidence growing. "Afraid of a little darkness below creation?"
        
        "You ignorant child!" Bahumura's form wavered between rage and fear. "Even your father, even Vol'nash himself knows better than to—"
        
        But something shifted then. Violet felt the world around them change, felt Bahumura's attention snap to their physical reality. Her moment of triumph shattered as she was suddenly pulled into her body's senses – the smell of smoke, the heat of flames, screams in the distance.
        
        "No..." she whispered, horror washing over her as she realized what her physical form had been doing while she explored Bahumura's memories. An entire village burned around them, the bodies of villagers scattered across the ground like discarded toys.
        
        An elderly man charged toward them, brandishing a pitchfork, his eyes full of terror and determination. "Y-you monster!" he screamed at Violet.
        
        "Watch closely, princess," Bahumura purred, his control reasserting itself. "See what happens to those who oppose a god."
        
        "No! Stop!" But Violet felt herself pushed back into the void as Bahumura raised her hand. The man's life extinguished with a casual gesture, his body crumpling to the ground.
        
        Back in the darkness of her mind, Violet's constructed garden crumbled to ash. She had been so focused on uncovering Bahumura's fears, so intent on understanding his past, that she'd lost sight of what he was doing with her body in the present.
        
        "Did you think understanding me would help you stop me?" Bahumura's voice filled the void. "I've had eons to come to terms with what I am. Your little insights mean nothing."
        
        But Violet held onto what she'd learned, even as grief and horror threatened to overwhelm her. Bahumura feared the abyss. The great destroyer, the corrupted god, the being who had unmade so much of creation – he feared something. It wasn't much, but it was a weakness. And right now, floating in the darkness of her own mind while her body was used as a weapon of destruction, she needed every advantage she could find.
        
        "Chris," she whispered into the void. "Please hurry."
        
        Violet floated in the void once more, the scent of the burning village still fresh in her memory. She could feel Bahumura's satisfaction radiating through their shared consciousness, his pleasure at having reminded her of her helplessness. But beneath that satisfaction, she sensed something else – a lingering unease. She had seen too much, learned too much about him.
        
        "Your little victory over my memories changes nothing," he said, his voice echoing through the darkness. "Even now, your body serves my will. We march ever closer to my true goal, and soon, all of creation will be remade."
        
        "And then what?" Violet asked softly. "When you've destroyed everything, corrupted every world, what will you have left? Will it finally make Onu'rah notice you? Will it bring back your physical form? Will it make Noma return to witness your revenge?"
        
        The void trembled with his anger, but Violet felt something else beneath it – uncertainty, perhaps even fear. Not just of the abyss now, but of his own emptiness, the hollow core of his eternal rage.
        
        "Enough," he snarled, and Violet felt reality shifting around them again. "Let me show you what else we've accomplished while you played at understanding the divine."
        
        The void ripped away, and Violet found herself thrust back into her body's senses. They stood atop a cliff overlooking not just one burning village, but an entire valley of destruction. Settlements smoldered in the distance, dark smoke climbing into the evening sky. Bodies littered the ground below, not just villagers, but soldiers who had tried to stop her – to stop him.
        
        "You see?" Bahumura's voice echoed in her mind as her body moved without her consent, walking along the cliff's edge. "While you dug through my memories, while you searched for weaknesses, I've been busy. The armies of this region are decimated. Soon, we'll move on to larger targets." Her hand raised, purple energy crackling between her fingers. "Your body holds such wonderful potential, princess. More than your father ever realized."
        
        Violet tried to scream, to fight back, but she felt herself being pulled back into the void once more. The last thing she saw was her reflection in a pool of water – her eyes burning with that sickly yellow glow, her face twisted in a smile that wasn't her own.
        
        As darkness consumed her consciousness once more, Violet held onto every scrap of knowledge she'd gained. Bahumura's fear of the abyss, his twisted jealousy, his obsession with planet Solaris – each piece was a weapon, if only she could learn to use them. Somewhere out there, Chris was searching for her. Until then, she would watch, and wait, and remember.
        
        And perhaps, when the moment was right, even a god could be made to fear the dark.