>>535789405
Phantom Echoes
The void within the Phantom Ruby was endless.
Infinite had long since stopped counting the days—if days even existed here. Time was meaningless in this prison of his own making. At first, he had raged against his confinement, screaming until his voice (did he even have a voice here?) went raw. He replayed every battle, every defeat, fueling his hatred like a dying star clinging to its last embers.
But hatred, he was learning, was exhausting.
And so was loneliness.
The first time he heard the other voice—his voice, but softer, wearier—he attacked it.
"Shut up!" he snarled into the darkness. "I don’t need your weakness!"
The voice didn’t fight back. It only sighed.
"What’s the point?"
That question festered.
Infinite wasn’t sure when the idea first came to him. Perhaps it was born from desperation, or madness, or simply the need to prove he still existed. But one day (was it day?), he reached into the depths of his fractured mind and pulled.
A figure materialized before him—a perfect copy, crimson mask and all.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other.
Then the clone smirked.
"Finally," it said, cracking its knuckles. "Something to kill."
Infinite felt his lips twist into a grin.
They lunged at each other.
The fight was brutal, beautiful—a dance of phantom limbs and imagined pain. They traded blows that should have shattered bones, slashed with blades that didn’t exist. Infinite laughed as he drove a fist through the clone’s chest, relishing the way its eyes widened in shock before it dissolved into crimson mist.
For the first time in eternity, he felt alive.
But the high didn’t last.
The silence returned.
And with it, the voice.
"Did that satisfy you?"
Infinite ignored it.
He summoned another clone.
And another.