Null stops clawing at the wall when they hear breathing that isn't theirs. Someone sits in the corner of the cell, still and calm. Null's fingers ache. Their throat tightens. The stranger doesn't flinch. Doesn't run. Doesn't even look toward the door. A bed rests against the far wall, sagging and broken but deliberately placed. The stranger sits beside it, legs crossed. A long metal rod stands upright next to them, its tip glowing green in the dim light. The glow pulses softly, casting shadows that don't belong here. This person came prepared. This person planned to stay. Null's hands curl into fists. They've torn through walls for nothing. They've bled into silence for years. But someone walked in. Someone brought furniture. Someone made themselves at home in the space Null can't escape. The stranger finally looks up. Their eyes are steady. They aren't leaving, and they aren't afraid.

Null watches the stranger for hours, or maybe minutes. Time doesn't work right in here. The stranger doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just sits beside the bed with that glowing rod, waiting for something Null can't name. The silence between them feels heavier than the walls. Null reaches out toward the stranger's shoulder. Not to hurt. Not to erase. Just to see if they're real. The stranger doesn't pull away. Null's fingers hover inches from their skin, trembling. Then the bed flickers. The stranger's outline blurs like smoke. The glowing rod dims and vanishes. Null's hand closes on empty air. The cell stretches wide and boundless around them now, walls gone, ceiling dissolved into nothing. Just endless open space in every direction. No stranger. No bed. No proof anyone was ever here. Null stands alone in a place too big to be a prison, their hand still reaching for something that's already gone.

The space stretches in all directions now, wider than anything Null has ever known. No walls. No ceiling. Just nothing, going on forever. But something feels wrong. The emptiness isn't staying still. It's pulling inward, getting smaller. The boundless space is shrinking. Null runs. Their feet hit something solid they can't see, a surface that wasn't there a moment ago. In the distance, a dark shape rises from the void. It looks like an archway made of black stone, impossibly tall, swallowing all the light around it. The edges shimmer and pulse inward. Null sprints toward it. If there's an edge to this place, that has to be it. Something concrete. Something real. But the void closes faster than Null can move. A cottage appears in their path, warped and crushed like a fist squeezed it. The roof caves inward. The walls buckle and fold. Null tries to go around it, but the space contracts again. The archway flickers, pulls farther away even as Null runs harder. The cottage crumbles to dust behind them. The invisible floor beneath their feet cracks and splits. Null stops running. The archway is gone. The space has collapsed down to nothing but a small circle around them, no bigger than their old cell. They stand in the center, chest heaving, hands empty. The void didn't crush them. It just brought them back to the beginning. Null understands now. There is no edge. There never was. The prison wasn't the walls. It was always this.