The Void Trials
The Champion
This was originally submitted for the May writing challenge—I felt inspired as soon as I read it so I felt that it deserved to be it’s own, separate piece.
If you want to participate in May’s challenge, submissions close at midnight on the 14th. Read the full details [HERE].
A Note From The Author:
This comes with a trigger warning. ⚠️
This is a poem based on a triggered memory. No specific details of what occurred are mentioned. I felt it important to provide this warning, in case you are in a place where even hearing trauma mentioned is triggering. I have done the work and healed this particular trauma, so writing about it is like telling a story, the emotions are no longer attached to it. I was a bit surprised that this was where the prompt led me, but it feels like a beautiful moment of healing that I can now attach to the memory.
Somewhere in the Void, there’s a forest.
No signage. No map. No name. Just a clearing where the silence is pressure—a heavy blanket muffling even the rustle of unseen leaves. Where the air itself seems to vibrate with a half-remembered lullaby, struggling to reach its final notes.
At first glance, it’s nothing—trees with bark like brittle bone, and a thin, ethereal light bleeding through the canopy, never quite touching the moss below.
If you linger long enough, if you hold yourself perfectly still, the edges of perception begin to fray, and the forest unravels…
It doesn't test you the way you'd expect. It doesn’t hand you a rusted sword or whisper riddles. There’s no final-boss waiting at the edge of the glade.
There’s only you…but not the you who stepped between these trees.
This is a ghost of a self, resurrected by the forest's most ancient alchemy. The you from before. The one who fell silent in the face of something too large, who got small to survive. The one who felt weak.
You won’t know that it’s happening, and I can’t explain rules from a place made to defy them. All I can say is that the forest speaks in a language that’s woven from threads of your past—a thread of pink buffalo-print fabric, jarringly familiar in this foreign space, caught on a branch that shouldn't exist, swaying to a breeze that isn't really there.
You won’t understand why it unsettles you. Not right away.
You’ll just feel it.
Like something ancient and knowing reaching up—its touch surprisingly gentle as it steals the very air from your lungs, leaving a hollow ache.
A memory, honed like a blade, pressed just beneath the ribs.
Pain. That is your summons.
If you can walk through it without becoming less than you once were—you don’t leave empty-handed. You leave changed.
Marked by the Void, blessed by its strange and unknowable power…consecrated, if you will.
Take my hand.
Allow me to be a source of comfort through the first trial.
A pink buffalo pattern
Blowing in the breeze
A tiny picture in a magazine
And I feel my body freeze
.
I’m right back in my bedroom
Half asleep and half awake
In my care bear ruffle nightgown
When I feel my body ache
.
My eyes flying open
Locking onto the first thing in sight
Pink Buffalo curtains
Fluttering in moonlight
.
Time looses all its meaning
While it freezes me in place
The world turns fuzzy
As tears stream down my face
.
Confusion blends with pain and fear
My voice cannot be found
One minute I’m trapped on my bed
The next I’m on the ground
.
Hands griping shag carpet
Legs trying to stand
Eyes trying to focus
Feet trying to land
.
Step after step
Am I moving or standing still
Passing through the doorway
A muted sense of thrill
.
The memory starts to fade to black
I’m back here in the now
The pink buffalo pattern
Just a picture
Somehow
Jeffrey and I stood at the edge of the forest, behaving less like illumination and more like a dream—unreliable and prone to sudden shifts. She didn’t know we were there. None of them ever do.
She was a fractured thing. One part tethered to the present, the other lost in the labyrinth of then, clutching a photograph that never existed—like a phantom limb lost in battle.
But then, a pause—
—like stillness taken from the heart of a storm.
She stood.
Just a breath at first.
And then another, deeper, seemingly drawing strength from some unseen well.
And then, as if an invisible hand had calmed her, the trembling stilled.
The forest hushed, a silence of profound attention. The wind, forever whispering secrets through the leaves, held its breath. Even time—the Void’s oldest trick—seemed to steady, suspended in the weight of the moment.
But what is now, when time is soup and we are fork?
The fragmented images of the past receded from her vision like a fading tide, and she found herself standing in the warm embrace of firelight. The air carried the faint scent of something warm and comforting. Around her, a circle of witnesses. Survivors. Champions.
Their faces, illuminated by the flickering firelight, held a deep pride…and profound recognition—a silent acknowledgment of the battles fought inside the Trials.
She looked down, and in her hand, a blade of light materialized. She never asked for it. It simply was, a natural extension of that moment of standing, of choosing the present over the past.
Above her, a banner, woven from moonlight and dreams, unfurled between the highest branches. Etched in a language older than apology:
Champion
The forest finally exhaled, rustling through the leaves like a blessing. The other Void Champions cheer.
Not for the pain, but for her.
For the quiet strength found in the face of the void. For reclaiming her existence.
For the champion she has become.
Until the next story,
—The Narrator
If you liked this post, check out some of my author favorite pieces by other authors: The Night Shift Files.
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