The Outsider watched as Billie Lurk led the boy she thought was a god out of the darkness. A whale bared its teeth and the ruins sharpened, the water bubbling in smug satisfaction. The boy could live a life, would remember his time as The Outsider, and Lurk and Daud would think they had won.

But The Outsider WAS the Void, and no half-hearted ritual undoing or rememberence of lost names could tear him was Other, unbound and infinite.

The story that Lurk had learned was true, to an extent. The boy she was freeing really had been ritually sacrificed and tossed into the Void 4000 years ago, and since that day he had been little more than a memory worn as a shell. He was the conduit.

It was probably for the best that the boy was freed. Ever since Delilah's... meddling... her pathetic scrambles for power and control twisting the Void in shallow coils around her, his conduit had grown ever more seperate, the link between them hollowing out. Lurk's severing of that umbilical was rather preferable to puppeting a mortal awake and screaming.

Now he would find a new conduit, a new shell to wear. It would take time, not many were suitable and even less would be in the right place at the right time. Ritual sacrifices were not as common as they used to be. But, one way or another, someone new would be the face of The Outsider.

It would not do to be without a voice. How else would he give his gifts to those who were so, so, interesting?