"...Alex, I am approximately six hundred quintillion nine hundred and ninety quadrillion six hundred and thirty eight trillion five hundred and seven billion four hundred and seventy two million six hundred and twenty thousand three hundred and eighty eight years old," said Notch, expertly reciting the ridiculously long number as if he had been repeating it in his head over and over again. "I know that because I have been counting every eon, every millennium, every year, every day, and every SECOND of my life since I first came into existence."

For a moment, I was staggered by just how OLD the person standing in front of me actually was. I don't think I even understood half of the long number that he had just recited. "Herobrine came into existence a few billion years after I did," Notch continued. "Jeb came into existence a few billion years after HIM. And yes, Alex, there are actually three of us." I closed my mouth, my question having been answered. "You have no idea just how lucky you mortals are," said Notch. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be an Ancient? To be like us? No, of course you don't. You can never understand the eternal pain and suffering that all three of us go through, but I will still try to explain it as best as I can. Do you remember me telling you back on the Mountain of Mojang that this…" He gestured to his own body. "...is only an avatar and not my real body?" I nodded numbly. "Yeah," I said. "I'm pretty sure you mentioned that at one point." Notch chuckled bitterly. "Well, that's the same for all Ancients," he said. "Creating and operating these avatars is the only way for us to interact with the physical world. We may be gods, but even we have our weaknesses." At that point, I thought I figured out what Notch was going for. He wanted to play himself as the victim, go, "Boo hoo! Oh, woe is me!", in order to gain my sympathy and my trust. Well, I refused to fall for that trick. I already fell for it once when Thomas tried doing the same thing. I was NOT going to make the same mistake again.

"Mere words can't describe what we go through every day," Notch continued. "But I'll try anyway. You see, our true forms are metaphysical in nature, and as a result, it's impossible for us to coexist with mortals in the physical realm. If we try to do so, all of reality will collapse in on itself, destroying absolutely everything in existence, even the laws of time and physics. Me, Jeb, and Herobrine are the only ones who can survive this ordeal. We will always live on, whether we like it or not. No matter how much we wish for death, death will never come to us." He leaned in closer to me, his eyes narrowing. "Our true forms are forever trapped in a realm where the laws of physics are nonexistent. In that realm, the impossible is possible. Where we come from, two plus two can equal five, infinity is a number instead of a concept, and seven sided cubes are no longer a thing of the imagination. You would think that such a world would be a paradise for those who seek knowledge throughout their lives...but you would be dead wrong. It wouldn't be fair to call that place hell, because even hell is more like a haven in comparison. We call that place...the Abyss." "The Abyss?," I asked. "Don't you mean the city of the Abyss?"

Only a few days after Romeo was defeated and Jesse proposed to me, I became very worried about Notch and what he might do in the future. Something in my gut told me that that wasn't going to be the last I've seen of him, so when the preparations for the wedding started, I delved into as much research as I could possibly cram into a short amount of time. However, even after long nights of poring over as many books as I could find, I couldn't find any useful information about Notch OR the Mountain of Mojang. Jesse and Petra became worried over how I was pretty much driving myself to exhaustion, and told me to forget about Notch. "What you're doing isn't good, Alex," I remembered Jesse saying. "If you keep this up, you might get sick or hurt yourself in some way." "Yeah," Petra agreed. "Don't let some bearded weirdo control you. Besides, it's not like he can be any worse than Romeo, am I right?" "But we don't know anything about him," I protested. "We don't know what he's capable of, where he's from, or even how he thinks. All we know is that he's willing to turn innocent people into statues and throw away lives like they mean nothing to him!" I sighed heavily. "I'm sorry guys, but I can't just 'forget about him.' He's...made a pretty lasting impact on me. I...I have to be prepared for what may happen next. If Notch ever comes back and we're not prepared for him...I'll never forgive myself, especially if there was something that I could've done." Despite everyone's pleas to get me to stop, I found myself unable to. But so far, none of my research was able to bear any fruit.

Then one day, Jack came to me with a book in his hands. "I found it on one of my many travels across the world," he explained. "It didn't do anything for me, but it might help you." The book turned out to be a journal, very similar to Sebastian's journal, that was written by a famous archeologist who was said to have vanished a long time ago: Patrick Peterson. Imagine my surprise when I saw a portrait of the man on the inside of the front cover, realizing that the man who wrote this journal was the same one who tried to kill me and my friends multiple times. The journal was filled with numerous accounts of archeological finds, but fortunately, Jack was kind enough to bookmark the part that he wanted me to see. It turned out that, when he was still sane, Patrick was obsessed with an ancient civilization known as the City of the Abyss. He went on to talk about its historical significance, its culture, and its mythology, which was the part that really caught my interest. According to that mythology, the city was ruled over by a deity who helped the people advance their technology to gobsmacking levels, but in return, they had to sacrifice one of their children every ten years. I was both horrified that people used to do that to their own children, and intrigued by the description of the deity that supposedly ruled over the city. Could that actually be Notch?, I thought, wondering if I had finally hit the jackpot.

I would've kept on reading if it wasn't for Stella, who suddenly barged into my room, took the book from my hands, and tossed it out the window, accidentally hitting some poor schmuck in the process. She told me that I shouldn't be locking myself in my own room and sticking my nose in a book all day like some kind of hermit. Yes, those were her exact words, and yes, I felt that she was being a little overdramatic. But at that moment, I also knew that she was right. Maybe Notch WILL come back soon, but that was in the future, and I needed to focus on the present. So I finally stopped my research, much to the joy of my friends and family, and began to help the others with preparations for the wedding. That was how I knew about the city of the Abyss in the first place. "Of course not," said Notch, shaking his head in disappointment. "Do you really think that an abandoned city can compare to the horrors of the world that I had just described? The Abyss - the REAL Abyss - is a pocket of space that exists between universes, almost like a barrier. It is a zero-dimensional plane of reality, which means moving around in it is impossible. When you're stuck in the Abyss, you cannot move, you cannot see, you cannot hear, you cannot speak. All you can do is think. And even THAT isn't a permanent luxury. Tell me, Alex, what happens to a mind when it has nothing to do, nothing to process, nothing to ponder over? And what happens when it's left like that for thousands of eons?" At that point, I saw something in Notch's eyes that was never there before: fear. "It erodes," Notch whispered, his voice so cold and empty that I felt shivers crawl up my spine just from hearing it. "It ROTS. It will slowly die away. You won't notice it at first. It will be very gradual. But make no mistake, you WILL notice. And when you do, you'll feel pure, unadulterated fear, the likes of which you've never felt before. But you won't be able to do anything. You'll just be completely still, slowly losing your mind, slowly, slowly...until there's nothing left. Until you can't think at all."

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Just how long has it been? A million years? A billion? A trillion? I've been trapped in the Abyss for so long that I've lost count of how many years I've been stuck here ages ago. Was this how I was going to spend the rest of eternity? As a massive blob of gray flesh aimlessly floating in an infinite space of nothingness, unable to see, hear, or talk? After spending so long in the Abyss, my mind was not what it used to be. Parts of my brain have already rotted away, though not so severely that I can no longer form coherent thoughts. I still can, but they've now grown…muddled, to say the least. I sometimes find myself zoning out, like I was thinking clearly for a moment, but then suddenly, my thinking process is immediately halted and it takes a while for me to get my bearings back. My memory has also been affected by the vast amount of time that I've spent in the Abyss. I can barely even remember what my friends' faces used to look like, how they acted, what their voices sounded like. I could still remember their names, so thank god for small mercies. These happy, albeit short memories are the only thing that's keeping me from losing my sanity in this dark, empty void of sadness and grief.

Not only do I feel my mind fading away with each passing moment, piece by piece, memory by memory, but I can also feel my very life essence being drained away. The Void, which is what I've started calling the multiverse itself, is especially hungry now that it only has one Ancient to snack on rather than three. I didn't mean to anger it so. I just wanted to help my friends, to save the world, to stop more people from dying. But upon doing so, I ended up taking away the Void's only source of food and nourishment, and now, I have to pay the price. This is my punishment. To replace the missing food source for the Void, I had to BECOME that food source. The Ancients - Notch, Jeb, and Herobrine - portrayed themselves as gods, but in reality, they were nothing more than fuel for the clockwork machine that is the multiverse.

Would I still have done everything in my power to defeat the Ancients and save everyone if I knew what was in store for me beforehand? I'd like to think that I would, but I'm not so sure. I now understand why Notch was so desperate to end his own life. Death really is better than the hell that Ancients have to go through every day. But I can't just kill myself. The Void won't let me. It now depends on me for its own survival, and of course, it can't just have its food sources killing themselves and each other willy nilly. I suppose that's why an Ancient's true form has to be so grotesque and inhumane. With my senses stripped away from me and my limbs replaced with stubby flippers, ending my own life would NOT be a very easy task to do.

At first, all I could think about was the pain and how I wished that someone could come and save me from this hellhole. But after thousands of years of waiting with no hope in sight and no light at the end of the tunnel, I became used to the pain and suffering, to the point where it felt more like a continuous dull ache all over my body and inside of my head. After some time, I have even come to grudgingly accept my eternal prison. In the Abyss, I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, and I couldn't see. Like Notch, Herobrine, and Jeb, I could create avatars of my own to interact with the mortal realm, but I chose not to do so because I couldn't bear to see a world where all of my friends and family are dead, long since vanished or crumbled away into dust through the passage of time. I truly was all alone. After so many eons in the Abyss, I doubt that there is anyone left on earth who remembers me, or if there is even an earth left. It was very likely that the world had crumbled away through time, but I didn't want to send an avatar to go there and see if that was true. In a scenario such as this, ignorance truly was bliss.

I really was all alone. I have no one left, no one who cares about me, no one who even knows that I exist and am suffering. All that I have left to keep me company during those dark and lonely years are the memories that I made with my friends and family as a mortal, and even those memories are slowly slipping from my grasp with each passing moment. Every day, every hour, every second, I look back on those memories - the ones that I can still remember - and wonder to myself: could I have done things differently? If I knew what was going to happen, or if I was stronger or smarter, could I have prevented so many deaths from occurring? Even though I was able to save the world from Herobrine, so many people needlessly died before that could happen. All of my friends had been slaughtered and killed in gruesome ways. And Jesse, the love of my life, the kind and loving man who saw something in me that I didn't, was vaporized right in front of me, reduced to a charred, smoking skeleton, and I did nothing.

All I could do now was ponder, mourn, and regret. After all, there was nothing else that I could possibly do. Those dark and terrible moments that I regret to this day still happened. It's all in the past, and you can't change the past, no matter how much you want to. There are really no two ways about it. I have to live with those mistakes. Still, one can dream…

…wait a minute! What was that? I suddenly felt a foreign presence in the Abyss with me, even though I couldn't see anything except for darkness. I've been trapped in the gullet of the Void for so long that even without the use of my five senses, I could still sense my surroundings, and ever since I first arrived here, everything felt the same. There couldn't be something else in the Abyss with me. It just wasn't possible. Only Ancients could survive in the impossibly harsh conditions of the Abyss, and as far as I know, the only three Ancients that I was familiar with, besides myself, were Notch, Jeb, and Herobrine. They are long dead. In fact, they have been dead for hundreds of billions of years, maybe even longer. Unless…maybe there was yet another Ancient that has been in hiding this whole time, and has chosen now of all times to reveal themselves? No, that was too far fetched, even in a realm of impossibilities like the Abyss. The Ancients' lives were closely intertwined together, to the point where when one of them dies, then all of the other Ancients perish alongside them. So what could it be?

Even though I couldn't see or hear the strange new presence, I could sense it getting closer and closer to me. I couldn't get away from it if I wanted to because I was literally stuck in place, unable to move a single muscle. But I didn't want to get away. I've been all alone in the Abyss for such a long time that any form of contact, even with something that wasn't human, was something that I craved for but never found…until now. As the presence got closer, I could feel the aura that it was exuding. Its aura was nice, warm, and comforting. Still, even though I wanted more than anything to bask in this new presence after being alone for so long, I didn't drop my guard. After all, Notch once exuded an aura that was very similar to this one, and he ended up being a psychopathic narcissist who turned people into stone.

The presence finally got so close to me that it was practically touching me, its warm and loving aura growing immensely strong. At that moment, I suddenly felt a great sense of shame. If this presence actually had a sentient mind behind it, then what was it thinking when it saw me? What was going through its head when it saw such a wretched and disgusting creature like myself, a gray and gelatinous blob of flesh and misery with twisted tentacles, rubbery flippers, black ooze leaking from its pores, and milky white eyes that showed nothing but pain and loss? I began feeling a sense of panic, not because I felt that the presence posed a threat to me, but because I was afraid that the presence was disgusted by my hideous appearance and was going to leave me all alone again. I didn't want to be alone. Not again. Never again.

To my great relief, the presence didn't end up leaving my side. Instead, it stayed with me and almost seemed to observe me with childish curiosity. "Don't go," I wanted to say. "Stay with me. Please." To my astonishment, the presence seemed to know exactly what I wanted to say, because right away, it answered. "You poor, poor child," the presence spoke. "What happened to you? How did you end up in such a terrible place?" I would've cried tears of joy if I could've, if my eyes still had tear ducts. Not only did the presence have such a beautiful voice, like the voice of an angel or a kind mother, but it was the first voice, or SOUND, that I have heard in so many years. I didn't know how I was able to hear its voice without my ears.

"You are suffering," the presence spoke. "You have been trapped in this prison for so long that you have lost your own conception of time. I can see into your heart, my child. And I can see that you have done many valorous acts, many deeds of heroism, and yet, you still got punished for it." I could almost feel the presence stroking its hand on me in an effort to comfort me. "It gives me great pain to see you like this, my child. You have done so much for those you cared about, despite your harsh upbringing, yet you are still punished for it with even more pain and suffering. I am so sorry that it took me so long to get to you, my child. I was on the other side of the multiverse when I heard your cries for help. Yes, I heard your cries even though you didn't - couldn't - make a sound. But I am here now. And I want to help you."

It was like music to my eyes. Could this be my way out? Am I finally going to get out of here? "I'm afraid that I cannot help you leave this place," the presence said mournfully. "The multiverse - the Void, as you call it - cannot survive without a food source to draw its power and energy from. The three Ancients that you killed so long ago were meant to be that food source. You made the Void angry, and it unjustly punished you by turning you into an Ancient and taking you to this awful place. The Void is infinite, eternal, and above all else, powerful. Even I cannot disobey its rules." And just like that, my hopes were dashed. "But I would not have come all this way just to bring you bad news," said the presence. "I cannot take away all of your pain - that would be impossible - but I can at least relieve some of it, if you want me to."

Relieve some of my pain? What did the presence mean by that? "I know that there is something you want. You want it more than anything else in the world. You want it even more than escaping this terrible fate. You want…a second chance." My heart would've stopped if I still had one. What did the presence mean? Is it saying what I think it's saying? "I cannot help you get back to your normal life, nor can I offer you the sweet release of death. Both of these would be impossible. What I can give you, however, is another chance for you to make amends, to correct your past mistakes, to see your friends and family again. Is that what you want?" Yes, I thought. I want that more than anything else. Just a second chance. "And what would you do with that second chance?," asked the presence. "How would you change the past?" I would save everyone, I thought. Jesse, Petra, Lukas, everyone. I'd save them all.

"Then so be it," said the presence. "Here is your second chance. Don't waste it." After that, the presence left just as suddenly as it had appeared. I no longer felt its calm and warming aura anymore. One second, it was right by my side, and the next second, it was gone. It was no longer in the Abyss with me. I was all alone again. But…was the presence telling me the truth? Did it really give me a second chance like it said it would? What did it even mean by "second chance?" All of those questions flowed through my mind. Despite the presence's promise that things were going to get better, I didn't feel any different than I did before. Has anything really changed? Now that I thought about it, there WAS a new sensation tingling in the back of my mind, like a tiny alarm going off. It was like when the presence first arrived here and I became aware of it the moment it stepped foot into the Abyss. But this felt different. It felt more sinister, disturbing, and…somewhat familiar. But for the life of me, I couldn't understand where this new sensation came from, nor did I recognize what it meant. But I decided to shrug it off for the time being so that I could focus on the second chance that this presence supposedly gave me. It told me that I could see my friends and family again, but that shouldn't be possible. They were all dead, weren't they? They've been dead for billions, maybe even trillions of years.

And yet, a small part of me couldn't help but hope, which genuinely surprised me, since I thought that I had already lost all of the hope that I once had a long time ago. I shouldn't get my hopes up like that, a very large part of me, the part that had been bashed on, banged up, and generally mistreated, whispered to myself. But there's no harm in seeing for yourself, the other part of myself whispered to me, the much smaller part that still clung onto the hope that I once had as a child. As Lucy. I would've sighed at that moment if I still had a mouth.

Finally, I decided that there was no use in torturing myself further by waiting. So I ended up summoning one of my own avatars and sent that avatar back to the mortal realm, where I was sure that I was going to be met with the sight of barren wastelands, dead trees, and dead skeletons strewn all over the place. It had been such a long time since I last visited the earth in the body of one of my avatars. Anything could've happened while I was away.

My avatar took the appearance of what I used to look like when I was still a mortal. It had blond hair, light blue eyes, a white shirt with a flower imprinted on the front, and blue jeans. I placed my avatar near the place where my house used to be, the same house that I lived in and built with my own two hands after meeting Thomas and Annie for the first time. Right now, there was no living soul inside of that avatar. There was only a completely lifeless body with its arms hanging at its sides and its shoulders slumping, yet still able to stand up on its feet. But that could easily be rectified. Even though my time as an Ancient was nothing short of horrific, I was still able to learn a few new things. For instance, controlling an avatar was like playing as a character in a video game. Even though my true form was still trapped inside of the Abyss, I could still control my avatar and see everything through its eyes. It was the only way for an Ancient to properly interact with the mortal realm without having to enter there yourself like Herobrine did and potentially destroy all of reality and existence in the process.

I took control of my then lifeless avatar by linking my mind to that of the avatar, so to speak. It was a bit like putting on virtual reality goggles, for lack of better words. I opened my avatar's eyes, blinked them to clear my blurry vision, and looked around at my surroundings. What I saw made me nearly drop my jaw in shock. After standing in place for a few minutes in shocked silence, I covered my mouth with my hands and felt tears of pure joy flowing down my cheeks. It turned out that the presence kept its promise. Instead of seeing a barren wasteland like I had expected, I was instead met with a large forest. Trees with green leaves stood all around me, while green grass could be felt beneath my feet. This shouldn't have been possible. After spending so much time in the Abyss, every living thing on earth, including trees and plants, should've died off a long time ago. And yet, there was the evidence right in front of me, proving me wrong. But what really got to me, what really lifted up my spirits…was that I recognized this forest. This was where I used to live, back when I was just a teenager, back when Jesse and I hadn't even met yet or become heroes. To me, this could only mean one thing…

I was back in the past…and all of my friends were still alive.