Overview
The void is the black extradimensional expanse used by gates, gate activators, void travel, and Malverand warp drives. Gates can open directly into it, controlled gate sequences can route through it, and Malverand warp drives couple to its edge through partial breaches. The void also contains exits that can be badly out of sync with one another, allowing gate travel, timerifts, and Malverand warp research to link distant worlds, displaced timelines, and both versions of Valrindor.
Nature
Travelers experience the void as cold, silent, weightless blackness with space and unstable time. Lights, gate signatures, essence traces, tethers, and familiar routes can provide orientation. Distant exits are difficult to identify. Essence is scarce inside it, making combat, survival, and long stays dangerous.
Access and Use
Belanor, Jareth, Amos, and other gate specialists navigate the void with activators, ropes, signatures, and technical knowledge. Silas and Zal'therak use the edge of the void to move beneath or alongside the material world, and their method can carry companions when the route is known. The Temple of no Return lies halfway in the void, the realm of the gates.
Abraxas uses named void rays through void magic. Origin magic and Malverand nanite-tech also produce black-line and ray attacks.
Gate Crossings and Disappearances
During Barachiel's Aethrendar Gate crossing, Khauren uses Oktlix against him; the gate collapses, the spiral shards split, and the missing emperor's succession opens the path to the fall of Malverand. On Vireen, Barachiel and Arcanis die after separate crossings through the damaged Aethrendar Gate; Eira later sends the revived atraxi bodies of the future Belanor and Jareth through the void toward atraxi gates. After Valalav, Thalena, Deylin, Sigurd, Silas, Lunorax, and Horol'Khai spend years inside the void. They complete the timerift loop that sends selected people into Varnhallow and the past.
In the later Malverand imperial world, Amos spends repeated dives in the void. He tracks Thalena's remains, recovers capsule-held essence traces, studies Oktlix, and compares the void with imperial warp drives. He traces Oktlix through scarred data, nanites, Kytherite, essence traces, the Maraveth Core, and the breach at Zarephon.