The Empty

## Tehom

**The Empty**, also known as **Tehom**, is the primordial void that was there before God created existence with the creation of the Celestial Princes. It's the afterlife of all immortal beings.

## Overview

In the Bible, the **Abyss** is an unfathomably deep or boundless place. The term comes from the Greek ἄβυσσος, which means bottomless, unfathomable, boundless. It is used as both an adjective and a noun.

It appears in the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament. It translates the Hebrew words *tehom* (תהום‎, deep), *tsulah* (צולה‎, sea-deep, deep flood) and *rachabh* (רחב‎, spacious place).

In the original sense of the Hebrew *tehom*, the abyss was the primordial waters or chaos out of which the ordered world was created (Genesis 1:2). The term could also refer literally to the depths of the sea, the deep source of a spring or the interior of the earth.

In a later extended sense in intertestamental Jewish literature, the abyss was the underworld, either the abode of the dead (*sheol*) or eventually the realm of the rebellious spirits (Hell). In the latter sense, specifically, the abyss was often seen as a prison for demons.

This usage was picked up in the New Testament. Jesus sent the Gadarene swine into the abyss (Luke 8:31) and the beast from the sea (Revelation 13:1) will rise out of the abyss (Revelation 11:7). The locusts ascend out of the abyss to torment those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads (Revelation 9:1-11). Paul uses the term in Romans 10:7 when quoting Psalm 71:20, referring to the abode of the dead.

## Summary

Tehom is the primordial void filled with silence and nothingness, where the cosmic entity known simply as the Void resides and rules over the souls sent there as viceroy in the name of God and Death. There is little to no known information about the realm as it is a taboo subject among the celestials, who are the only beings capable of comprehending its existence.

While it is popularly believed that it predated God and the evidence for some entities more primordial and powerful than Him, this is incorrect and was invented to be used as an excuse by those who are against the Three Factions, especially against Heaven and the Christian Faction.

According to the Void themself, their origins is very murky and difficult to explain in any language and in any way that is comprehensible to the human mind, stating that they and the void came to existence shortly after the Seven Princes - possibly between Azrael and Samael - but definitely before the Outside was created.

## Purposes

### Primordial Void

Tehom acts as the primordial void that predated existence before God has created Creation and everything within it. Because of this, it is filled to the brim with raw and potent creative power, which would then be purified through the systems of Hylemorphes into the power behind all acts of creation, regardless of its origins or its sizes.

### Immortals' Afterlife

After the original sin was released into the world by Adam and Eve, came with it the concepts of death and mortality which had been applied to even the deathless celestials. In order to stabilize the natural order, God transformed the Void into the afterlife of immortal beings such as the angels, the fallen angels, the demons, as well as many other immortal creatures within the supernatural world.

While staying within the void, the souls there remain "asleep", forever stuck inside a static state for eternity while their consciousness remains as active as ever. Under certain circumstances, these souls can be summoned through lost and forbidden rituals, though the summoned souls are "forever scarred by their gleams of the abyss."

Among the original Three Factions, the souls of angels, fallen angels, and demons do not remain there for eternity, however, as their corporeal body will eventually reform after millions of years, and when they are reborn, regardless of their previous alignments, they will be pure angels completely without their original personality and free will.

### Eternal Prison

According to Azazel, aside from being the afterlife for the immortals, it also serves as an eternal prison for some of God's... "less glorious" creations. Among these creations are the Asrestars, the beings created by God before djinns and humans and were thrown into the void by the Seraph Yomiel under the commands of the Four Great Seraphs.

## Notable Locations

### Ex-Nihilo

**Ex-Nihilo** (エクス・ニヒロ, *Ekusu Nihiro*) is the center of Tehom and the personal abode of the Void. In 20XX, after returning from the Realm of the Dead with Lilith's amputated arm, the Void used it to create artificial Super Devils using the souls of the deceased demons sent there as the template, and since then, it has been the new abode of these devils.

### The Silence

**The Silence** (沈黙, *Chinmoku*) is a pocket-realm located in the darkest depths within the infinite void that is Tehom. This is the Eldritch Ones were imprisoned within due to their cruelty. According to the Void, the Silence is separated into a thousand levels, each level is infinitely greater than the last, and the most secured level located at the bottom where the most wicked of God's creations are sealed.

#### Cage of Lucifer

It's later revealed that at the bottom of the Silence, hidden beneath hundreds and thousands of angelic runes, laid the physical entrance to the Cage of Lucifer where the eponymous Celestial Prince was imprisoned after he was defeated in the Heavenly War.

### The Outside

**The Outside** (外部, *Gaibu*) is the realm existing outside Creation, above and beyond Adam Kadmon and the Four Worlds. It was born alongside the Seven Princes, "the concept of existence at its purest sense", and contains within it is the Abrahamic Heaven ruled by God and the angels, the Abrahamic Underworld ruled by the demons, and Purgatory ruled by the fallen angels.

## Quotes

**The Void**: "*Before God and the Princes, creation, destruction, Heaven, Hell, your precious little Earth, what was there?*"
**Teodoro**: "*Nothing?*"
**The Void**: "*Yes. That's right. Nothing. Nothing but empty and you are soaking in it. Angels, fallen angels, and demons, all of them come here when they die (...) sleeping an endless, peaceful sleep.*"
— The Void and Teodoro Legrenzi

## Trivia

* The name, *Tehom*, means "Deep Waters" or "Great Deep" in Hebrew.
* "Ex-Nihilo" means "from or out of nothing", and is associated with the doctrine of *Creatio ex nihilo*, in which matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act.
* While Celestial Princes aren't allowed to have power over Tehom, the Void claims it's actually how its supposed to work but is actually a "sweet lie".
* The Void considers Tehom as even worse than the Underworld, saying that "at least Hell is something" - a contradiction as during their initial introduction, they said the souls within Tehom peacefully sleep.
	+ Maalik claims that despite being called the Empty, the place is full with the sorrow and despair that comes from the fallen angels and demons sleeping there who dream about their greatest regrets. This is likelike what the Void means, that though they appear to sleep peacefully, they constantly dream of their greatest regrets.
* Aside from dying, it's possible for an immortal to visit Tehom by entering a near-death state through the removal of most of their life-force. In effect, such a visit is comparable to a near-death experience for a human.