What comes too close begins to lose colour, then become transparent and gaseous, before vanishing. The sensation is described as like going blind. When Atreyu attempts to look at it from a distance, he is unable to process what stands before his eyes, and the very sight causes him such pain that he is forced to look sideways. An abstract oxymoron that cannot and should not exist, for it does not and yet it is. In the novel, the Nothing is an inconceivable, formless, featureless, colourless negation of existence, impossible to describe, surrounded by an otherworldly mist. Should it not be stopped in time, the Nothing would obliterate all of Fantasia and leave everlasting damage on humanity's creativity, leaving them as easy prey for those who profit from apathy and broken minds.
In turn, its victims get turned into lies and deceits in the real world, furthering humanity's loss of dreams and empowering it to erase more, creating a vicious circle that can be only broken with renewed fantasy. All Fantasians in its presence are compelled to jump into it and meet their doom. The Nothing is a force of absolute oblivion erasing things and people from existence, leaving no trace whatsoever as if they never were there to begin with. It can be seen as a metaphor of adulthood that lost its ways, and the dangers of excessive pragmatism. As humanity is denying its fantasies in pursuit of materialistic goals, the Childlike Empress' health declines and the Nothing appears to destroy Fantasia.
It is linked to the disease plaguing the Childlike Empress, the ageless ruler of Fantasia. That is to say, the distaste for stories and the negation of imagination, hopes, and wishes forming Fantasia's very essence, for this world is made of everything that was ever imagined by human minds, since the Dawn of Times. The Nothing is the result of "human apathy, cynicism, and the denial of childish dreams".
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