All my life, I felt as if something were missing—something I had lost, yet could never quite name. It was a hollow ache in my chest, a phantom grief that branded my existence and tethered me to mediocrity. I became just another face in the crowd, never striving, never even able to taste the sweetness of success. What's the point? The question haunted me until the very end. Then, it was over—brief, unavoidable, and seemingly meaningless.
Then came the darkness, endless and absolute. The Abyss.
But my consciousness never faded. No god summoned me for judgment; there was only the void. In that darkness, there was no "where" to go; there was nothing but me. I could fly for a thousand miles or stay perfectly still; it made no difference. All I had left were my memories—the fragments of what I used to call a soul. Have you ever seen a person who has lost their memory? They become someone else entirely.
To save myself, I sheltered within those memories. But soon, remembering wasn't enough. I needed something else. I started to imagine. To create.
I imagined a place—a white hall. But why settle for a hall? I expanded it into a temple in my own honor, a monument to a god of one. Yet beyond the marble columns, there was only a flat, endless whiteness. So, I planted a forest. I raised Amazonian trees I had only ever seen in pictures, striving to make them real.
I painted, and I perfected the painting over and over. I meditated on the physics of it all: the wind had to move just so; gravity had to pull with a specific weight; the birds had to behave in their own instinctual, "birdy" way. I tried. I kept trying. What started as a spark of Will in the dark became a sanctuary. When I finally looked around, I was sitting upon the throne of my own creation—my temple, my forest, the stars I had meticulously placed in the sky, and the eternal sunset on the unreachable horizon.
It was mine. It was perfect. But I knew the truth: it wasn't real. Not yet.
I opened my eyes, and there was only the darkness again. Beautiful, endless darkness. I feel whole in here, somehow. It is as if I always belonged in here, as if I needed nothing more than this absolute peace and freedom.
And then, I sensed it. There was something else in here with me. I sensed its hunger.
It gave me no time.
The beast didn't aim for my throat—perhaps because it was smaller than me, or perhaps because my leg was simply the closer target. It tore through my thigh in a single, sickening snap of its jaws.
Pain. I never thought I would feel it again. But this wasn't the dull, fading ache of my previous life's end. This was deep. This pain felt as if a fragment of my very soul had been shredded.
I screamed. Tears—warm and real—escaped my eyes, but the darkness offered no mercy. The beast lunged again, determined to finish the job. We collided in the void, a frantic tangle of limbs and claws. Then, the world buckled.
Without warning, a rift tore open in the nothingness. We were sucked through, tumbling out of the abyss and into a world of jagged shadows. Gravity, a force I had only ever simulated in my mind, suddenly became a cruel reality. It slammed us toward the earth.
I hit the ground hard. Stones as sharp as obsidian waited for us. The impact threw us apart, stunning me and wounding me further. Nearby, the beast shrieked; it had been impaled on a jagged stone shard. Yet, even as the stone pierced its vitals, it didn't stop. It thrashed, its four lidless eyes locked onto me, slowly cracking the shard to free itself. It wanted me. It needed to devour me.
In its eyes, I saw the truth of this new existence. There was no mercy, no god, no reason. There was only violence and hunger.
And I was the prey.
I was weak. I was meaningless—just another meal to satiate a hollow stomach. It was a fool's dream to think I was alone in the void. It was pure luck that I hadn't been devoured while lost in my imaginary temple. If there were little ones like this, how many titanic monsters were drifting in the dark, waiting for me to grow large enough to notice?
I couldn't escape. My blood spilled onto the gray soil, pooling around the ruins of my leg. I wanted to cry. It was unfair. I had finally felt whole. I had finally found freedom. And now, I was to be eaten? Why?
The answer was cold: because that is the law. To eat, or be eaten. The strong consume the weak.
And I was weak.
No. The thought flickered like a dying ember, then roared into a flame. I am not weak. Not anymore.
I steeled my heart. As the blood drained from my body, a cold, jagged rage began to fill the void in my chest. I didn't want to run. I wanted to kill. I wanted to hear its bones snap. I found myself dragging my mangled body toward the creature, my fingers clawing at the dirt.
A numbness began to spread. My vision blurred as the loss of blood took its toll. My consciousness was slipping, drifting back toward the darkness.
Through the haze, I saw the air ripple. A rift appeared again—silent and impossible. It swallowed the beast's body up to its neck and then snapped shut with the sound of a thunderclap.
The creature's head rolled to a stop at my feet, its eyes still twitching with a hunger it would never satisfy.
I didn't know how it happened. I didn't care. As the world faded to black, only one thought remained, etched into my mind like a brand:
"All that is weak shall be devoured."