Prometheus
The primordial world was akin to the Absolute Void — a perfect nothingness, without even the concept of chaos to its name. Some called it a lake: water so utterly still, without a single breath of wind, neither swaying nor flowing, that one could not help but wonder whether "lake" was a word it deserved at all.
And yet it was a little different. No wind stirred it; nothing swayed; nothing flowed. The only difference was that there wasn't even any stagnant water to be found.
And so life and death were one and the same. To live was, in itself, to die; to die was, in itself, to live. The Netherworld, that realm the dead were said to depart for, did not yet exist — and so soul and flesh had never once been divided.
Just as breadth and direction lost all meaning in that endless white expanse, so too did the fear of death lose all meaning in a world where life and death were one. How could that which lives come to fear life itself? Such was the bond between them — life and death, existences that could never be torn apart.
Thus the world was a ring of return, its beginning joined to its end — for life and death had long since forfeited their meaning to each other, and to live or to die meant nothing at all.
Then, like an ant gnawing through the heart of a tree, it devoured the living without end — until at last it bored a great hole through the primordial world.
Though the world as yet knew neither will nor language, every living thing grasped its true nature in a single, wordless instant.
Chaos.
Formless, orderless pandemonium, born from the pit of the Abyss. The vast, gaping maw swallowed the primordial world and spewed it out again, over and over, without a moment's rest. And upon this stagnant world, for the very first time, a ripple spread — one that bore the name I —
"...?"
—and if I had to sum up everything that's happened to me... yeah, that about covers it.
Pure white. Not white the color, but a pure white born of nothingness itself. That was the thought that struck me as I watched it — all that pristine white — being sucked down into a hole about the size of a trash can.
At first I figured my eyes were playing tricks on me. Something floating in midair, fine, I could buy that. But a hole that swallowed up everything around it like a miniature black hole? That was honestly kind of fascinating. For a second there I even wondered if I was dreaming. I probably would've kept right on wondering, too, if a finger hadn't been torn clean off the moment I touched the thing.
In the world I remembered, there were no tiny holes that vacuumed up everything in sight, and touching a hole had never once cost anyone a finger. Sure, stranger things might exist out there somewhere — but at least in the world I'd lived in, that was how it worked.
...Hold on. The world I remember?
"Welp. I'm fucked."
Only then was I finally able to perceive this world for what it was.
Where am I? Why am I here? I didn't know. Couldn't even begin to guess. Never in my life had I dealt with a problem that was, quite literally, on a whole different dimension.
With my head throbbing, there was exactly one choice left to make.
"Let's run."
For now, at the very least, I needed to put as much distance as possible between myself and that sphere.
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