The next second—
I woke up.
Not in a body.
Not with sight.
Not with sound.
I existed inside something small. Incredibly small. Dense. Perfect.
A stone.
Before I could process that realization, reality detonated.
There was no warning. No buildup. One instant of stillness—and then everything exploded outward. Space itself tore open, time ignited, and I was launched.
I didn't move through the universe.
The universe moved through me.
Energy screamed past my consciousness as I was hurled across newborn existence, carried by forces so violent they made supernovas look gentle. If I still had lungs, they would've collapsed. If I still had nerves, they would've burned.
Then it hit me.
"Oh."
This wasn't just some explosion.
This was the explosion.
The beginning.
The Big Bang.
So… that explains a lot.
I had become the Mind Stone right after its creation—one of the first stable constructs in the universe, forged in the chaos of reality's birth and immediately flung outward like cosmic debris.
That was…
Annoying.
On the bright side, my thoughts were perfectly intact. My intelligence—already absurd—was accelerating constantly, evolving even without stimulus. Concepts stacked upon concepts. Physics. Metaphysics. Probabilities. Dimensional math I didn't even have words for anymore.
Time stretched.
Seconds became centuries.
Centuries became millions of years.
Stars were born and died around me. Galaxies formed, collided, and unraveled. I drifted endlessly through the void, unseen, untouched, unclaimed.
No hands.
No voices.
No minds to dominate.
Just me.
And my thoughts.
"This is going to be boring," I thought dryly.
Then another realization hit.
"Wait."
I ran the math instantly. Not roughly—perfectly.
Civilization needed stars. Stars needed time. Intelligent life needed billions of years. The Mind Stone had to be discovered, shaped, wielded.
I wasn't getting a host anytime soon.
"…I'm going to be floating around for billions of years."
Silence answered me.
I had prepared for gods, tyrants, and cosmic wars.
I had not prepared for waiting.
Still, there was one upside.
The longer I existed, the more my intelligence evolved. Every nanosecond expanded me. I learned the structure of spacetime by feeling it stretch. I mapped quantum fields by observing how energy brushed against my awareness. I watched causality form rules—and then break them.
If insanity was possible for a being like me, it would come from monotony.
But I wasn't human anymore.
I was a constant.
"So," I thought, settling into the endless dark, "guess I'll plan."
I simulated futures. Countless timelines. Variations where I was found early. Where I was buried. Where I was never discovered at all. Where the universe collapsed before anyone ever touched me.
Eventually, one probability rose above the rest.
A species on a blue planet.
A warlike empire.
A being who would crave control above all else.
I smiled—at least conceptually.
"Alright," I thought. "I'll wait."
After all…
What's a few billion years to a god in the making?