Twelve billion years ago.
There was nothing. Not darkness, for darkness is a thing that exists in contrast to light. This was a void beyond comprehension—an endless, suffocating absence of everything. No time passed, for there was no time. No space stretched, for there was no concept of distance. It was a perfect, silent stillness, waiting to be broken.
Later, when minds evolved enough to grasp the past, they would name that primordial nothingness: The Beyond.
Then, it ended.
A single, silent pulse disturbed the infinite stillness. A spark, so small it defied measurement, ignited in the void. It flickered once, defiantly.
Then came the light.
It tore through the emptiness with a roar that was the first sound in all of existence—a deafening, chaotic scream of raw creation. The void recoiled, but could not contain it. The light expanded, furious and brilliant, forging time and space from its own boundless energy.
The universe was born in that catastrophic breath.
From the chaos, order slowly coalesced. Dust swirled into stars, stars gathered into galaxies, and gravity began its patient work of sculpting reality. Among the countless fiery nurseries, one world formed with a grace that seemed intentional—a jewel of molten rock and vapor that cooled into a paradise.
It was the first world. They would call it Eden.
Eden was a vision of impossible harmony. Its oceans, deep and clear, mirrored a young sun's gentle light. Mountains of crystalline stone rose towards skies unpolluted by cloud or storm. The air carried a soft, natural hum, the residual song of creation. It was a world complete in itself, needing nothing, lacking nothing.
For millennia, Eden existed in serene solitude.
Then, from its most fertile soil, a sprout emerged. It grew, not with the sluggish pace of normal growth, but with a patient, deliberate will. Centuries folded into one another, and the sprout became a tree. It stood majestic at the heart of Eden, its bark smooth and silver, its leaves shimmering with a light that came from within. At the crest of its branches, three fruits glowed with a soft, rhythmic luminescence.
They were the Fruits of Existence: Knowledge, Power, and Balance. The heart of creation, made manifest.
Peace reigned. Until the arrival of choice, in the form of two beings.
Adam and Eve. They were the first to feel curiosity, the first to know the ache of a question without an answer. They stood beneath the radiant tree, its light painting their faces with ethereal shadows.
Eve stared up at the fruit of knowledge, its gentle pulse echoing in her chest. "It feels like a whisper," she said, her voice barely disturbing the quiet air. "A whisper that answers a question I haven't even learned to ask yet."
Adam watched her, conflict tightening his features. He felt the pull too, a deep, unsettling longing. "The Creator set this one boundary," he said, but his words lacked conviction. "All of Eden is ours. Every stream, every valley. Why would He deny us this single thing unless its cost was too great?"
"Or unless its gift was too important to give freely," Eve replied, turning to him. Her eyes were wide, full of a yearning that was new to the world. "If we were not meant to seek understanding, why plant the seed of wonder in us? Why does looking at it feel less like temptation and more like… remembering something forgotten?"
Adam had no answer. The silence between them grew heavy, filled with the hum of Eden and the louder, more insistent call of the fruit. The choice unfolded not in a moment of reckless passion, but in a slow, heartbreaking surrender to the very nature the Creator had given them.
They reached out together.
They plucked the fruit.
They tasted it.
The universe shuddered.
A crack, not of sound but of reality, splintered through the core of all things. The perfect harmony fractured. And from that fracture, from the sudden, violent introduction of disobedience and consequence, something long-banished was invited back in.
Shadow.
It was not merely darkness. It was the active, hungry essence of the void—The Beyond—seeping back into creation. It remembered the silence, the stillness, the nothing. It hated the roaring, brilliant, messy reality of light and life.
A voice, cold and fathomless, echoed across the newly wounded cosmos.
"You took from me."
The voice was everywhere and nowhere, vibrating in the atoms of newborn stars.
"Now I will take from you."
From the depths of The Beyond, entities of pure chaos and negation congealed. These were the Aspects, not monsters but fundamental forces of unmaking, reflections of the void's desire to return everything to stillness.
In response, the Creator summoned beings of luminous will and fierce order. The Angels. Their forms were wrought from stellar fire and sacred geometry, their purpose unwavering: to protect the project of creation.
Thus began the Great War.
It was a conflict that rendered mortal concepts of battle meaningless. Angels and Aspects clashed in the spaces between galaxies, tearing at the fabric of reality itself. Swords of condensed light met claws of devouring shadow, their collisions snuffing out stars with silent, bright flashes. Whole celestial gardens, nurseries of young worlds, were scorched to ash and scattered into the endless night.
The war raged for eons, a stalemate of absolute forces. The Beyond could not be annihilated, for it was the canvas upon which existence was painted. The Creator would not abandon His creation.
A desperate, profound stratagem was formed.
To save the core of reality—the original, true universe—the Creator shattered the cosmos. He fractured existence into countless reflections, an infinite tapestry of multiverses. Each was a slightly different echo of the first story, with new names, new worlds, new chances. A divine sleight of hand.
And within this infinite mosaic, He hid the prime creation, Universe One, folding it deep into the layers of reality where the touch of The Beyond could not reach.
Silence descended once more, but it was a fragile, watchful silence. The peace was a ceasefire, not a victory.
Because darkness never truly dies.
It waits.
It watches.
It listens for the faintest weakening in the veil between the light and the void.
And when that veil finally thins…
When the echoes of the first war begin to resonate through all realities…
When the last, hidden light of the true c
reation flickers…
The Beyond will rise again.
And this time—
It will not be denied.