Prologue: The Echo of Wisdom
The silence was not empty. It was full, pregnant with a potential so immense it felt like a pressure against his very being. He had no eyes to see, no ears to hear, yet he perceived everything. The last thing he remembered was the gentle sigh of his own ending, the quiet surrender of a body worn by a century of life, his mind a library of joys, regrets, and hard-won peace.
And then… this.
Not an afterlife, but a before-life. A primal becoming.
He felt a rhythm, a pulsing song of such sublime complexity it brought tears to a consciousness that had no form to shed them. It was the Song of Creation, and its composer was a presence of infinite love and power that dwarfed all imagination—Veldanava.
In that song, he found himself. Not as an intruder, but as a note, a fundamental chord that had always been meant to be there. His essence, the accumulated wisdom of a hundred years of quiet observation, was not erased but… amplified. It was given shape, power, and a name that settled into his soul like a founding law.
Aethelgar.
The Dragon of Silent Wisdom. The Calm Before the Dawn.
He was. And as he embraced this new existence, reality flexed around him.