Darkness surrounded him, or perhaps 'surrounded' was wrong, as there was nothing to be outside of, nothing to press against. Aris couldn't tell; he couldn't feel as there was no weight, no breath, no heartbeat. Only an overwhelming cold and a stillness so complete it seeped into him like water into stone, until he wasn't sure where the stillness ended and he began.
For a moment, he wondered if this was still unconsciousness—then realization hit him. I can't feel my body
Panic surged through him; he tried to force his eyes open instinctively, tried to feel them open. But even the attempt felt strange and distant, like willing a limb that had long since been severed to move. Nothing responded
As his sight returned, he felt relieved, yet he felt no eyelids move. One moment there was nothing, and the next, a vast, silent expanse of endless darkness scattered with distant, glowing stars came into view. Aris stared with awe and creeping dread.
Where... where am I? Is this hell? Heaven? Do those things even exist?'
He looked down instinctively, and his mind trembled at the sight. Where a hand should have been, there was only a faint shape—pale mist, white energy, something barely existing. When he tried to clench his hand, his fingers dissolved into drifting strands before slowly reforming.
A soul. I'm in a soul state. The realization struck him slow and cold. So I'm really dead. Before I changed anything. Before I changed the world.
He turned—or thought he turned, for there was no ground, no horizon, no direction. Only stars. An ocean of them, silent and distant, scattered across the endless dark.
Then he saw it: something massive shifting in the distance, so vast it blotted out the stars, leaving a gap of perfect darkness where light should be.
Aris froze. His mouth hung open as his mind refused to believe what he was seeing. It was a serpentine entity that was too vast and unfamiliar for his mind to grasp. It coiled through the void like a living constellation, its body spanning the breadth of a star.
As his perception adjusted, dread flooded through him, not fear of death, but something primal. Existential. The kind of dread a mouse feels when a hawk's shadow passes overhead: recognition without understanding.
The serpent's body shifted through the darkness, scales emerging one by one from the void. Each shimmered like molten gold. With them came an ancient, immeasurable pressure, pressing against his soul.
His soul recoiled—not a conscious decision, but instinct. He couldn't judge the distance. Stars away? Galaxies? It didn't matter. He felt the creature's coercion anyway, and for the first time, his formless self felt weight in the void.
One word screamed through his mind: Run! But where? In this endless darkness, there was nowhere to go—no direction, no distance, nothing to hide behind. He just floated there, gripped by horror. Not the sharp kind that sparks action, but the slow kind that paralyzes. The kind that watches. The kind that knows, with perfect certainty, that nothing can be done.
{Fear not, child.}The voice did not echo because there was nothing for sound to bounce from, no air to carry it. It simply appeared in his mind, fully formed. Deep and calm in a way that made the void itself seem small.
{I mean you no harm,} it said, pausing long enough to make it seem deliberate. {Not yet.}
Aris's fear spiked.
"Not yet?" The words hung in his mind, and the terror tightened its grip. But beneath it, the part of him that had always refused to break awakened.
If it wanted me dead, I'd already be nothing. He held onto that thought like a lifeline. So stop. Calm yourself. Think.
{Hahaha...} The sound rumbled through his mind—not exactly laughter, but something akin to it. Perhaps it was ancient amusement, vast and distant, like thunder heard from across an ocean. {Even trembling before me, you still attempt to compose yourself.} There was a pause, and he felt the weight of its eyes on him, though he still couldn't see them. {As expected, you are an interesting child.}
Aris forced his soul form to bow. There was no body to bend and no weight to shift, yet as he willed himself lower, the mist complied.
"It seems resistance would be pointless." Despite his lack of a body, his voice emerged. He didn't dwell on how. "May I ask why a being of your magnitude would summon someone as insignificant as me?"
The massive, serpentine shape shifted slightly, and then an eye opened in the darkness. It was golden, with vertical slits, and larger than any structure he had ever seen.
{Aris Seldon.} A voice spoke his name as if turning a page, as if his entire life were a book that had already been read, closed, and shelved among countless others.
{You are not insignificant. You are one of my countless children.}
Aris stiffened. Children?
{But your actions,} the voice continued, calm as ever, {have deprived my children of their future.}
A chill ran through his soul. "Your children?" he asked slowly.
The golden body coiled through the void, starlight bending around its scales as it moved toward him. When it spoke again, its form began to expand, unfolding and uncoiling to reveal what distance had hidden.
{All humans are my children.} A head emerged from the darkness—an eastern dragon, powerful beyond measure, its whiskers drifting through nebulae like smoke.
{And I...} The word hung in the void between them. {...am their Providence.}
Aris fell silent. For the first time in his life, his mind wouldn't cooperate. The words lingered, their meaning circling him like wolves around a fire, never quite reaching him. Humanity's luck. Personified. Is that even possible?
He looked at the dragon, at the starlight bending around its whiskers and the nebulae reflected in its scales. The question answered itself.
{The biochip you pursued with such fervor was humanity's rising destiny,} the dragon continued. {Through it, the human race would have escaped the ranks of weak civilizations after countless years of evolution.}
It paused, its golden pupil settling on him. Coercion was too small a word for what he felt. It was more like gravity—the sudden awareness that you are made of meat and bone while the thing looking at you is made of forever.
{But your greed shattered that future.}
Guilt. The word surfaced like a corpse in a still lake. It was an emotion he had suppressed for years by rationalizing it away with twisted logic. Now, it was unavoidable.
"So you brought me here to punish me?" he asked, his voice barely a ripple in the void.
{No.}The dragon's voice remained steady. {I brought you here because of what happened afterward.}
A faint golden light began to gather around Aris, swirling and pulling at the edges of his soul like a current. Wherever the light touched him, his mist-like soul form flickered and dimmed as if he were vanishing piece by piece.
{The biochip was destroyed. Yet its core merged with your soul.} The dragon's gaze sharpened. {Technology and soul should never fuse as they have in you. Even more so for a mortal with such a fragile soul.} It paused, and the golden light spun faster. {Yet...they have.}
Aris blinked. "So I'm some kind of accident?"
{A singularity.} The dragon's voice was calm, but the word hung in the void like a single struck bell. {In the human race, to say the least.}
The golden energy intensified, spinning faster and pulling harder at the edges of his form.
{And therefore...} The dragon's ancient eyes closed. When they opened again, something in them had changed. Not hope, for hope was too small. Not desperation, for desperation was for mortals. It was something else entirely, something that, from a certain angle, looked like conviction.
{...My final gamble.} A pause. {Our final gamble as a species.}
The golden light tightened around him. It wasn't squeezing but gathering, like water circling a drain. His mist form began to spiral, blurring into the golden glow.
"Wait—" the word came quickly and desperately. "You mentioned a future. What are you planning to do?"
{You will return.}
"Return where?"
{To the primordial era.} The dragon's voice was distant now, as if already fading. {To a time before the Great Shattering.}
Aris's mind reeled. "You're sending me back in time?"
{Indeed.} There was a pause that felt like forever. {And no.}
The vortex spun faster. His form unraveled, and strands of mist were pulled into the gold.
"A gamble? You're a god. You don't roll dice unless you've weighted them. If I'm the 'singularity' you're betting on, then show me the data. I can't change a future I can't see."
{Be careful with your curiosity, Aris Seldon. In the River of Time, a single word can be a boulder that shifts the entire current. To carry the map of the future into the Primordial Era is to invite the heavens to strike you down for your insolence.}The dragon's voice was gentle now; its tone was almost sad despite its words. {You will know in time. If you survive.}
Panic surged through him. "Hold on! You're sending one of your 'children' into another world without anything?! No information, no help, no—"
{You already possess what you need. Sending you back would be costly enough to wipe us out.}
The dragon's voice was distant now. Fading. Like words spoken from the far end of a long corridor.
{The biochip will be enough. Your mortal soul cannot carry anything else through the River of Time.}
Aris opened his mouth to argue, to beg—
{Keep your head down, Aris Seldon.} The voice turned solemn, almost human. {For I will not be able to save you again.}
The golden light pulled harder. {For you...the future of the human species depends on you.}
The vortex collapsed inward. Aris vanished, and the void returned to silence.
The colossal dragon slowly shrank, its golden scales growing dim. Its once mighty voice was now barely a whisper. {Almost all my providence energy...gone.} Its massive body coiled weakly among the stars.
{I hope this gamble was not my final mistake. For if it fails...} The dragon closed its eyes. {My children will vanish in the next cosmic cycle.}
Aris tumbled through nothing and everything all at once. He passed through light that wasn't light and darkness that wasn't dark. All logic dissolved, and the laws of physics unraveled—not that they mattered anymore. The golden vortex screamed around him—or perhaps he was screaming. He couldn't tell.
There was no sound. Only pressure. The sensation of being pulled apart and pushed together simultaneously overwhelmed him. For what felt like an eternity, he thrashed desperately against a reverse current. But he persevered, and finally, he felt weight. It was a weight he hadn't known he'd missed until it crushed him.
Heavy. Impossibly heavy. And pain, like being born through fire, every nerve waking at once and screaming. His lungs seized. His heart stumbled. For one endless moment, he existed only as agony.
Then, slowly, the pain became more specific. His ribs ached and his swollen face throbbed. Raw air scraped through a throat that had been unused for too long.
He tried to open his eyes, but his lids resisted and were gummed shut. With effort, they parted. At first, the world was hazy, then blurry, but slowly it came into focus.
A cramped wooden house. Smoke-stained walls. A torch flickered in its bracket, casting faint shadows that moved like living things. Clay and wooden utensils were piled in a corner: pots, bowls, and a chipped cup.
His eyes cleared further and landed on the empty beds beside him. He stared at them. He didn't mean to; his body did it on its own. Some instinct beneath thought pulled his gaze there and held it. Grief tightened in his chest.
Memories flooded in, pressing against his mind from the inside: Shared meals across a low table with somehow strange faces. Quiet laughter in this cramped room. The warmth of voices that should still be beside him but are gone.
The beds. They had belonged to his predecessor's sister and his wife.