Before me, in the center of the void where a room should have been, resided an entity. No, the word "thing" was too crude, too transient to define it. This was not something you could touch or measure. To call it "floating" was a fundamental fallacy, a simplification made by a limited mind to comprehend the incomprehensible. Floating implies the existence of gravity to be defied, of an up and a down. Here, in the presence of this existence, the laws of physics felt like obsolete suggestions. It simply was, a concept given form, a theorem that had decided to breathe.
Its light was the first thing to assault my consciousness. Not light like a lamp, but a living blue luminescence that pulsed with ancient energy. The blue was so dense, as if all the oceans from a thousand worlds had been compressed into a single, dazzling point of light. The heat it radiated wasn't a heat that burned the skin, but one that seeped into the soul, a primordial warmth that reminded me of the birth of stars. And its size… oh, its size. The word "large" was an insult. "Gigantic" felt clumsy. Its size was an absolute, an infinity that made the universe feel like a shoebox. Before it, I was no longer mere dust. I was smaller than that. I was a fleeting nothingness, a statistical anomaly that happened to possess the consciousness to witness its majesty.
And in the distance, beyond the window of my perception, the catastrophe danced. A vortex. No, that term was too tame. It was a hungry singularity, a gaping wound in the fabric of reality. A massive, pitch-black abyss adorned with rings of light from shredded matter. It was devouring our home. Our massive planet, a world so majestic its mountains could scrape the orbit of moons, was now being peeled, layer by layer, like a fruit. Continents were stripped from the planetary mantle, oceans of liquid methane boiled and evaporated into the void, and our singing crystal cities were now crushed into silent dust before being swallowed by eternal darkness. Almost nothing was left. Only a dying memory.
"I want you to save 'us'."
The voice did not come from the air. It resonated directly within my bones, within the very core of my being. A voice so melodious, like the strings of a cosmic harp played by time itself. I turned and saw her. Her. Her form was like mine, but finer, more luminous. Her figure held my cheek, her touch feeling like a soothing frequency. Tears welled in her large, shimmering eyes, but strangely, they did not fall. They just clung there, trembling like diamond dew under the blue light of the great entity before us.
She sobbed, a silent sob that nonetheless shook my heart to its foundations. "It's all going to end," she whispered, not with words, but with an emotion that flowed from her touch into me. "This is the twilight of our people. Our destiny is to become an echo."
I knew it. Every fiber of my being felt the cold truth of her words. We were the end of a beautiful song. But her gaze implied rebellion. She did not want that fate. She did not want us to become just a memory. Among the billions of souls heading for oblivion, she chose me. To save her. To save us.
A cold fear gripped me. Me? How could I possibly bear such a burden? I was just a single note in a grand symphony. Failure was a terrifying certainty. But as I looked into her eyes, filled with desperate hope, I realized there was a greater fear: the fear of never having tried. The fear of a regret that would haunt me in my final moments. I nodded slowly.
She smiled, though the smile was fractured by sadness. Her other hand moved, stroking my head gently, a sorrowful gesture of farewell.
Then, without warning, she pressed her palm to my forehead. It was no longer a touch. It was an invasion. A seal was being forged inside my skull. An indescribable pain exploded within me. Not a physical pain like a broken bone or burnt skin. This was an existential pain. It felt as if the entire library of the universe, with all the knowledge, history, songs, art, and essence of "our" people, was being forced into my limited consciousness. Millions of voices screamed, billions of memories flashed by, the entire existence of a civilization compressed into a single point within me. I wanted to scream, but my lungs felt paralyzed. I could only endure it, letting the storm rage within my mind, hoping I wouldn't shatter from within.
When the torment reached its peak, she pulled her hand away. She pushed me gently, a barely-there push that yet had the force to separate worlds.
"Goodbye," she said, her voice now hoarse, a tone forced to sound strong while her soul shattered into pieces. Her sad smile would be forever etched in my memory.
And.
The massive vortex moved again. It was no longer dancing; now it was devouring with greed. Its horrifying gravity pulled her, pulling the last remnants of our world. I watched her, her luminous figure, being drawn towards that inescapable event horizon. She didn't fight it. She just looked at me, that sad smile still on her face.
I felt the pull too, an invisible grip that wanted to drag me with her. But something else happened. The energy from the seal on my forehead flared. My body wasn't pulled, but pushed away. I was floating—no, I was shot like a projectile across the void.
I moved, hurtling backward at an unimaginable speed. Her figure grew smaller, dimmer, until finally, she was just one of a trillion points of light before vanishing, swallowed by that bottomless darkness. I was alone.
The world around me became a smear of light. The shining blue things, of which I had only seen one, now appeared everywhere. So, so many, countless. Were they all the same? Was every point of light a witness to the end of a world? How could something so massive, so majestic, exist in such numbers? The question was swallowed by a new wave of pain. The faster I moved, the greater the pain from the seal inside me. It felt like a seed planted within me was now growing wildly, its roots tearing at my sanity.
Amidst the rending suffering and dizzying speed, I saw it—an anomaly. A bubble of reality unlike the world around it. It looked like a room filled with clear, gently rippling water, floating gracefully amidst the cosmic chaos. A pure impossibility. An oasis in the desert of the void. Without a second thought, I directed the remnants of my consciousness towards it. I didn't know what it was, only that it was the one thing that didn't look like absolute death. With a desperate hope for salvation—or at least, a respite from this torment—I pierced its surface and entered that liquid world.
For a moment, everything fell silent. The sound of cosmic explosions, the screams of collapsing dimensions, all seemed to be swallowed. It felt like passing through a pliable membrane, like entering the very womb of that world. My body drifted slowly among motes of light that floated like star dust, while time seemed to stand still, allowing me to breathe again for the first time after an eternity of torment. The sensation was strange—cool yet warm, alien yet familiar, as if I was being reminded of something long lost to my memory.