The Universe is everything, yet it begins with nothing. Before time, before light, before space itself, there was a silence without name. Out of that silence came a gesture, whether thought, breath, or command, no one can tell and reality unfolded. Some call it the Big Bang, others call it creation, but in truth it was the birth of possibility. An unknown hand, unseen and unknowable, stretched the fabric of existence from an infinitesimal spark into the boundless expanse we inhabit.
From that act, time itself was born. What we call "before" has no meaning, for time did not yet flow; it began with creation's first pulse. In less than a heartbeat, the cosmos inflated, swelling faster than light, smoothing chaos into order. Energy became matter, matter became atoms, and atoms became the seeds of stars. The unknown being, whether conscious architect or blind force, set laws in place: four forces to govern every interaction, constants to balance delicately, a mathematics so perfect that it has never faltered.
In the young cosmos, all was fire. Clouds of hydrogen and helium swirled like whispers of the creator's breath. Gravity, that subtle sculptor, pulled them together until they burned as stars. In those stars, the elements of life were forged; carbon, oxygen, iron, the alphabet of existence written in nuclear flame. When those stars died, they scattered their gift into the void, a quiet generosity that would one day give rise to worlds and to beings who could ask why.
Galaxies spun into being, immense wheels of light suspended in darkness. They gathered into clusters, stretched into filaments, and traced a vast web across the void, as though some invisible weaver had cast a cosmic net. Between the strands yawned immense voids, silence made into space. It is not unreasonable to imagine that the unknown being, if it indeed existed, wrote beauty into the Universe deliberately for no random scattering could look so much like art.
Yet most of this creation remains hidden. The stars we see, the planets we touch, the light we measure, all of it is only a fraction of what exists. Around every galaxy lies an invisible halo of dark matter, a shadow substance that bends gravity yet refuses to be seen. And in the fabric itself pulses a stranger force still: dark energy, the silent command that drives the Universe to expand ever faster. These mysteries are not accidents; they are signatures, traces of a design beyond human grasp.
And then, somewhere in a quiet corner of a galaxy, dust gathered into a small blue world. On it, chemistry danced into biology, and biology into awareness. From stardust rose creatures who looked up and wondered, who gave names to constellations and asked about beginnings. Perhaps this, too, was intended that the Universe would not only exist but know itself through the eyes of its children. To define the Universe is therefore to define ourselves, for we are not separate from it. We are the breath of stars, the dream of matter, perhaps even the echo of the being that set it all in motion.
The Universe is vast beyond comprehension: two trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars, each with planets beyond counting. Yet it is also delicate at the smallest scale, where particles flicker between existence and nonexistence, ruled by laws that seem almost like riddles. Every level, from the quantum to the cosmic, is bound by order. Whether accident or intention, it carries the fingerprint of coherence.
But every story must lean toward an ending. The Universe will not remain as it is. Stars will fade, galaxies will drift apart, and perhaps all matter will decay into silence once again. Will the creator return at that moment, to renew what has withered? Or was creation a single gesture, left to unfold without interference? No one knows. The Universe may end in heat death, stretched so thin that nothing can happen; or it may collapse, pulled back into the seed of another beginning; or it may rip itself apart, undone by its own expansion. Each fate is possible, and in each there lingers the shadow of intention for even destruction is a kind of design.
Thus, the Universe can be defined, but never fully explained. It is time and space, matter and energy, visible and invisible. It is law and chance, order and chaos. It is the silence before creation and the music after. And woven through it all is the mystery of an unknown being.....perhaps a creator, perhaps a principle, perhaps something beyond both whose gesture still echoes in every star, every atom, every thought.
The Universe is everything, but it is also a question. And to speak of it is to admit wonder, for in the end, no definition can contain what contains us all.
In the year 3813, Earth had been reborn. What once was a world scarred by centuries of war, pollution, and dissonance had undergone a metamorphosis so profound it felt divine. The wounds of humanity's greed were not mended by force, but by a convergence of forgotten energies and a transcendent presence.
The result was not survival, but renewal. Cities no longer devoured the wild; they lived in harmony with it. Skies shimmered in crystalline clarity. Oceans sang once more, as if their voices had been restored after millennia of silence.
At the heart of this renaissance stood Helixia, a sovereign island radiant with ingenuity. Here, the past and the future did not collide, they fused like constellations etched across midnight. The Hailox, once a tempest of ambition and chaos, had long since fallen. Peace reigned not as a gift, but as a prize purchased dearly in blood.
And within this peace, I walked.
My name is Erza Akira. To most, I am but a woman in her early thirties, a solitary figure in a long black coat, her single arm cradling a katana. But time carved a truth deeper than appearances: I am 207 years old. I walk as one who has watched history unravel, fracture, and stitch itself anew.
The wind tugged at my coat as I moved through Avril City, Helixia's capital. A marvel where glass gardens gleamed, floating trams whispered overhead, and trees bent to murmur secrets in the breeze. My right arm was gone, claimed by the final war. I carry its absence not as a wound, but as a seal upon my soul. My eyes—ancient, amber-hued see not with bitterness, but with reverence.
My steps carried me into the Serenity District, where petals drift endlessly through the air like fragments of memory. There, a grave waited silent, polished stone standing amidst the bloom. I knelt, laying my sword at its side. For a moment, words refused me. Then my lips parted, my voice no louder than the wind.
"I still remember your voice... even when the world forgets."
The world hushed. No tears came, no trembling. Only a stillness so deep it seemed even time paused. Then I rose, and the journey continued.
The city opened before me, alive with laughter and light. Children darted beneath bioluminescent trees, their joy harmonizing with the hum of drones that moved like bees spun from starlight. From the Verdant Cliffs, Avril stretched below me, a dream carved from a history steeped in blood.
And there, she awaited me.
Lutessa, Keeper of Culture. Her robes whispered of tradition, her eyes softened by time. She had known me longer than most, and she greeted me not with words, but with a nod heavy with understanding.
I gazed into the horizon's abyss, and when I spoke, my voice cracked like distant thunder.
"Lutessa...how would you feel if all your loved ones had passed, leaving you behind? Alone...yet still breathing."
The wind stirred her sleeves as she stepped closer. Her words came steady, unwavering.
"Not all have passed, Erza. You have me...and your son ."
At that, something flickered within me...something fragile, like the last ember refusing to die in a long-cold fire.
When Lutessa departed, I walked alone. My feet traced paths I had once raced through as a child. My thoughts pressed against me like ghosts: Why am I still here? Why has an ancient relic like me endured into an age not my own? These questions return to me always. Perhaps it is not the world I grieve, but the people I miss.
The Celestial Gardens called to me. An eden where memory blossomed in light. Each plant glowed faintly, encoded with the history of those long gone.
And there, amid the radiance, I saw her.
A little girl. She danced among the flora, her laughter ringing as pure as glass chimes. Her hair caught the sunlight like spun starlight. But it was her eyes that pierced me. Wide, bright, unbearably familiar.
They were Alya Aerius's eyes.
I froze. The child's joy cracked something open inside me. For an instant, it was as if Alya herself stood before me alive, radiant, unchanged. My mind buckled, tumbling back through decades of peace, graveside silences, and fragile illusions.
Memory surged, unrelenting.
My hand tightened on the hilt of my katana, anchoring me against the tide of the past.
Once again, I stood atop the Verdant Cliffs. The wind tore at me, carrying the faintest echoes of voices long extinguished. Beneath me, Avril shimmered, a jewel forged of ruin and redemption.
But I am no jewel. I am a remnant.
And so I write not for myself, but for those yet to come. For I am the last witness of an age that is no longer mine. I will record its struggles, its victories, its shadows. I will inscribe the name AvivA, and above all, I will preserve the life of Alya Aerius.
Where to begin again? Ah… yes.
It began the day Alya first beheld true evil.