The first thing he learned about the world was that it had a ceiling.
It was very far away.
He lay flat on cold stone, unmoving, staring upward at a circular patch of pale light no bigger than a coin held at arm's length. It hovered impossibly high above him, distant and thin, like something reluctant to exist. Around that faint halo, silhouettes hung in the abyss, vast shapes layered one above another, continents suspended in darkness. Their undersides were jagged and uneven, pierced by roots thicker than towers, their surfaces scarred with ruins that clung upside down like the remains of dead civilizations.
The sight was of a scale incomprehensible to the human mind. Pillars of time, order, and existence themself stretched like jagged spider webs through the void above. In his periphery, he could make out colossal stalactites hanging from looming precipices made of change itself.
And yet, the man who lay on the shrine-like platform, surrounded by winding charcoal black roots, was no ordinary human. In fact, at this very precise moment in time, he was not human at all.
To say that the first thing he learned about the world was its confines was quite accurate. The knowledge was embedded deep within his brain, lurking in his subconscious. He knew nothing else. Not even his name or his home, and especially not his purpose for being where he was now. This did not go to say he was a shell, for he did know he had once lived before, and he carried the slight semblance of subsistence and maintenance.
The man on the stone was truly in a sorry state, His eyes neither moving nor blinking as he gazed vapidly into the abyss. His naked body frozen in place, unable to muster the strength to even twitch. Perhaps it was because of the grandness of the abyss, or perhaps the nearly soulless state he was in.
Some time passed as he lay there.
Something warm struck his chest at some moment in the eternity. He did not move.
Another amount of time passed, and another drop fell. Then another, each one landing on his bare skin. As endless time continued, the interval between each drop became smaller. They began to fall in multiples in short sequences.
At this point, the man's eyes finally shifted. They slid upward until they focused on a jumble of roots nestled in a hollow of a stalactite.
More specifically, on the corpse hanging interwined between them.
It had been there long enough for the universe to forget it. The body was twisted sideways, spine bent unnaturally, limbs stiff and dry. Its skin had turned gray and cracked like an old clay vase, and its hollow eye sockets stared directly down at him with the empty patience of something that no longer understood what sight was. The liquid dripping from its chin was dark and thick.
It was blood.
He recognized it instantly, not because he remembered blood, but because his mind supplied the answer without hesitation. The last instinctual remnants of whatever life he once had lived.
It was at this moment, as his brain began to stir slightly, that he realized he truly knew nothing.
And yet, the realization arrived without shock or panic. It settled into his thoughts as simply as any other observation, as though it had always been there waiting for him to notice it. He searched his memory. There was nothing; No childhood, no face, no voice. No past at all. All he had was awareness of the fact that he was living.
He waited expectantly for fear to follow this realization, but it did not. He then waited for confusion, but nothing but emptiness emanated from his emotions. Even the somewhat instinctive alarm any living creature would feel while lying beneath a corpse in an endless void of eternity failed to appear.
His mind was clear, precise, and devoid of distraction. So much so that it almost felt deliberate. The silence around him seemed to press inward.
It couldn't be natural silence, though. It would be nearly impossible. There was no quiet of night, or gentle stillness of sleep. The silence felt almost constructed, almost as if sound itself had been removed from the world by law, ordered by something that deemed it unnecessary. The absence of sound was so absolute.
Then, the ground trembled.
It did so very faintly. It was so faint that most people would have missed it. But the vibration traveled up through the pitch-black roots surrounding the stone, through the stone itself, and into the man's skull before fading away.
Blood continued to drip from above, sporadic, but still growing noticeably more frequent. The ground trembled again, but this time, the man's eyes caught something—a change.
Above him, the corpse twitched. It was not as though it slipped or fell slightly through the roots; rather, it jerked. The man's eyes continued to gaze without blinking.
A thin crack appeared on the chest of the corpse, and began to spread. If there were a sound, it did not exist. The split widened with patient inevitability, and the gray skin on the body stretched outward, as if something was pressing from within.
The bulge grew. The ribs shifted, and the bone bent outward. With a dry motion, still silently, the ribcage burst open.
A hand emerged, not human. The fingers were much too long and divided into much too many joints. Each segment bent at angles that suggested anatomy was merely a recommendation to whoever—whatever owned them. The hand's surface couldn't be described as flesh. It was more like wet stone stretching thin over a skeletal frame.
The hand braced against the breastbone of the corpse and pushed off. The rest of the creature slid free from the confines of the hollowing body. It pulled itself out of the hollowed body with unrushed movements and dragged its lengthy limbs from the cavity.
Its torso unfolded, then its shoulders, then its neck, continuing to crawl its way free from its former enclosure.
Parasitic.
...
At the man's thought, the emerging creature froze. Its face was now fully emerged from the corpse. It had no eyes, no mouth, nor any other facial feature one would imagine. Its face was smooth and pale, reflecting the distant light from the halo near the ceiling far above. Seconds passed, and the head (or what resembled a head) of the creature turned to face the man.
They stared at each other.
Neither moved.
Despite the literal blankness of the face, there was clear shock sprawled across the smooth, bone-like surface. Almost like offense at the idea that something could muster a thought in its proximity. It truly was irrational for the man to have done so. Nothing had managed to do so before, and it should have been impossible.
If someone had been there to witness it, they may have mistaken the scene for a sculpture carved from stone: a corpse hanging motionless between roots, a pale creature perched above, and a man lying beneath them both, calm as though the situation was merely worth observing.
The creature shook its head, as though it must have imagined the thought, and dropped beside the man without a sound. There was no impact, shift of air, or tremor in the ground. At one moment, it hung above him, and then the next, it was by his side. Its narrow, lanky body was angled like a question mark above him.
Up close, it was worse. You could argue it was frightening—for it was—but more than that, it was just plain wrong. Its presence felt incorrect in a way that the man's mind could not categorize, similar to a word that looked familiar but meant nothing. The creature did not breathe. It did not sway. It was as if it did not possess weight. It simply occupied the world and the space it took up. Almost like reality had permitted its existence but did not grant it acknowledgment.
It leaned closer, its smooth face hovering inches from the man's own, tilted slightly as if studying him. It was not filled with hostility, but also no curiosity. It examined him with purpose, not interest.
But the man did not flinch, tense, or swallow. Again, he could not find fear within himself.
The creature raised an arm. Its fingers unfolded slowly, lengthening as they moved, each joint extending until the tips became narrow, glass-dark claws. They hovered just above his throat, so close he could see his own reflection stretched along their surface.
What the hell...?
The abyss seemed to pause.
Another impossible thought had escaped from the confines of the void and entered the man's mind. However, this time, both the creature and the abyss acknowledged it.
And then, for the first time since he had awakened, a thought appeared in his mind that did not belong to him.
"Yes, Candidate?"