The rift opened without a sound, and Mirshad stepped through. There was no fall, no light, no sense of up or down — only a floating silence that felt endless. His body moved forward, not by step, but by thought, as though gravity had been erased or perhaps forgotten here. He drifted for what felt like eternity, not lost, not afraid… just small.
Eventually, his feet touched something — a surface, though it was neither stone nor metal, neither water nor energy. It was alive. It shifted faintly under him, not in rejection, but in acknowledgment. This place recognized him. He stood tall. The air here could not be breathed, yet he was not suffocating. Because this was not air. This was existence itself in its rawest form. He had entered a space not meant to be found, not mapped, not named. A space beneath all creation.
In the center of the endless white-dark void, a figure stood — tall, shifting, neither man nor shadow, but something in between. It pulsed faintly, like memory, like something watching, not to judge but to remember. Mirshad moved closer, and as he did, visions ignited inside his mind. No words, no explanations — just images. Planets swirling into being. Suns dying and reforming. His own eyes, but filled with constellations. A sword forged not for war but for balance. Children of light bowing in reverence. And then the silence of his own hands stripping himself of power, choosing to forget, choosing Earth.
The voice that followed came not from the being before him but from inside his chest. You are not lost. You are hidden. You chose to fall so you could learn to rise without fear. His own voice felt small as he asked into the stillness, "Why now? Why show me this now?" The reply was not a command, but a truth. Because for the first time, you chose to become more than power. You chose to become a father. And now… your creation will need you again.
The air shifted, not in danger but in prophecy. There are forces born in your absence that remember the silence you left behind. They wait in corners untouched by light. And one day… they will rise. His fists tightened slowly. "Am I enough?" he asked. There was no answer — only silence. Yet within that silence, he understood. He didn't need an answer. He was the answer.
The presence in the center dissolved, not vanishing but returning to everything, as though it had never been a single being at all, but only a piece of all things. Alone again, Mirshad turned as the living floor beneath him shifted once more, revealing a path leading back — not out of the pyramid, not into divine power, but back to the world, back to the question that had started everything.
He was still masked. Still quiet. Still hidden. But now he carried the weight of something far older than memory. He had not awakened. He had not transformed. But beneath all creation, he remembered what it felt like to be known by everything and understood by nothing.