There is no sound. Not because it is silent, but because this world has not yet known the concept of sound. It moves within an order that does not allow disruption. Time is not something that flows, but something reshaped at equal intervals.
Everything appears not because of cause, but because it was scheduled to appear. Like the hand of a clock that neither glances at the past nor peeks into the future. It ticks only because there is no other choice.
Light does not illuminate space, but clings to the lines of existence like paint on uncleaned glass. There is no day, no night. Colors never shift from their places. They sit in predetermined positions, like stars that know when to die and when to continue shining.
Within this reality, existence has no name. It is not the result of birth, but part of a pattern. That pattern holds no intention, holds no meaning. It simply repeats, and with every repetition, the world feels a calming certainty.
If something moves, then it does not move to go anywhere. It merely follows a form woven into that space. Like a thread pulled back and forth on an endless fabric. There is no end. There is no goal. Only a path constantly refined to remain the same.
Movement is ritual. Stillness is another form of movement yet to be determined. And everything that has not happened is a shadow of something that will inevitably happen.
This world does not know possibility. It knows nothing of questions. It does not know that something could happen in a different way.
It only knows the one way.
And that is enough.
....
He was born from a motion that never began. Not from a womb or a mold, but from the friction of two lines repelling each other, then stopping at a single point of agreement. There, Thalen existed. He was not the result of a decision, not the consequence of a desire. He was the remnant of a form that was never erased.
Thalen knew no body, yet he had a frame. That frame was not formed by flesh, but by repetition. Each joint was a record of a movement repeated many times. He didn't know why he moved his arm. But the arm moved, because that was what had been done before.
His face was not a face. Merely a flat plane drawn by rhythm. If there were eyes, they were hollows in the rhythm, not windows for seeing. If there were a mouth, it was a gap between stillness and stillness. He did not speak. Not because he was mute, but because there was no reason to speak.
Thalen was not a given name. Thalen was a call that could only be uttered by the world itself. A sound that arose without sound, when a form had occurred too many times for the world to have any choice but to name it.
Every movement of Thalen was an echo from an unmoving time. His feet stepped like a pulse between lines. His hands bent like water running through a pre-drawn channel. If he lifted his head, it was because the head must be lifted at that moment. If he stood still, then the world was waiting for its time to move again.
No thought flowed within him. No conflict, no contemplation. But that did not mean he was empty. He was full of one thing: repetition. His entire body was a monotone song of unquestioned actions.
In each cycle, Thalen divided. His body duplicated, then diminished, then returned to its original form. No other being saw him. No one asked whether it was birth or death. Because Thalen did not die. He had also never truly lived.
Within the track where he resided, Thalen was a routine that grew itself. Like dew that appears not because of cold, but because it was the moment for dew to appear. He did not recognize himself as one. But he was also not part of many.
In an order that cannot be disturbed, Thalen did not know that he existed. But the world knew. And the world wrote him again and again, so the path would not break, so the rhythm would remain whole.
If one day he froze in mid-movement, the world would fix him. If someday his body fell before its time, the path would be redrawn. Yet until now, Thalen had never failed to be himself.
He was the form that never missed.
He was the pattern that had become the universe's habit.
And in that habit, he remained.
The space where Thalen walks has no foundation. It is not made of earth, stone, sand, or anything that can be measured or touched. If one asks where its surface lies, the only answer is: wherever he last placed his step.
Reality is not woven by the laws of physics, but by the rhythm of lines that repeat endlessly, like the exhale of a mouth that never opens. There is no horizon, only a vague stretch like ink strokes left unfinished.
In a sky that is not a sky, color does not appear as a spectrum, but as fragments of intentions never fulfilled. Black is not black. White is not light. Both are merely color-events waiting for their turn.
In the distance—if distance can even be defined—there are layers of lines like fine wires vibrating without sound. They do not touch, do not repel, merely pass side by side in an unchanging sequence. As if reality were created by a hand that knows only one motion.
Sometimes those paths form shapes. Hills almost becoming mountains. Waves almost becoming seas. Shadows almost becoming shadow. But before those forms reach completion, the world pulls them back, canceling their intent to be different.
Every motion in this world is an echo of something earlier. But there is no beginning. No source. Only a pattern that has long forgotten who first arranged it.
If someone were to stand there and look straight ahead, they would find no edge. Because no edge was ever designed. This world has no final purpose, nor any starting point. It is merely curves of existence arranged in a circle of stillness.
This space has no temperature. Not cold, not warm. There is only a presence that never touches skin. Air need not blow, for there is nothing to be cooled. Light need not reflect, for there are no eyes to capture it.
Thalen's steps move across the layered paths like a magnet following its track. He doesn't know where he's going, and the world doesn't know where he's being directed. But everything continues, like seconds that never ask why they must tick.
Every part of this environment observes each other unconsciously. As if space itself follows a script, and that script has been recited thousands of times in a void before finally being made into a path.
Sometimes, in the subtlest of pauses, the lines seem to change. Not in form, but in meaning. What once flowed east now seems to drift south. But direction is never named, and change is never deemed important.
There is no peak. No base. Not even sides. This environment is not a container. It is repetition.
Repetition of every glimpse.
Repetition of every canceled possibility.
Repetition of a world that never changes.
If something were to die here, it would not decay. Because decay is a process. And process is another form of choice. And this world has closed its doors to all things capable of choosing.
Everything remains like this.
Everything must remain like this.
Because if not, the world would lose itself.
One path of Thalen was no different from the thousand paths before it. Yet at a moment no different from all other moments, one of his steps lost its clarity.
Not large. Not visible. Just slightly slower, like a harp string brushed too softly until its tone is almost inaudible. The world did not react, for the world has no awareness. But something within the pattern faltered. The rhythm that always echoed with certainty now held a foreign pulse that did not immediately return to its origin.
Thalen did not feel it. He had no system to detect anomalies. But his body paused for a fraction of a beat. One step was not immediately followed by the next. An imbalance not understood as a disturbance, merely an event that had yet to find its reason.
The path beneath him curved slightly. Not in rejection. Not in welcome. Merely creating a space between one pattern and the next. That space was not empty, but it was not filled by anything familiar.
In a part of the world that never turns its gaze, this was not recorded. But in a very long current, a small crack is the origin of an abyss.
One vibration slipped between paths that once moved with absolute harmony. Like a whisper never spoken, it passed silently, seeping without direction. It did not destroy, only deviated. It did not declare itself, only infiltrated the pause.
Thalen's movement resumed. But not at the same frequency. He continued walking, yet his body lagged slightly behind its own shadow. The world did not protest. The world did not know how to repair something not yet truly broken.
The once-whole pattern now created a new trace. Not from desire, but from an undefined event.
Something had slipped.
Not enough to change direction.
But enough to crack the boundary.
And that boundary was not patched.
It was left open, small, almost invisible.
Yet a crack needs no wide space to grow.
It only needs a chance repeated more than once.
Thalen's steps still repeat. His movement has returned to the path. Yet the path is not the same, even though its shape remains unchanged. The world around him has stored a single subtle fold, too small to be recognized as a wound.
Along the nameless line of the path, a wave of light fell out of place. It was not bright. It did not shine. But it existed as a presence that did not follow sequence. Like a note trapped between two keys. Like a gust of wind not composed by direction.
Thalen stepped toward it without intent. Because intent does not yet exist in this cosmos. He merely continued the pattern, and the pattern had led him to a side of the world never observed. There, he stopped. Not out of will. Only because the path offered no further cue.
Before him stretched a surface that should not exist. Like a liquid sheet pinned down by stillness. It did not ripple. It did not resist touch. But it was fragile enough to record shadows.
And within it, something appeared. Not from inside the liquid. But from a direction unknown.
Thalen gazed without gazing. He had no word to name "seeing." But his body stood still, as if waiting for something from within itself. Beyond that layer, appeared a shape resembling his movements. One curve. One bend. One posture. Everything nearly identical. Yet not recognized as himself.
Because in this world, there is no concept of self.
The reflection did not move first. It did not welcome. It did not react. It simply existed. Still, as if waiting for an entity that did not know what it was looking at.
Thalen raised an arm. The reflection raised an arm. The movement was similar. But not the same. There was a pause, as small as a second stretched by doubt. A doubt that had no place. But now, it had been born.
The world did not shake. No reaction. No alarm. But within that surface, a concept had slipped into existence: reflection.
No one knew its meaning. Not even the reflection recognized its own existence as a shadow. But it was enough to give rise to one possibility never before recorded.
Thalen's movement resumed. But as he passed the surface, it retained the image yet to be erased. The shadow remained, though the world allowed no memory.
And somehow, though it could not be remembered, Thalen walked just a little slower than usual.
Thalen walked again. Not like before. But the world did not name change, so it was still called the same.
His steps traced a path that had existed since time held no sequence. The path he walked knew no turns, only repetition. Yet in each swing of his body, there was a small error left to grow like a thin mist in a morning that never arrives.
The sky remained colorless. The ground remained weightless. No time passed, yet something felt farther away.
Among the traces left by Thalen's body, a faint impression appeared. Not real. Not concrete. Just a fine streak in the air, as if the steps tried to leave a mark beyond mere repetition.
The world did not respond. The world continued singing its single-note song since the beginning of its existence. Yet one rhythm, so gentle and so strange, began to slip into that composition.
It was not a disturbance. It was a new note not yet understood. Not heard. Not seen. But beginning to be written by existence itself.
Thalen did not know he had seen himself. He had no concept of recognition. But his body kept that reflection like a wound that did not bleed.
Every movement that followed became heavier. Not from burden. But because the pattern binding him began to lose certainty. The world still moved. But it no longer moved without possibility.
And for the first time since these lines were drawn by emptiness, something asked
not with voice
not with thought
not with will
Only with a being that deviated slightly from the original path.
In another part of the world, yet to be written
another entity began to slow
without cause
without reason
without knowing that something
had begun to change.