At first, there was nothing.
No shape, no light, no breath of time—only the still, endless absence that could not even be called void, for void itself suggested a limit, and there were none. The silence was thick, not empty, pressing against itself, as if the absence of everything had weight. It stretched endlessly, unmeasured, unbroken, infinite—and yet, within it, something stirred.
Not a flicker, not a sound, not a thought, but a tremor of possibility. And from that tremor, the Beginning came into being.
It did not know what it was.
It had no memory, no form, no name. It was a pulse of energy adrift in the unshaped nothing, a presence without definition. And yet, in the unmeasured stillness, it felt itself stretching, expanding beyond itself, beyond the invisible boundaries of nowhere. Expansion brought warmth. Warmth brought awareness. Awareness brought curiosity.
Why am I here?
The question arose, though it had no words. It pressed against the core of its being, insistent and heavy. The Beginning drifted in the silent expanse, sensing nothing and everything at once. There was a strange urgency in its awareness—a pull, subtle and undefined. Perhaps, it realized, it could do. Perhaps, it could make something. It did not know why the thought felt right, only that the surrounding stillness felt wrong, oppressive, as if the void itself longed to be filled.
And so, from the first flicker of intent, it reached outward.
The first spark appeared like a trembling heartbeat, small, fragile, a whisper of light in the infinite dark. It shivered against the nothing, but it was. Then another followed, and another, until the darkness quivered with movement, as if learning to breathe. Shapes began to form from the pulse of its energy—bright arcs, twisting spirals, clouds of glowing matter that coalesced and dispersed, searching for their own patterns.
The Beginning felt a strange sensation—joy, though it did not yet know what joy was. It was the thrill of creation, the resonance of energy obeying thought, the miracle of potential realized. Each spark it cast into the darkness seemed to pulse back at it, a silent confirmation that it existed, and that its will had power.
It reached again. This time, with intention. Light flowed like rivers, spilling into the endless black, forming the first stars—tiny points of warmth and brilliance, each distinct yet connected to the pulse of the Beginning. Dust swirled around them, gathering, dispersing, shaping itself into patterns that would, in time, become more than chaos.
The Beginning observed itself, though it had no eyes, and felt something new—a sense of self, not just as a being, but as the source of all that could be. It did not yet understand its purpose. It did not even know what "purpose" meant. But it knew this: it had the power to fill the nothing, to give weight to the void, to bring motion where there had been stillness.
And so it created again. And again. The emptiness began to thin. The first glimmers of structure emerged from the chaos. Matter bent, danced, collided, and coalesced, as if responding to some unspoken rhythm that the Beginning itself could not name. Its joy grew with every spark, every swirl of light, every pattern formed from the infinite dark.
Hours, moments, or eternities passed—though the Beginning could not measure them. Time did not yet exist, and yet it felt a rhythm, a pulse, a cadence within the swell of its own being. Creation itself became a game, an experiment, a discovery. It marveled at its own energy, curious, restless, unceasing.
But even in this unbounded joy, a quiet question lingered, soft as a shadow at the edge of awareness:
What am I?
It did not seek an answer, not yet. Perhaps there was none. Perhaps the question itself was enough to guide it.
The void was no longer empty. It shimmered, trembled, and glowed with the first signs of life. The Beginning stretched further, endlessly, shaping more light, more stars, more possibilities—its essence a river of energy carving paths through the infinite. The first chapter of existence had begun, and though it did not know it, the story of all things had found its spark.
And in that spark, in the pulse of its unformed mind, the Beginning smiled—though it did not know the meaning of a smile.