The silence after the pulse was deeper than death. It lingered in the wilderness, a heavy weight that pressed on soil and tree and beast alike. Even the air felt wrong, thick and suffocating, as though it too had been swallowed by that single beat from within the egg. The world seemed to hesitate, holding its breath, listening.
And then the dreams began.
Not dreams as mortals knew them. Not the fleeting scraps of memory born of longing and fear. These were older, vaster, heavier. They bled through the cracks of time, seeping from the egg like poisoned mist, reaching out into the wilderness where no living soul was present to bear witness.
Visions flickered in the darkness.
A thousand stars bloomed in silence, only to wither into dust, swallowed by a shadow that stretched beyond sight.
A vast empire rose from the earth, its golden towers piercing the heavens. Crowds knelt beneath its banners, voices raised in worship. Yet moments later, fire and steel reduced it to rivers of blood. Children wailed, their cries drowned by laughter twisted with madness.
A pair of lovers whispered eternal devotion, hands clasped beneath a sky filled with promise. In the next breath, their blades sank into one another's hearts, crimson staining their smiles.
Mountains fell. Oceans boiled. Gods screamed as their thrones crumbled, their immortal blood scattering like rain, only to be devoured by something darker than night.
A lone figure stood beneath a shattered sky, weeping into the void as silence answered him.
The visions came too fast, too broken to be understood. Like shards of glass glimpsed in a storm, each fragment cut the mind but revealed nothing whole. They blurred between the cosmic and the intimate–one moment showing the fall of galaxies, the next the quiet despair of a single soul betrayed by all they loved. Memory, prophecy, nightmare–none could be named for certain.
The wilderness recoiled beneath their weight.
The soil blackened, veins of darkness spreading outward as though corruption had rooted itself deep beneath the ground. Grass shriveled without flame. Stones groaned and split, hairline cracks whispering across their surfaces. The rivers slowed, their waters growing thick and sluggish until the moonlight refused to reflect upon them.
Above, the stars dimmed. Not clouds, not mist, but an unseen pressure smothered their light, as though the heavens themselves dared not gaze upon the thing that slumbered in the clearing.
The trees curled their branches inward, bark splitting as pale sap oozed like tears. Leaves shrank and withered, crumbling into dust long before their time. They stood frozen, petrified guardians to a secret they wished never to know.
The beasts fared no better. Wolves whimpered in their dens, their bodies pressed flat against the earth as if trying to merge with it and vanish. Serpents knotted themselves until bones cracked. Birds fell silent mid-flight, wings stiff as they plunged lifeless to the forest floor. The air vibrated with the low hum of panic, a sound without source, carried on the instincts of every creature that had not already fled or perished.
And then—
Crack.
It was soft at first, a whisper of stone splitting. But in the stillness, it echoed louder than thunder. The sound did not end with the noise; it reverberated in the bones of the world, trembling through root and soil, rattling the very marrow of the wilderness.
A jagged fissure split across the egg's surface. From it seeped a glow unlike light, unlike shadow—something in between, something undefined. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat older than creation.
The barrier that cloaked the egg rippled. Though invisible to mortal eyes, its presence distorted the clearing, bending space as water bends around a stone. Now, under the pressure of that crack, it shivered violently. Ancient runes shimmered across its unseen skin—symbols so ancient they belonged not to mortals, nor to immortals, but to something else entirely. Forgotten. Forbidden.
And then the barrier strained.
The first wave came like a sigh. A breath exhaled after eons of silence. It spread through the clearing, pressing down on the wilderness with a weight that had no name. The second wave struck harder, and the world screamed.
Qi. Mana. Essence. Call it what one would. It poured from the crack in the egg, surging outward in a black tide. It was not the gentle warmth of life-breath, nor the refined purity sought by cultivators. This was older, heavier, steeped in hunger and despair. A force that whispered of endless voids and the eternity of silence.
The ground heaved, roots tearing free from the soil as if fleeing. Trees bent low, their trunks groaning like dying beasts. The sky itself quaked; the stars dimmed further, their faint light swallowed whole. For one breath, one heartbeat, the world seemed ready to collapse into nothing.
And then it ceased.
The barrier convulsed, runes flaring one last desperate time, and the tide snapped inward.