Emptiness. Darkness.
This was not the kind that comes from nightfall or the absence of light, it is the ancient kind of Darkness. This is the void that existed before existence knew it's own name.
The darkness was vast, endless and unfeeling. In it was a silence that devoured silence. Floating a drift within that emptiness was a single soul. The soul was dim, fractured and almost extinguished.
It had no body, no anchor and no voice.
The soul should have vanished long ago. Countless other souls had vanished yet, this one still endured. It still persisted but it's endurance was a fragile thing.
The soul lingered more than existed, caught between complete erasure and survival. It was a dying ember refusing to yield.
In that darkness the soul flickered like a dying candle, it had sensed the arrival of it's jailor.
Chains drifted in the void. They were not made of iron or stone but of something far much crueler. The chains shimmered with faint glyphs, pulsing with the echo of a foreign command. The chains slithered through that emptiness and found their way to the soul and clamping down.
[Command: Consume and Assimilate]
The command from the system etched itself into the soul. The fragile soul convulsed as the chains tightened. It was dragged, unwillingness filling it's heart, from one world to another.
Through different lives, it awoke in a body not it's own. A brief life of hunger, laughter, pain and warmth and yet, before the first spring ended, the system would tighten it's grip.
The vessel would die or wither, memories would collapse into static and the soul is pulled out once more into another world, a different vessel and another cycle.
It was endless suffering. The soul lived as a warrior drenched in the blood of his enemies only to collapse mid-battle when the chains decided the vessel had served it's purpose.
The soul lived as a scholar, eyes burning with wisdom but one day he forgot all as the system devoured knowledge from it's hollow maw.
It was a beast with fur and fangs, running and surviving through the forest until it was hunted down as a meal. The vessel's job completed.
It lived as an immortal, the skies bowed to his every commands. He was forced to destroy the very world he loved, painted as a villain, the vessel served it's purpose.
It lived as a mother and before it held it's first child in it's arms, the vessel served it's purpose and the soul was ripped away to a different life.
Each incarnation blurred into the next. Names , Faces, Voices, all of it dissolved into a slurry of exhaustion. The soul was being grounded until nothing was left of it. The endless parasitism of the system left the soul worn down.
It resisted where it could, it screamt and clawed in refusal but resistance was meaningless before the power of the system. If time existed then it passed until resistance faded to nothingness.
The soul had already forgotten it's first name, it had forgotten the shape of it's own essence. Resistance became a memory of the past. All this while, the assimilation increased. The system drew closer to its own goal.
[Assimilation: 96%]
[Resistance: Null]
The chains of the system sunk deeper into the soul reaching to the inner core. The soul's light flickered weaker than ever and what little light remained was about to dissolve.
The soul tied to resist one last time. It was a futile attempt, centuries and millennia have passed and it has never escaped the chains of the system but the soul did not want to perish in this manner.
It's essence had been stripped of everything but it's resistance. The system long used to such souls ignored and continued it's assimilation.
Suddenly...
[Assimilation: Error]
[ Error: External force detected. Unable to proceed]
A light shone within the emptiness. The light was not of the sun or a flame. It was deeper and older than anything existing within the system world.
The system used all it's barriers to keep the light away and even contacted it's main administrator, using it's power as support of diverting the light but it was all for naught.
The light was a Thread, purple-gold in colour. It descended through the darkness, piercing through the emptiness.
It weaved through the chains breaking them as though they were made of fragile glass. The Thread's brilliance was not merely illumination but it was a presence that rewrote the silence and reality of the space.
Slowly, like a gentle mother's hands, the thread coiled around the lingering soul. The Threads anchored the dying soul to reality and at the very core of the soul, tied a knot. The soul trembled but remained motionless.
The knot was quite small, seemingly insignificant and yet the system recoiled at it's touch. It's chains writhed and the glyphs were shattered. It pulled back as much as it could sensing a power thag could annihilate it from the seemingly small Thread.
[Assimilation failed.]
The system decided to abandon the soul and seek another that is not contaminated by presence. The soul unaware of what was happening around it, felt it's essence being mended by a soft gentle warmth.
The soul drifted to sleep. It was not the restless sleep of forced reincarnation but a deeper slumber. The sleep was healing and anchoring.
The Threads pulsed softly once more then dimmed and vanished. It's work was complete.
The soul slept for years upon years. Eras came and went. It slept through the life of universes and eventually found itself upon the right path. It slept until it's scars were healed.
.....
Far away in places the soul could not yet dream of, pieces of fate were already moving.
The stage had been set and the moves made. Now all was left to the Threads of Fate.