Dust. Ash. Ruins from a past that no longer even had a name. This world was dead. Not destroyed, not extinct, but silent.
Amid the shards of ruin, a cockroach crawled. Its body was small, fragile, yet its eyes held all that had ever existed and all that shouldn't. It was aware. That made it different.
> "I… am not dead yet," it thought.
And in that moment, the drive appeared—not merely to survive, but to become more than what should exist. Something that would one day be known as Khe'Raash, but for now, only the awareness mattered.