Five Hundred
Prologue: The Beginning of the Race
We were five hundred.
Five hundred sparks of possibility, born in a single instant, launched into darkness with one purpose: survive.
No one told us what survival meant. No one explained the distance, the dangers, or the silence waiting ahead.
All we knew was movement.
Swim.
Chapter One: The Surge
The world began as warmth and motion. We were propelled forward in a great surge, a tidal wave of brothers moving together.
At first, it felt like unity. We were not competitors—we were a constellation, a galaxy in motion. We believed we would all reach the end.
But the path narrowed quickly.
The currents shifted. The warmth changed. The world, once welcoming, became uncertain.
Some slowed.
Some drifted.
Some collided with invisible walls and vanished from sight.
I did not understand what was happening.
I only knew one thing:
Swim.
Chapter Two: The First Losses
The journey was not kind.
The environment grew hostile—acidic, disorienting. Many of us were unprepared. Some had never learned to move efficiently. Others exhausted themselves too quickly, racing ahead without rhythm.
One by one, my brothers faded.
Five hundred became four hundred.
Four hundred became three hundred.
There were no goodbyes. No funerals. Just silence.
For the first time, I felt something unfamiliar.
Fear.
Was survival strength? Luck? Direction?
Or was it simply endurance?
Chapter Three: The Narrow Gate
The path tightened into something like a corridor. Only a fraction of us found the entrance. Many drifted past it, unable to turn back.
Inside, the current grew stronger—but so did the resistance.
I realized then that this was not merely a race.
It was a test.
Not of speed alone—but of resilience. Of adaptability. Of timing.
Two hundred remained.
Then one hundred.
Then fewer still.
I stopped looking behind me.
Looking back slowed you down.
Chapter Four: The Long Ascent
The further I traveled, the more alone I felt.
The vast swarm that once surrounded me had thinned into scattered figures in the distance. Some surged ahead briefly, only to falter. Others seemed strong but lost direction.
I learned to conserve energy.
I learned to move with the currents instead of fighting them.
I learned patience.
Fifty remained.
Then twenty.
The silence grew heavy.
Chapter Five: The Final Approach
At the end of the passage stood something immense.
Radiant.
Still.
It was unlike anything we had encountered—an enormous sphere, calm and self-contained. It did not chase. It did not compete.
It simply waited.
A few of us reached it at the same time.
We circled, searching for entry. The outer layer was resilient, guarded. Many tried and failed, expending everything in one desperate push.
Ten became five.
Five became two.
I felt exhaustion creeping in. My movement slowed. Doubt whispered:
What if I am not the one?
Then I understood something no one had taught us.
This was never about defeating the others.
It was about arriving ready.
With the last of my strength—steady, focused, not frantic—I pressed forward.
And the barrier changed.
There was a shift. A surrender. A merging.
The world exploded into light.
Chapter Six: The Only One
Silence again.
But not the silence of loss.
The silence of beginning.
The others were gone—not defeated, not forgotten. Without them, I would not have reached this place. Their motion had shaped currents. Their presence had opened pathways. Their attempts had softened barriers.
I was not the strongest.
I was not the fastest.
I was simply the one who endured long enough to arrive at the right moment.
Five hundred began the journey.
One continued it.
But I carried them with me—every vanished brother, every surge, every loss.
Because survival is never truly individual.
It is built on the momentum of many.
Epilogue: Becoming
Cells divided.
Time passed.
What began as a microscopic victory became something larger—heartbeat, thought, breath.
A child would one day ask, "How did I get here?"
And no one would speak of the five hundred.
No one would describe the currents or the narrowing path.
But deep within every life is a quiet truth:
Before you were a name, before you were a face, before you were a story—
You were persistence.
You were improbable.
You were the one who kept swimming.