Infinite nothingness.
There was no concept of dimensional laws such as 'time' or 'space' in this realm, as nothing existed for these laws to act upon as of yet. Many mythologies had this realm in concept, and many mythologies feared it.
For the Norse, it was Ginnungagap, the origin of the planet Earth. For Greeks, it was aptly named the Void. For Christians, it is the 9th Layer of Hell where only the worst sinners were sent for punishment.
There are dozens of religions that knew of such an existence, but it was mostly forgotten and believed to never exist.
All of these beliefs said nothing existed there, but now something appeared in this emptiness.
It appeared from the rampant formless energy which had no known laws affecting it. This energy would be referred to by living beings of other dimensions as 'the soul in its purest form'.
As this existence floated there alone in the unfathomable darkness, it began to feel emotion.
That emotion was... boredom.
This being of pure energy, soul, and power was bored.
It knew nothing, it had nothing, it sat there, yet somehow it knew what 'boredom' was.
Of course this being didn't know that this would be abnormal in the first place since it only knew itself.
Eons passed, and as they did the soul energy gathered more and more around the entity until it absorbed incredible amounts. In waiting, it had discovered a way to relieve its 'boredom'. To create thousands of separate trains of thought in its own sentience and debate whether it truly existed among its parallel selves.
Unfathomable ages pass, or maybe just a moment. Time does not exist even yet. Either way, a parallel mind diverged from the others and their arguments. It wandered along the boundaries that none of the other minds went beyond, and discovered something it deemed miraculous: Imagination.
It began seeing glimpses of color, hearing odd sounds, feeling varieties of textures, smelling infinite smells, and tasting thousands of flavors. It was a stunning discovery, and all other minds collapsed the moment they sensed what happened.
Eons pass and the soul had a flash of inspiration while imagining the flashing sensations for the 7 decillionth time that eon.
From this inspiration it quickly constructed orbs of light; followed by objects the size of grains of sand and many, many times more numerous appeared and began revolving about the lights, and such would be recognized as the 'Universe' by beings of other dimensions.
After imagining these objects, the objects would not leave its mind no matter what. It could not remove them even if it wished to.
Dozens of eons passed and the orbs began colliding. Fragments of the orbs crashed into other orbs, some of the lights burst in brilliant auras of flame and color, and many of the orbs were consumed by a new black orb appearing after hundreds of the orbs gathered into one space and then rapidly shrank leaving the rest unscathed.
The soul viewed these events in awe, startled at the beauty of its 'imagination'.
As eons passed once more, the soul watched as the surfaces of several orbs became blue and green and white, while others turned into varieties of other colors.
It knew not what it had done, but it knew in its core that these orbs were not in its imagination anymore. Somehow, sometime during those eons that had passed, it had created matter from the energy that formed it using only its imagination.
It then wished to imagine a form for itself as it discovered it could create such a foreign concept as 'matter'.
It watched living beings form on the orbs of various colors and chose what it liked the most. Slowly the soul sculpted the features of what it wished its figure to be, slowly it perfected its form.
Time passed as it remained wholly focused upon this form it wished to have, and it was obsessed with perfection. Occasionally it would look away for further inspiration and every time it did so it would notice how advanced the life forms had become since the last time it looked.
A long time later, it looked up once more for inspiration, but there was nearly nothing anymore. The colorful orbs were gone, the light was gone, and there was one thing left: the black orb formed from the lights.
In confusion, the being drew close to the black orb. As it did so, the orb became more and more unstable. It shrank faster the closer the being drew, its thoughts reaching out. At the moment it brushed the orb with its though-form, the orb burst in a brilliant flash, followed by vast untime and void. The energy that made the matter was a part of the void again.
Timeless ages passed yet again, and the soul had finished its physical form. A giant... thing with 8 arms, 10 appendages per hand, and four legs ending in metallic spikes. It was chitinous and sturdy, somehow unsettling but also comforting. It had a single head with ten eyes that reflected only the void, and no mouth. There were gold and silver horns forming a grand crown on its head, the idea of it unknown in origin. It had scales as dark as the void it came from with a beautiful golden light shining from around their edges. Something about this form made the existence feel reverence, even if it was for its own use.
Ridiculous! How could one feel reverence towards something of its own creation?
As it pictured this glorious form in its head, there were sudden flashes of color again. These flashes depicted the soul as one of the tiny beings it had seen beforehand, even.
It saw the being wandering among towers of a reflective material with white and blue scattered above it and shining beings flashing past all around it upon a grey layer below it.
The images seemed so familiar, yet so distant. For some reason the soul felt sadness as the images faded away.
The perfected body floated before the soul, waiting for it to become the immortal form of this all powerful being.
Gazing at this body that somehow now felt alien to it, the soul asked itself something it never wondered before.
"What... was I, before the void?"
The soul did not remember anything before the void, and the void existed for eternity as far as it could tell.
How does one research history when history has been erased by existence itself?
The soul searched alongside its thousand parallel thoughts, but it could not find an answer to its question.
What existed before nothingness? Was there an existence outside the nothingness?
It began its habit of questioning its existence once again, forgetting the body it had formed for itself.
Another age had passed as it pondered the odd image that it had seen, and the sadness it felt as the image had faded.
What was it? Why did it see it?
Remembering the time it sometimes watched the beings for inspiration, it remembered that name they had for themselves was something short but defining. It could not recall.
The ones it had seen recently in the sprawling planets did not have towers of shining silver, they had walls of stone and wood and pure energy at most. Nothing of this fragile looking metal.
Perhaps these creatures, with all their collective power and knowledge, could not find this material, or perhaps they had found only a variant. The soul seemingly remembered having seen a material slightly similar in the holes of the stone structures humans built.
As the soul pondered, it came upon an idea it deemed worthy of its time.
"The small things were named 'Humans'! That's right. They had individual names for each other, yet I have no name."
This entity that just began pondering the name of its existence, in its boundless power, began imagining again.
It imagined a light of beautiful and radiant white, a torus of shimmering purity. This light came to be, but the torus could not hold form as the entity was distracted. The energy was drawn to the center of the ring until the light was gathered in one point. It then burst outwards once more, forming a vast sea of endless colors.
The entity was drawn out of its thoughts upon seeing this majestic view and thought to itself "What is a name fitting for a creature than can stride across these ethereal plains as the ruler of all this power?"
At this time, in the distant edges of the darkness, something shifted. Energy gathered into form once more, this time with thought..
Sensing the energy radiating from the original soul, this new entity felt curiosity but was not developed enough to think clearly.
The original entity, having thought for several centuries, finally devised a name. It was a name unlike all the words of existence that it had heard, and uttering it was impossible for entities of a physical form. Only ethereal powers such as a soul could say it.
The original soul was overjoyed at its discovery, and it spoke its names all at once with great pride.
The power of the four names as one clashed and caused the ambient energies to tremble as though they surrendered their entirety to the Original Soul.
Far away, the newborn entity felt the power of Charabadon from the energy imbued into the names and was frightened. It had thought it might be able to absorb this other entity, but it was beginning to have doubts.
This soul felt that Charabadon was a force to be reckoned with and immediately fled as fast as it could from him.
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As this was happening, Charabadon finally returned his attention to the vessel he had made for himself.
It had a strange alien sense to it, as though it was something that should not ever come into existence, but it also seemed to have some sort of allure that was almost inviting.
It had the same atmosphere as a hot feast near a warm hearth during winter, yet at the same time it gave a sense of unsettledness as though one knew one of the dishes at the feast was poisoned but one did not know which.
Charabadon felt something was off about it, but as he still lacked knowledge he was not worried. After all, he was a soul, and what could matter that he had constructed do to him?
Charabadon drifted to the body and touched it with his wispy tendrils. As a soul, he appeared to be a cloud of gently glowing energy that moved as he willed.
Gently, he eased his misty form into the body and stretched tendrils of energy into the limbs.
If Charabadon could breathe at that point, he would have breathed a sigh of relief as it seemed the worries were unwarranted... until he felt something latch onto his existence.
It felt as though it were a ravenous maw that would devour everything about him until he was vanquished.
Shuddering, Charabadon panicked. He tried to leave the body, but the alien entity held him too firmly. He felt a feeling he only felt once before: pain. He recognized it from the flashing images he had seen of a human's perspective, and he found it very unpleasant and struggled in vain.
A strong sense of danger, a burrowing feeling, and a cry of the soul itself suffering. Turning his attention back to the torso that he was halfway out of he could see a pulsating crimson energy laced into him as though it were hungry roots growing into and eating at away his very mind.
In his panic, Charabadon pulled away as best he could, tearing part of his soul away with the few tendrils that grabbed him in the process. With this action came a sudden wave of agony, boundless and unending, paralyzing his mind. He slowly faded out of awareness as the crimson tendrils retreated into the body with the fragment of his soul.
Eras passed, universes expanded and collapsed, and beings came and left existence. In this time, Charabadon was no-where to be found.
Charabadon awoke with a start, causing blasts of chaotic energy to radiate outwards.
It sat there in the void, howling in its ethereal voice as the pain was beating down time after time.
Centuries passed as it screamed and howled, expressing its torment to the ambient power about it.
The voice of Charabadon became a horrible song to the energy, causing it to dance about and form abnormal figures and things never dreamt of. Charabadon unwittingly 'sang' a universe to existence.
After an age, Charabadon calmed. It seemed the pain had not lessened, instead Charabadon had become resistant to it.
Another flash of color passed through Charabadon's mind at this moment, something defining.
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A blurry image of blue skies, something colorless but warm, and green lumps. A boy stood here, on a grassy knoll in front of a small hut.
Next to him, a tall figure stood. He was clearly male and grown, yet his features were blurred.
"Come, son. You must learn to defend your family and your honor if you wish to grow to be a strong and upstanding man."
The figure handed a long piece of a hard shining material to the boy.
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The image ended, and with it all the sensations that the Original Soul had felt. This image was somehow bound to the core of his identity, engraving every detail on his heart.
He found a meaning to himself, information that can be used to define himself other than his four names. He was a boy, he was strong, honorable, and he was upstanding.
He had heard some of these before, but he had yet to learn for himself what these meant. With this begins the myriad of lives that Charabadon watched from above and lived from below. Generations, individuals, and civilizations he watched over as he attempted to discover himself through their stories.
He started these "Annals" to record the lives of the beings he spectated, to learn the most he could of them.
Aye, this is the prologue to his tale.