Going from casual monday evening to experiencing many unimaginable horrors in their entirety was more than just a shock.
I experienced time in a single instant. A swathe of emotions bore into my soul. I felt the suffering of medieval warriors as the protected their honor, modern soliders as they served their nations, mother's as they wailed for their children, children as the felt; for the first time, the pain of loss.
There was more than that, I experienced every of this things in a single instant. The spectrum of human emotions as chaotic as it could be was dumped on my heart weighing on it with the weight of a singularity. To know every facet of it at once was not meant to be, yet there I was, suffering in the wake of impossibility.
Eons of history were lain bare to my punitive mind.
I forgot how to breath, how to move, how to think. I didn't know if I was standing or seated, I knew I existed and that was it everything else was murdled in uncertainty.
I know now that time flows, but time remembers too. What I was seeing were memories written in time. They were utter chaos, incongruent moments woven in the same tapestry, every of their detail preserved.
When a colonization died, the moment of their death was broadcast into my mind at the same time as the moment of their rise. I felt both the death and rebirth of everything that was and ever would be in a single fleeting instant.
My heart; under the tension of such a wild contrasts of experiences ached unimaginably.
Those first moments after the doors of a distant universe bled darkness into my heart were by far the most grueling.
I see them now too, the myriad of existences etched in the tapestry of time. The burden on my mind however is not as taxing.
At that time, even a few days after, i couldn't, with utmost certainty tell how much time had passed. I bore the mind of a child once, then that of an aging universe the next. The novelty of tomorrow and the curiosity that came with it was ripped from my grasp. Knowledge was a depressing thing to be bestowed. And it was dumped on me unannounced and without moderation.
In the haze of experiences; my vision lost in the past and future, I felt a presence vastly stronger than any I had seen in time, approach.
In hindsight, I should have been able to see them through the turmoil of memories. I saw both the past, present and future after all. Only the past was clearer, the latter... well let's just say the future is never really set in stone.
There was a comforting warmth they exuded.
I wondered of their nature. However, at the periphery of my mind, I knew their name, and that was all. Their origin was mared by mystery and their face veiled in secret.
Slowly, my sense of self was slipping. I had long forgotten who I was. I was on track to forget that I was. Time was never meant to be beholden by a mortal in it's vastness, time was meant to be elusive, hidden behind mounds of enigma to remain as unfathomable as possible.
Yet I held it in the palm of my hands, the weight of its secrets crushing my mind, body and soul.
To know the secrets of everything, but to be unable to carry that knowledge into the future was taxing on the mind. I knew everything only to forget it and know it once more in a constant loop. Such was my existence for the past minutes, it was... depriving to say the least.
The presence moved closer, it's influence stronger. It was like living in a world as cold as the darkest star only to experience the warmth of the brightest sun in the next moment.
The falvor of the power beholden by the alien presence was vastly different from that of the darkness that slowly devoured my soul.
The fiber of my being was tortured. Forced to accommodate the immense pressure of a vast well of strength conflicting against another even more potent, it shattered.
When my mortal bind shattered, it was as though I ascended into a greater form of existence. I saw in stark clarity all that was etched in time.
The memories were no longer as cryptic, their secrets not as enigmatic. The colors of the universe shifted, and the weave of reality shifted with them.
I experienced the pull to the past with every distant memory, and that of the future with every revelation.
I felt connected to everything, my consciousness reaching out into the very atoms that held together the universe.
It was a profound feeling, one I would have never in my wildest dreams thought existed.
I had no form, and I also had form. My body, that was now in a different plane of existence, was in a constant cycle of collapse and reform. Never maintaining one form for more than a passing second.
Like mist that turned to water for a brief second and to mist in the next.
I understood profoundly, the secrets of the universe. The depth of existence and the unimaginable strength held in everything that was.
Like a spider at the center of it's web, I sat at the center of existence. The world around me was no longer dark, no longer suffocating. The change had been drastic, almost instant but now I existed as something unbound by time. My humanity was eroded, my identity remade.
The presence that had been approaching me made itself known.
I still couldn't behold it's face, i only saw what it was, not what it could be.
Like how scientists spoke of the duality of electrons, as both particles and waves, their position and momentum never known at the same time; collapsing into one only under observation. The being before me was of a similar nature, existing as many things but never collapsing into any.
Their form shifted as did mine, only it was far more hidden and elusive. If i was mist that collapsed into water and back, they were everything and nothing at the same time.
Truly incomprehensible.
It's past was more defined, a singular life form that roamed the universe as both parent and butcher. Birthing and erasing from existence anything they willed.
It's future and present were hidden from me, i couldn't; try as I may, understand what they were or would be. Their identity torn from the memories in time.
To experience time in it's entirety as I did was enough to dim my light. The toll on my spirit was great. But as the presence drew near, a wave of relief enveloped me as the torture I had grown accustomed to recended almost into oblivion.
It spoke into my mind, it's tongue ancient but the words known to me. I was stunned... confused even.
With it's approach, my mind was slowly coming back to me, gradually my identity returned, however, I was not the same as I had been. Nonetheless, I gained the capacity to question my current predicament. I recalled what precided my situation, everything feeling almost like a dream now that the influx of knowledge had been cut off.
Then I heard it's voice in my head.
It was a voice that conveyed not only the message but also the identity of the being. Everything they were and would be was held in those simple words.
"HELLO SON"