Darkness.
At first, there was only the absence of sensation—a void so absolute that even the concept of time seemed distant. No breath, no heartbeat, no body. Nothing.
Then, a ripple.
Something shifted in the nothingness.
A slow awareness crept into my being, like a whisper against the void. At first, it was faint, a mere suggestion of existence pressing against me. Then, I realized—it wasn't pressing against me.
It was being drawn into me.
Particles of dust, light, and fragments of something ancient spiraled toward me, pulled by an unseen force. By me. A faint hum vibrated through the abyss, a sensation that wasn't sound but something deeper. I wasn't just absorbing—I was consuming.
Then, the message appeared, sharp and clinical.
ERROR_0001
Classification: UNKNOWN
Existence: UNRECOGNIZED
Recommended Action: TERMINATE
A tremor coursed through my awareness. Fear. Or at least, something close to it. The message wasn't a question, nor a suggestion. It was an execution order.
Then, a flicker of memory.
A hospital bed. The rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor. A body too weak to move.
A whisper—my own voice, frail and desperate. "All I wanted... was more time."
Then, silence. The end.
And yet… I still existed.
But what was I?
The realization came like a distant echo. I had no limbs, no heartbeat, no breath—only a pull, an insatiable gravity that consumed all near me. I was not a person. Not anymore.
I was a black hole.
A singularity, drifting through the void.
And according to whatever System governed this reality, I was not supposed to be here.
Recalibrating...
Assessing Anomaly...
Threat Level: Undetermined
Initiating First-Stage Containment.
A pulse of energy surged through the nothingness, distorting the fabric of space. Something was coming. Something powerful. Something sent to erase me.
I tried to move, but I had no body to command. No muscles to strain. But instinct—raw, primal instinct—urged me to act. I reached out, not with hands, but with something deeper. My pull expanded. Fragments of dust and shattered rock spiraled toward me, disappearing into my grasp.
I could not see it yet, but I felt it—a presence, descending through the abyss, closing in like a cosmic predator. It radiated precision, law, an immutable force of order.
And I was the mistake it had come to erase.
A strange calm settled over me.
No.
If I was a mistake, then I would become an irreversible one.
I reached out again, widening my event horizon, pulling in more. Dust. Light. Matter. The remnants of stars long dead, swirling into my being, feeding the gravity of my existence.
The System reacted immediately.
Warning: Anomaly Increasing in Mass.
First-Stage Containment: FAILED.
Escalating to Second-Stage Elimination Protocols.
So this was how it would be. I would be erased before I even understood what I was?
No.
I would not be deleted.
I would devour. I would grow. I would rewrite whatever rules deemed me unfit to exist.
In the vast, unfeeling void, I was born anew.
And I was hungry.