Light was not the first thing to exist,
nor will darkness be the last to vanish.
In a time without names,
before letters learned to speak,
before worlds became homelands,
things were formed from an unseen struggle.
There was no absolute good,
nor pure evil,
but a flood beyond classification…
advancing, retreating,
assuming shapes that defied comprehension.
Amidst it all…
will was born,
then will was poured into a body.
And the body was the first sin.
Since that moment,
everything longs for division,
and every being walks toward a point it cannot name,
yet feels its call.
Emperors, kings, sorcerers, and sons born unbidden—
all lived under the same sky,
and all slept in shadows that have never known light.
But there was one…
who was not even granted a dream.
Alone...
he was silenced before he learned to speak,
wrapped before he could see,
his limbs bound as though he was not made to walk,
but to be restrained.
No one knows when he was buried,
nor who turned the final key.
All that remains…
is silence,
and something suspended… as if waiting.
…
In the darkness, no sound.
Only breath… barely audible, untethered from time.
The air is still, the walls close,
as though the whole world had been compressed into a coffin of stone.
There…
the first eye opened.
It was not wakefulness, but a shudder.
A lash trembled as if remembering something never lived.
His eyelid was heavy, as though the weight of continents pressed upon it.
He remained shut for moments,
then opened his eye to a half-glance—
he could not see… he could see nothing.
A pitch-black darkness, thick,
more like a void than a night.
He turned his head slightly.
Nothing moved.
He wanted to touch his cheek,
but his hand struck a rough fabric covering his face.
With numb fingers,
he began to feel.
Layers of cloth,
covering his forehead, his eyes, his mouth, his chest, his legs—
as though he were wrapped not in a blanket, but in a prison.
He felt something choking him.
Not the air.
But the sensation of not feeling.
"Why am I not afraid?"
"Where… am I?"
"What is this silence?"
He heard no voice.
There was no voice in his mouth to begin with.
His head was heavy.
His mind fogged, as if memory were a well that had never been filled.
As though time had abandoned him.
But he felt something new…
A pulse.
Faint… distant… unsure,
as if his heart had forgotten how to beat,
then remembered.
His eyelid flickered.
His hands began to tremble softly,
then he pushed his palm upward…
he felt a wall above him.
He tried to push it.
But it was unyielding.
Silent.
Cold as ice.
Pressing, as if the whole earth were crouched upon his chest.
He pushed again, and a cracking sound rang out.
Something in his hand broke.
But no pain.
No scream, no blood.
Still, he felt nothing.
All he longed for in that moment…
was to see the light.
Not the sun.
Not a lamp.
Just… something to prove this wasn't a nightmare.
But he saw nothing.
His eyelids began to betray his patience, and he felt weakness.
His hand fell slowly onto his chest,
where he sensed something warm, circular…
as though it were not a part of him.
He did not know what it was,
but it pulsed.
He closed his eyes again.
It was not sleep…
but extinguishment.
As if the body needed to sink once more,
before it could rise.
As if every birth
must be preceded by a moment of annihilation.
…
Outside this place
no one knew someone stirred beneath.
No one heard the defiant heartbeat,
no one smelled the scent of creation returning from void.
But something had begun.
And in the highlands,
where no voice reaches, and no humans tread,
ancient threads quivered,
as if someone had broken a vow,
or something had gone unwatched.
The night is still long,
but light…
for the first time in a distant age…
trembled its name in the dark.
---
In a nearby mountain,
where trees do not grow and eagles dare not soar,
silence awoke again.
No sound stirred it, nor light…
but a feeling, old, forgotten through the ages.
A feeling that crept between cracks in stone…
as if breaths not exhaled in millennia
had, for a moment, drawn air.
Then something moved beneath the mountain.
No screech, no roar, no collapse.
Only the air changed… grew heavy.
In a depth beyond measure, in a cave known only to dust,
emptiness recoiled briefly.
There were eyes.
Eyes unlike anything in this world,
that bore neither life… nor death.
They opened slowly… as though the mountain itself had looked.
The gaze did not linger.
Just a moment…
then the eyes closed as they opened—without warning, without trace.
But what had occurred could not be undone.
The air remained heavy.
The stones no longer slept.
And something in the heart of the mountain
had begun to wait.
---
And from afar, where the sky never sleeps and clouds never break,
in a continent that has never known the warmth of a sun,
silence shifted.
No one declared the change,
but the land knew.
The first to feel it were the stones—
one cracked beside an ancient tomb untouched for centuries,
as if something within it had shrunk, then stretched.
Next, a root of a charred tree,
dead since an unknown age,
shuddered for a moment,
then returned to its decay,
but the soil beneath it would not calm.
In a remote cave,
far from the roads of dark sorcerers and the eyes of mercenaries,
bats that had not flown since the black snows fell
awoke, their eyes alight like dim embers.
And in the smoke-choked port,
where corpses sleep beneath trading ships,
a blind old man rose from his slumber,
placed a hand on his chest as if his heart had heard something no one else did.
"Something has changed…"
he muttered, not knowing to whom,
then returned to his sleep, trembling.
Atop the highest mountains,
a wind that had never ceased
suddenly held its breath,
then reversed its path.
And deep in a forgotten plaza,
a disfigured statue of an ancient king cracked,
a piece of its face falling—
as though the stone refused to bear a secret that was no longer asleep.
And the moon that never completes its cycle in the dark continent
was full that night.
But it was not white.
It was red—
as if it, too, was watching.
Watching a certain place…
a certain mountain…
a name not yet spoken.