There was no light. No shadow. No movement. Only the endless, formless quiet of the Void, where thought had not yet taken its first breath and time still slumbered unborn.
And yet, something stirred.
A ripple moved where no ripples should be. A single point in an infinite sea of nothing tensed, like a breath held too long.
And then—he awoke.
Not with sound. Not with a scream or a gasp. With awareness.
I exist.
The thought was not spoken, but it echoed—louder than thunder across a world that didn't yet exist. The moment the idea formed, the ripple widened, and in its center sat a soul unanchored by flesh. He was without shape, without skin, without a name—yet he was.
Fragments of a forgotten life clung to him like mist. He remembered cities and sunsets. A woman's laughter. The ache of loss. The weight of humanity. All of it distant now—phantoms trailing off into the black.
But the core of him burned with something deeper than memory.
Chaos.
That was what he was now. Not a man. Not a god. Not even a spirit. He was Chaos itself, aware, alive, unchained. The original breath before order. The first truth before lies could exist.
And as the realization settled, the Void reacted.
Swirls of unseen currents flowed around him. Not wind. Not water. Not fire. Just…concept. As if the absence of everything recognized him as its child.
Where am I? What am I meant to do?
The questions didn't come from fear. Fear was still too distant. But instinct whispered: to exist is to act. To act is to define. And to define is to create.
Yet he was untrained. A newborn in a realm older than time.
Still, as he focused on the blankness around him, the Void seemed to lean closer, listening. Reacting. Awaiting his will.
And so, he tried.
Light.
Nothing.
Color?
Still nothing.
Sound.
There was a shift—faint, a breath of resistance in the silence. Then it collapsed.
Whatever this power was, it could not be forced by wish or mimicry. He felt it in his bones—he had to understand, not demand.
He floated in that thought for eons—or maybe seconds. There was no time here. No motion to track. No gravity to anchor. Just Chaos, alive and quiet, thinking.
And as he thought, the Void… changed.
It dimmed, ever so slightly. And in the dimness, a shape began to emerge.
A spiral. A fractal. No, a book.
It unfolded from nothing, each page a shimmer of concept, bound not by leather but by living Voidfire—black and silver flame that burned without heat.
What is this?
The book hovered before him, its spine crackling with silent potential. No words marked its cover, yet he knew what it was.
The Codex of Origin.
Not a creation of his will, but a gift. Or perhaps an inevitability—an instinct born of Chaos itself. As his awareness touched the Codex, it flared. Runes and glyphs bloomed across the cover like veins of molten silver, pulsing with knowledge beyond language.
The book opened.
And knowledge poured in.
Not as text. Not as images. As understanding.
The first lesson: You are Chaos-born. You are not alone.
Across the Void—beyond even this one—others had stirred. Other Chaos-beings, each cast into the womb of their own unrevealed universes. Some woke as destroyers. Some as dreamers. Some would die before they ever acted.
But Luke… he had awakened. Fully. Early.
He now knew this much:
He could shape reality from concept.
He could weave form into the formless.
He could imprint existence onto the Void.
But once something was named, it could no longer be unnamed.
Power, yes—but not without consequence.
The Codex turned a page.
And another revelation came.
There existed no hierarchy yet. No gods. No laws. No balance. No death. No cycles. No stars. No galaxies. Not even time. Everything waited—for him, and those like him—to shape or shatter it.
Luke—the human memory of that name—echoed faintly within this truth.
I was once small. Now I am everything unshaped.
And with that thought, his mind settled.
Then let there be the First Thought.
The moment he willed it, the Void quivered. And in front of him, a tiny spark blinked into being. A dot of golden light, no bigger than a tear, trembling with potential.
It lasted only a moment—then winked out.
But it was real. Real in a realm that had never known reality.
His heart—if he still had one—raced.
It worked…
I made something.
And from that first, fragile spark, Chaos began to shift. Like a pond kissed by wind, ripples of cause and effect began spiraling outward. For the first time in the Void's long slumber, something had existed—and thus, possibility had been born.
Luke was no longer only Chaos.
He was the First Shaper.