Something awoke.
First came awareness, not thought.
Only the simple realization that something existed.
Then came feeling.
Not warmth or cold. Not pain or comfort.
Merely the certainty that there were things.
It lingered in that sensation.
There was a here.
And somewhere, there was a there.
It could not have explained how it knew.
Only that the distinction suddenly existed.
Only then did sight arrive.
It had no eyes, yet it saw.
It had no body.
Not truly.
It was little more than a shape suspended within an impossible expanse.
An inky darkness without edges.
Without skin or bone.
Two crimson lights floated within it, watching a world that possessed neither distance nor direction.
For a long while, it did nothing.
The last thing it remembered was... something.
A collision.
A tremendous force meeting another.
It reached for the memory, but nothing came in return.
Only the certainty that something immense had happened.
Eventually, it drifted.
Not by walking, for there was nothing beneath it.
And not by flying, for there was no sky above.
It simply... became somewhere else.
Some things in this realm were impossibly simple.
A point.
A line.
A color that was only itself.
Others were so complicated that merely observing them caused thought to unravel.
Structures folded through dimensions it could not imagine.
Entire landscapes seemed to consist of ideas rather than matter.
Whenever it believed it understood something, it changed.
Or perhaps it had never changed at all.
Perhaps the understanding had been the illusion.
It drifted farther.
There were places where existence seemed unfinished.
Others where it appeared to have been completed so thoroughly that nothing more could ever happen there.
Neither felt stranger than the other.
The thing looked at itself.
Not downward.
Not into a reflection.
But inward.
What was it?
Somehow, it knew this was not its true self.
There was more to it.
If such a thing could even be said.
More senses.
More... something.
It remembered being a person.
That knowledge remained absolute, even if every other detail escaped it.
It had done this before.
Not this.
But something similar.
It had projected its spirit.
Separated its thoughts from its body.
Observed distant places while its body remained elsewhere.
It remembered existing as a body without a mind.
As a mind without a soul.
As a soul without a body.
But this...
It had never existed like this before.
It was unfamiliar, yet it felt nothing in particular about it.
Only acceptance.
And a touch of curiosity.
Nothing it had ever done resembled this.
It continued drifting through the incomprehensible silence, carrying with it only two certainties.
It had once been someone.
The idea of personhood remained, even if the person did not.
And it had a reason for being in this impossible place.
It was searching for something.