THE BLOOD THAT REMEMBERED THE BEGINNING
Prologue — Before the First Dawn
There was no darkness.
Darkness required light.
There was no silence.
Silence required sound.
There was no empty space.
Space itself had not yet become a possibility.
There was only an immeasurable absence of distinction.
No direction.
No distance.
No beginning.
No ending.
No existence.
No non-existence.
And yet, something was aware.
It could not see, because there was nothing that could be called sight.
It could not think, because thought required sequence.
It could not speak, because language required distinction.
Still—
it knew.
Not everything.
There was not yet an everything.
It knew only itself.
Then came the first impulse.
Not a thought.
Not a sound.
A permission.
Exist.
The undivided expanse trembled.
For the first time, the possibility of distinction appeared.
And from that permission came another.
Separate.
One became distinguishable from another.
Presence became possible.
Absence became possible.
Being.
Non-being.
Beginning.
Ending.
Affirmation.
Negation.
The first polarity opened.
And reality began.
Not as a universe.
Not as a galaxy.
Not even as a dimension.
First came principles.
Then laws.
Then concepts.
Then forms.
Then worlds.
Then life.
Then death.
Then souls.
Then gods.
Then civilizations.
Then history.
And eventually, after an incomprehensible succession of realities, one insignificant planet acquired a name.
Earth.
On that planet, in a city full of ordinary people living ordinary lives, a young man slept through his alarm.
He had absolutely no idea that the universe had already existed for eternity.
He had even less idea that eternity had once existed because of him.