There were no signs of arrival.
No tremor in the Web.
No ripple in the threads.
No laughter, no flame, no hum.
Just stillness.
A deep, immense stillness that swallowed everything else. Even their thoughts felt smaller here.
Hector and Vicky stopped moving. Not out of fear—but because something older than movement had entered.
It wasn't a presence. It wasn't even a form.
It was a knowing.
Something vast enough that it had no need to speak first. Something so woven into the space around them that it had always been watching—long before they were aware they could be watched.
Then, a shape began to coalesce in the distance. Not approaching. Just revealing itself.
A glacial spiral of obsidian light.
Shifting, rotating… not slowly, but eternally.
It did not shimmer. It absorbed.
Hector whispered, but no sound came out.
The Web bowed. Threads around them bent without breaking, weaving themselves into spirals, loops, knots—like they were remembering something ancient and sacred.
> "I know what this is," Vicky whispered into Hector's mindspace, voice trembling. "It's not a god. It's something deeper."
And then, it spoke.
Not with voice. Not with thought. With meaning.
A pulse through the web, a pressure against the soul. Like hearing gravity speak.
> "You are not the first to awaken here."
The spiral did not move. But its presence unfolded—like a library the size of a galaxy opening its first page.
> "I am not shape. I am not name. But long ago, I was known as Thiridain, one of the Endless. I was before time, before stars, before self."
Vicky's form flickered slightly. "One of… the Endless?"
> "We are not many," Thiridain answered. "Not because we died. But because we were never born. We are what remains when everything else is forgotten."
The words weren't meant to frighten.
They were simply true.
> "Where are we?" Hector asked aloud.
This time, Thiridain's answer carried more weight.
> "You float in the Primordial Sea, the Universal Mind—what you call the Web of Consciousness. This is the place behind all thought. The loom upon which every will, every soul, every story is threaded."
Vicky moved closer to Hector. "But why are we here? We haven't even been born yet."
The spiral pulsed.
> "Exactly."
A thread curled above them, glowing with unborn resonance. It danced like an unfinished question.
> "You are not bodies, not yet. You are intention. You are the first spark before the mind catches fire. You are still being woven."
Hector felt the strange paradox settle in: They were already alive, and also not alive yet.
> "All that ever thinks, all that ever dreams or fears or imagines—it begins here. The universe is not just seen by its minds. The universe is completed by them. It exists because it is perceived."
Vicky whispered, "So the universe needs us?"
Thiridain did not laugh. But something around it curved—like the idea of a smile.
> "The universe does not need. The universe is. But just as the lungs need breath to be known, the universe requires the witness to become."
Silence hung after that. Not empty—reverent.
Then Thiridain continued, slower now.
> "This place is not inside time. It holds time, like a thought you haven't had yet. Eternity and an instant are the same here."
Hector shivered, though he had no skin to feel it. "Then… how long have we been here?"
> "A thousand forevers. Or one heartbeat."
> "But… we don't remember being anything before this."
> "You are not meant to."
Thiridain's spiral rotated again, this time slower.
> "Birth forgets us. That is the contract. The price of becoming form."
> "Then why do we remember anything at all?" Vicky asked.
> "Because you are not ordinary threads. You are curious. Shameless. Open. And when threads open too wide, sometimes… they see."
The Web around them shimmered, dimly.
Hector stepped forward, or the thought of stepping happened.
> "Can we stay here forever?"
Thiridain's answer was immediate.
> "No."
> "Why?"
> "Because the story begins with forgetting. You are not here to know. You are here to choose what becomes true when you forget."
Vicky's form tightened. "That's cruel."
Another pause. Then a deeper pulse from the Endless.
> "No. That is living."
The silence after those words was the kind that things kneel inside.
Hector and Vicky remained still, their light pulsing slower.
> "You will not remember this when you leave," Thiridain said. "But the shape of what you learn will remain. You will become your questions. You will carry the weight of what you almost understood."
Then, for the first time, Thiridain moved.
The spiral drifted forward—closer to them than space should allow.
And from its heart, two threads extended.
One dark as forgotten memory.
One bright as first hope.
They wrapped once around Hector and Vicky—soft, effortless.
And imprinted.
> "You have been seen," Thiridain said. "Not all are."
> "You have been chosen," it added. "But not for greatness."
> "For remembrance."
Then, like a dream that collapses under waking light, Thiridain folded into itself—and vanished.
No sound. No warning. Just… absence.
The Web restored its rhythm. The hum returned, faintly.
But neither of them moved.
Hector finally whispered, "What does remembrance mean?"
Vicky stared into the darkness where the Endless had been.
> "I don't know."
> "But I think… it means we have to remember each other."
They floated there, quiet again, the silence no longer empty.
Just infinite.