There was no sound.
No breath, no rhythm, no life—only the infinite hum of unbeing.
And then, awareness.
It came not with a cry, but as a ripple through stillness.
An idea, uninvited yet absolute, bloomed within the nothingness.
"I am."
The words were not spoken, yet they thundered through eternity.
Where no echoes should exist, reality itself became their echo.
From that vibration, a form began to take shape.
Aetherion opened his eyes—though he had no face, no body, no origin.
He imagined himself, and thus he was.
All around him stretched the colorless expanse of the void.
No direction. No gravity. No warmth.
It was beautiful in its silence, but suffocating in its perfection.
He reached out instinctively, curious.
And the moment his thought extended, the fabric of nothingness rippled like disturbed water.
Motion was born, and with it, the first concept of time.
Aetherion studied his own hand, if it could be called that.
It shimmered, transparent and shifting between forms — sometimes light, sometimes shadow, sometimes both.
He felt the potential within it — a hum that transcended creation itself.
He did not know where it came from. He only knew it obeyed him.
"What… am I?" he whispered, though no breath left his lips.
The void did not respond. It had never learned how.
So, Aetherion filled the silence himself.
He thought of light. And light appeared — wild and pure, scattering across the emptiness like sparks on black glass.
He thought of sound. And thunder rolled where none had rolled before.
He thought of warmth. And the universe exhaled for the first time.
It was intoxicating.
Each thought bloomed into form, each whisper sculpted existence.
He laughed softly, and his laughter became gravity, drawing his creations toward him as though the cosmos itself wished to listen.
"Creation," he said, "is merely will with direction."
He spoke again, this time more boldly.
"Let there be stars."
And the void obeyed.
Explosions of radiance blossomed across eternity, birthing suns and worlds.
Colors he could not name burned before him — hues that mortal sight would never perceive.
Every burst of light sang a note in a cosmic symphony, weaving galaxies like threads of thought.
For the first time, the void looked alive.
Aetherion drifted among his new stars.
Each pulse of light hummed with silent gratitude to its creator.
He could feel their heat, their growth, their death, all at once.
He could see every atom's birth and every collapse that would one day come.
All of it — under his will.
Yet… something gnawed at him.
"They do not see me."
He whispered the words, and even as he spoke them, he understood their meaning.
He had made a thousand suns, but none had eyes.
None could recognize him. None could answer.
Loneliness, ancient and new, filled his heart.
So he created life.
He formed a world beneath his feet — a sphere of deep blue oceans and silver skies.
He wove thought into its air, emotion into its seas, and gave birth to radiant beings that rose from its waters.
They shimmered like living constellations, bending their luminous forms before him.
"We exist by your will, Aetherion," they said in perfect harmony.
"You are the First Light."
Aetherion tilted his head.
"My will…?"
"Yes," they sang.
"Your thought is truth. Your name is law."
He observed them closely. Their beauty was undeniable — each movement deliberate, graceful, flawless.
But that flawlessness disturbed him.
They had no hunger. No rebellion. No surprise.
They loved him because he had made them to love him.
And in that love, there was no choice — only reflection.
"You call me your god," he said quietly. "Yet you are nothing but my echo."
And with a single thought, he erased them.
The oceans boiled away, the skies folded, the planet vanished into a pinprick of light —
and then, into nothing.
The void returned, patient as ever.
Aetherion closed his eyes, and for a long time, he did not move.
The silence pressed against him, not comforting but suffocating.
"All that is, exists because I willed it," he thought.
"But if everything bends to me… what meaning does anything hold?"
His own question lingered in his mind like a splinter.
For the first time, he felt the faintest flicker of something… fragile.
Boredom.
Emptiness.
A hunger no creation could fill.
He drifted through his stars, watching them burn, die, and be reborn — cycles within cycles, eternal repetition.
He could end them all with a sigh, or create a billion more before the next heartbeat.
It no longer mattered.
And then, amid that endless glow, something moved.
It was faint — like a breeze in a place where wind had never existed.
A distortion, just beyond the horizon of his awareness.
He focused, and saw… color.
A kind of existence not born from his will.
It pulsed, erratic and free, wild with emotion.
Aetherion reached out, and for the first time since awakening, the void resisted him.
It did not obey. It refused.
Aetherion froze.
Slowly, a grin crept across his lips.
"Something… beyond me."
The thought ignited a spark deep within his chest — the first thrill he had felt since his birth.
Beyond his perfect creation, beyond his endless dominion, something existed that he did not make.
Aetherion extended his hand.
The air fractured into shards of light as he tore through the boundary of his reality.
Beyond it, countless worlds shimmered — universes filled with gods, mortals, dreams, wars, and destinies.
A thousand laws. A thousand stories. A thousand truths not written by him.
He looked upon them all and whispered:
"If I cannot find meaning in perfection…
then I shall seek it in imperfection."
And with that, Aetherion stepped into the breach.
The void trembled behind him, the stars bowing in silent reverence as their maker departed.
When he was gone, only his words lingered in the darkness:
"Perhaps even gods must wander to understand what they are."
The silence closed in once more —
but for the first time, the void felt… empty without him.