Cold was not the right word, because cold requires temperature. Darkness was also not an accurate description, because darkness requires light as a comparison. There, within the Absolute Vacuum, there was only... Nothingness.
Then, an eyelid opened.
He did not awaken upon a soft bed or beneath the warmth of the sun. He awakened in a void so absolute that the sound of his own heartbeat rang like thunder splitting primordial silence.
He was a Man. Physically, he possessed everything: a pair of hands with intricate palm lines, muscles wrapping sturdy bones, and steady breathing. Yet he possessed no memory. There was no mother whispering a name into his ear, no father teaching him how to stand.
He existed, just like that. Appearing without permission from the womb of nothingness.
The man tried to move his fingers. He felt the friction between the skin of his index finger and thumb, a first physical sensation in a universe not yet born. He tried to speak, but his voice was swallowed by the hungry void. There was no air to carry his sound waves, no walls to reflect an echo.
Fear began to creep in. It was the most human fear that had ever existed: the fear of being meaningless.
He groped at his chest, feeling warmth there. In the midst of this endless emptiness, he alone was the single point that possessed mass, temperature, and life. He was an anomaly within the Absolute Vacuum.
Who am I? The question was not spoken by his lips, but screamed inside his head.
He lowered his gaze, staring at his naked body in the midst of colorless darkness. He felt strange. He had the ability to understand, yet there was nothing to understand. He had eyes to see, yet there was no sight. He felt like an answer that had been created even before the question existed.
"I..."
That single word emerged. Hoarse, yet carrying an authority he did not realize.
As he struggled to understand who he was, he realized that he could not continuously be "something" without a name. To exist was a curse if you did not know who you were. The emptiness around him seemed to press in, trying to erase his existence, as if the Absolute Vacuum were offended that there was "something" daring to appear within its domain.
Yet the Man refused to vanish. He clenched his fists tightly until the veins in his arms bulged. He did not choose to exist, but now he was here, and he refused to submit to nothingness.
He needed a boundary. He needed a divider between himself, who breathed, and this dead void.
The man drew in a deep breath, gathering the entire essence of his existence into a single point in his throat. He was ready to define himself. He was ready to give a name to this existence without permission.
And just as his lips began to part to utter the first declaration in history...