Darkness.
Not the absence of light, nor the soulless depths of someone without meaning in life, but a primordial darkness. The overtaker of time, the void without sound, time, or meaning. The type of darkness to drive one beyond insane with nothing but a glimpse. No being should be able to exist under the pressure of this darkness.
And yet, he did.
With one breath, the universe lit up into an explosion of light, stars filling the vast emptiness of space like dots on a canvas drawn by creation itself.
With nothing to surround him, he should not have been able to think, breathe, or move – he shouldn’t have been able to exist. Despite this, Axion opened his eyes. Like a bell ringing throughout a country, his soul awakened.
The bright lights filling the void suddenly started warping; twisting around itself until it compressed into a small, red ball, the size of which was no more than his fingernail. Slowly, it drifted towards his chest, until it touched him. When it did, a feeling more powerful than any drug or alcohol coursed through his veins, flowing through every bit of his body until it reached his heart.
Thump. He couldn’t think, but he understood the addiction of what he felt. It was too much for him to handle. It was too good, too satisfying, too… pure.
Thump! His heart couldn’t think, but it started to beat faster and faster, the euphoria of it all digging into him. His bones molded into a stronger counterpart, his brain powered to a new height, his blood took in more nutrients than it should ever be able to, and eventually…
THUMP. Darkness.
The previously intoxicating feeling disappeared, along with any light in front of him, as his mind formed a connection between parts of his body. At the same time, he woke up.
‘IT BUR–’
A thought formed into his mind as his eyes cracked open, seemingly carrying over from the past; possibly another area, subspace… even universe? As his thoughts instantly dissipated, he couldn’t tell. Surrounding him was the unfamiliar sight of absolutely nothing. No information in his brain was wrought out as not even black could enter his irises. Was he going blind?
[DING]
Despite the lack of anything visible, his ears were still mysteriously able to hear something behind him. Sound waves, he knew from high school so many years ago, shouldn’t be able to be heard by him if he was in space – though god knows if he was – but he couldn’t think of that right now.
Literally being in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to support his body, and even gravity seeming absent, he shouldn’t be able to move around, or at least easily. Thankfully, unbeknownst to him, whatever mysterious force had entered his body while he was unconscious gave him the body strength to somehow twist around.
When he finally did, starting right back at him was a giant eye with a green pupil, looking straight out of a horror movie. As soon as he looked at it, however, it flickered in and out of existence, before the first signs of light appeared. A small rectangular shape bloomed before him, carving into the void. Lines of gold twisted into the air, forming a frame, until it hardened into something eligible to read.
[INITIATING SOUL INTEGRITY CHECK… COMPLETE.]
[AXION: HOST BODY IN STASIS.]
[COGNITIVE FUNCTIONALITY: ERR% STABILITY.]
[CONDITION: UNKNOWN. REFORMATTING.]
[ERROR_439: UNABLE TO RESONATE VOID HARMONY. REQUESTING HIGHER ACCESS…]
[ACC_GRANTED. ATTEMPTING TO RESONATE…]
[ERROR_795_UNW: PLEASE CONFIRM YOU ARE WILLING.]
Staring at the text in front of him, Axiom felt lightheaded.
‘Hahh… Have I finally gone crazy?’
Strangely, a panel, it seemed like, had appeared in front of him. What’s more, he couldn’t see anything else, as if he was trapped in a dungeon at night with only a lantern visible. The borders of it were golden, in a regal seeming design, while the background was dark blue. ‘If I’m a schizo, I might as well take it in. Maybe I’ll get some fun out of it.’
“I confirm.”
He confirmed that he was willing for ‘resonation,’ whatever that was, to happen, but after a minute of waiting, nothing happened. Maybe he had to think about it? ‘I confirm.’
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[SOUL_GRANTED. LOADING PATH: C:\Users\G\Panel\main.bat (////////)]
“What? Wait, wait, soul granted? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Finding no response, Axiom started sweating. Delusion or not, he didn’t agree to this! He knew he should have taken those pills his friends offered him!
‘Hey, hey, you hear my thoughts, right? Undo!’
[LOADING: 58% (//////////)]
‘No, no, no, stop! I said undo, undo!’
[LOADING: 97% (////////////////)]
“Stop! Undo – please, I said please!”
Seeing no response initially, he panicked. Right after saying undo again, though, the panel flickered until it disappeared, and he was met with the void again. Asking it politely probably was what had done the trick. Thankfully, he knew when to be polite.
[LOADING: 100%. ACCEPTING PAYMENT OF SOUL; OPENING PANEL.]
Axiom spat out blood. This stupid second-generation dare to trick him? It flickered back into existence the next second, saying it was going to take his soul. He wouldn’t accept that! Despite his pleadings, though, it was too late, as a new panel appeared in front of him.
[WELCOME, — ERROR: AUTHORITY INSUFFICIENT TO GAIN GRANT TO TITLE. GIVING TEMPORARY TITLE, HOLDER OF CREATION.]
[STATISTICS FAILED TO LOAD. RESTORING DEFAULT TEMPLATE…]
UNIQUE SOUL IDENTIFIER: Axion-33921
SOUL AGE: 29
PHYSICAL AGE: 0
STATUS: Dead
RACE: Cosmic Dust
TITLE: Holder of Creation
ITEMS: Inconclusive
== NOTES ==
Welcome, holder of creation.
He has great hopes for you.
Unblinkingly, Axiom started at the panel. The golden words shimmering in front of him was reminiscent of RPGs games he would play in his free times while he was a teen, though really only in design. Except for race and items, nothing he saw seemed familiar. He could glean into the possibility that his “unique soul identified” was just his name with some meaningless numbers added to it, while most of the other parts of what he saw were not so obvious. It was probably meant to look somewhat like a status panel, though with the majestic outline and dark sea blue background attached to it, his imagination somewhat found that hard to believe. He wasn’t sure why he was marked as ‘cosmic dust,’ but looking down at his body which wasn’t really all that present, he assumed it just meant he was dead, looking at his status.
Wait… dead?
‘H-hey, sir panel, I’m not really dead, am I? I-I can think, and… kinda move, so I can’t be, right?’
It wasn’t possible he was dead. He had lived for twenty nine years straight, surviving horrible living conditions and mental barration from all he had met, so why would he suddenly stop surviving? He could breathe, too, so he couldn’t be dead. But when he thought that, he suddenly realized: He wasn’t breathing until he thought of it.
‘This, it can’t, it, it can’t be possible! I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m… am… Am I alive?’
[DETECTING SPIKE IN EMOTIONS. CALMING…]
Suddenly, he calmed down and realized that even if he were dead, it would be fine. He still was, as it seemed, existing, so he couldn’t be fully dead, or at least not dead in the sense of his heart stopping. If he focused, he could still hear it beating ever so slightly.
“Sir panel, what are you?”
[Ding! Host, I am an existence meant to give… Unable to determine name. Searching for an eligible title… Granted. Host, I am an existence meant to gift you Creation’s Wisp. You have been found to be the most fitting to receive it. Additionally, according to data collected by other forms of me, the most common name I am referred to as is ‘system.’ I will now assimilate that into my data and will respond to that through thoughts or verbal speaking.]
Axiom noticed that the response was longer than anything before, and not all in uppercase. Interestingly, it seemed that the system, as it told him to call it, was talking with more of a humanoid semblance, as if it was someone real – albeit slightly robotic – talking to him. However…
“‘Creation’s Wisp?’ What’s that?”
[Ding! The Creation’s Wisp is what you make of it.]
“...”
Coming from a panel appearing from a giant eye, he didn’t really know what to expect its intelligence to be. One could argue it wasn’t truly low, since it answered his question, but it was in the dumbest way possible. Even though it didn’t clearly answer, he knew it was probably something good, considering that it contained the word ‘Creation’ in it. Would he be able to create anything he willed, like in those novels where the main character could randomly create a universe with a snap of their fingers? He doubted it, but there was always hope. After all, if he was truly going crazy, anything could happen, right?
“Well, okay. How do I get it?”
[Ding! To obtain the Creation’s Wisp, you must pass three trials to prove your worth. The first trial, you have already passed, which is to absorb ERR_INSUFFICIENT_AUTHORITY and survive. The second trial, which you may start at any point, is to prove your creation level can be high enough with maximum authority to have homo sapiens that live for at least ten thousand years. The third and final trial, which can only be done if you pass the second trial, will be to prove your mind is strong enough to handle creational demolition. If you fail any of the three trials, your soul, which you do not own as you agreed upon earlier, will be crushed into powder to be eaten by the next candidate for body reconditioning.]
Ignoring the error present at the top, Axiom read through the trials. He didn’t remember ‘absorbing’ anything, unless his memory was just that bad, but the other two trials didn’t seem to be hard. However, for the second one, ten thousand years seemed like a long time.
‘Could I even live that long?’
[Rest assured, host, you will be able to speed up time.]
That assured him, but he still had questions in his mind. What was creational demolition? What was the authority, or creation level? And, most importantly;
“I never agreed to you owning my soul!”
[Host, you confirmed that you would transfer ownership of your soul upon initialization. Please think or speak that you would like to move on to the second trial to continue.]
“What? You can’t just take my soul! I’m not going to say anything about how I want to move on to the next trial until-”
[Confirmed. Loading…]
And then everything faded to black.
