Awakening in the Void

Darkness.

At first, there was only the absence of sensation—a void so absolute that even the concept of time seemed distant. No breath, no heartbeat, no body. Nothing.

Then, a ripple.

Something shifted in the nothingness.

A slow awareness crept into my being, like a whisper against the void. At first, it was faint, a mere suggestion of existence pressing against me. Then, I realized—it wasn't pressing against me.

It was being drawn into me.

Particles of dust, light, and fragments of something ancient spiraled toward me, pulled by an unseen force. By me. A faint hum vibrated through the abyss, a sensation that wasn't sound but something deeper. I wasn't just absorbing—I was consuming.

Then, the message appeared, sharp and clinical.

⚠ [ERROR_0001]

⚠ [CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN]

⚠ [EXISTENCE: UNRECOGNIZED]

⚠ [RECOMMENDED ACTION: TERMINATE]

A tremor coursed through my awareness. Fear. Or at least, something close to it. The message wasn't a question, nor a suggestion. It was an execution order.

Then, a flicker of memory.

A hospital bed. The rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor. A body too weak to move.

A whisper—my own voice, frail and desperate. "All I wanted... was more time."

Then, silence. The end.

And yet… I still existed.

But what was I?

The realization came like a distant echo. I had no limbs, no heartbeat, no breath—only a pull, an insatiable gravity that consumed all near me. I was not a person. Not anymore.

I was a black hole.

A singularity, drifting through the void.

And according to whatever System governed this reality, I was not supposed to be here.

⚠ [RECALIBRATING...]

⚠ [ASSESSING ANOMALY...]

⚠ [THREAT LEVEL: UNDETERMINED]

⚠ [INITIATING FIRST-STAGE CONTAINMENT.]

Then, suddenly—

A pulse of energy surged through the void, distorting the very fabric of space.

It was not light in the way a star burned, nor was it the glow of something distant and indifferent. This was a force of precision—an executioner's blade, descending with intent.

I felt it before I understood it. A pressure. A force that did not push, but erased.

Where it passed, the void did not brighten—it disappeared.

I had no eyes, yet I felt its presence like a wound cutting through existence itself. It did not move randomly. It was seeking. Searching for something that should not be.

Me.

I tried to move, but I had no body, no form to recoil with. I tried to escape, but the force was not something I could outrun—it did not chase; it simply was.

Then it touched me.

I had no nerves, yet agony lanced through my being. Not pain in the human sense, but something deeper—something worse.

I was unraveling.

A piece of me simply stopped existing.

The edge of my presence flickered and shrank as if it had never been there at all. I did not bleed. I did not burn. I was being erased from the fabric of reality itself.

A moment of instinctual panic surged through me, raw and blinding. I tried to pull—not at the force, but at anything else.

Debris. Dust. Matter. I reached desperately, dragging in shattered fragments of asteroids, remnants of ancient collisions. They vanished into me, but they did nothing to stop the unmaking that pressed down upon me.

It was not enough.

I tried again, widening my pull, searching for something more substantial. A drifting moon fragment, dense and heavy. It entered my event horizon. I devoured it.

But no matter how much I struggled, the execution did not halt.

A second pulse struck.

Another piece of me vanished.

I recoiled inward, instinct screaming without words. The hunger inside me raged, but it was powerless against this force.

I could not escape.

I could not fight it.

I was going to be erased.

No. No. No.

There had to be something. Some way.

I turned my focus outward, feeling along the edges of the encroaching force, trying to understand it. But it was alien, unnatural—no, too natural. It was not energy. It was not matter. It was a fundamental law, being imposed upon me.

And laws were absolute.

Another pulse.

I felt my edges strain, peeling away. My thoughts fragmented for an instant, memories slipping away into the nothingness. A bed. A whisper. A monitor's steady beep.

I was disappearing.

I had to do something.

I reached again—not for matter, not for energy, but for whatever this was.

At first, nothing. My pull grasped at emptiness, slipping uselessly past the force. I was too weak. Too small.

Another pulse.

Pain. Unmaking. The void around me rippled, breaking apart like fragile glass.

And then…

A realization.

No.

I didn't need to overpower it. I didn't need to resist it. I needed to consume it.

Not like the asteroids. Not like dust and rock.

I had been trying to consume it like matter. That was wrong. This was different.

I had to pull in something deeper.

A crack rippled through the abyss. My horizon wavered.

And then—

The light trembled.

For the first time, I felt it react.

The next pulse came, but this time, I grasped at its edges. I did not stop it. I did not block it.

I drew it in.

The moment the force wavered, I seized it—pulling, devouring, warping. It did not break. It did not collapse. But it hesitated.

The System had not accounted for this.

A shudder passed through the fabric of space. A ripple in the law that had once been absolute.

The pressure against me cracked.

I did not know what I had done. I did not understand it.

But I had survived.

And I was hungry.