Prologue: The Price of Zero

Now, now, lets go back a bit in time and rewind it, back from the time of Hiroshima and Nagazaki's bombing using the Little boy and Fat man atomic bombs, from WWII!-errrr, actually, no!

That is too early for our story.

Hmm.....Fine, tsk, tsk, lets go back some more.

Back to the birth of the Ottoman empire and the mongols and Byzantines. Too early.

Back to the time of Moses.

Too early.

Farther back to Costantine...Too early, too early

Further back to before Jesus.

Ancient Rome and Greece? Nah, farther.

"Tsk, fucking senile old geezer, can we go further back already goddammit?"

"Young one, have some patience. Tch, this generation is no fun." The narrator clicked his tongue in annoyance. "You really know how to wreck the mood, don't ya, you little rascal?"

The narrator sighed deeply.

"Where was I? Ah yes" He cleared his throat.

Back to Adam and eve, back to the creation of the earth, back to the big bang, back to the creation of Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus. To other worlds, planets.

Too early, too early, too early.

Further back, further, further, further, further, before the birth of the milky way, before the birth of the galaxy next to it, and the one before it, and the one before, before, before, before.

"Pops, can w-"

"Shut the fuck up! Just let me fucking continue the story!!" He shouted at the top of his lungs in irritation.

Back to the creation of them.

Before the dimensions of all. Stood something called BR as an abbreviation (well explain later on).

Before, before, before, before, befo -whoops, hold on, hold on, lets stop here.

But, if my mind doesn't betray me, wasn't there something before?

Ah, how could I forget!

There once upon a time stood something called 'Nothing' that people tend to forget, or not since there isn't anything to forget about in the first place.

Now arises an important question that we decisively need to analyze.

"If a man is never born, is he dead? If a thing is never seen, does it exist? If a name is never spoken, does it carry meaning?"

I do not ask these questions to be answered. I ask them because no one dares to.

The universe is built on the arrogance of definition. Numbers, laws, identities—shackles that are forged in language, in memory, in time, or this theory that lingers in our brains called collective consciousness. But what of the spaces between? The void? Reality? The things that exist outside knowing, outside the gaze of men and gods? Or does it not exist at all?

If so, how are we speaking about it? Paradoxical isn't it?

He was such a thing. A presence without a name. A shadow cast by nothing. Or nothing cast by a shadow?

If history is a river, he was the drought. If men are measured by the weight of their deeds, he was the absence of gravity itself. He did not belong, not in this world, not in any world, because he was not of the world.

Not forgotten. Not ignored. Not erased.

Simply… he never counted.

And yet, in the nothing, he saw everything. The weight of unspoken thoughts. The blood behind unshed tears. The truth in silence. The universe was full of things unseen, of wounds never given words, of horrors never given shape.

And he understood.

He understood that nothingness was not the absence of being, but the absence of limitation. He understood that a thing untethered by perception is a thing without chains. He understood that the moment a man asks, "What is the shape of nothing?"—

—he has already begun to see it. The idea of liminalism or being liminal. He experienced it and it drove him not to insanity, but sent him spiraling into the depth of the abyssal word of all what it carried of meaning, something much much beyond than mere insanity, something that can not described with words, because it is not a reality, it is something simply…...beyond.

Saying he was insane would be an understatement, mind you.

And once seen, it can never be unseen.

The world had built itself on the assumption that zero was empty. That nothing had no weight. That absence held no consequence. But they were wrong.

Zero was the abyss between all things. The wound that preceded creation. The foundation of every lie called "truth."

And the price of zero… was everything.

As such, because he lost everything,

He gained everything.