Silence. Darkness. No sound. No light.
Aezur Valin floated. No body. No mind. No form. Just a drifting consciousness in the void. The cradle of nothingness. The womb of oblivion. And he was part of it.
Memories. Shards of glass. They flickered and vanished. Fleeting images. A world. Faces. Truths. All crumbled into cosmic dust. Only melancholy remained.
Aezur didn't know who he was. Where he came from. Why he was there. The only certainty: he was the final manifestation of a forgotten concept. A primordial truth. Erased, but stubbornly persisting within him.
A pulse. Faint. Almost imperceptible. Like the wings of a moth in the abyss. Then stronger. Insistent. Echoing through the void. Not sound. A vibration. A ripple across non-existence.
Aezur felt it in his very essence. A primordial call. From all directions. From nowhere. The echo of something awakening. Or dying.
With the pulse came form. Not solid. A coalescence of energy. A whirl of non-existent colors. Textures that couldn't be touched. The void twisted. Trying to birth something forbidden.
Aezur was pulled. Into a spiral. An irresistible force. Toward an unknown destiny. There was no fear. Only curiosity. A thirst for knowledge. The only real thing in his ethereal existence.
Then, pain. Not physical. Existential agony. His essence torn apart. Reassembled. Every fiber screaming. But the pulse continued. Relentless. Shaping him. Transforming him.
Aezur felt madness creeping closer. A cold fog. Threatening to consume his consciousness. But he resisted. Clung to the only thing that felt real: being a forgotten concept. A truth refusing to die.
The pain faded. Still a distant echo. A promise it would return. Muffled sounds pierced the veil. Guttural murmurs. The rustle of heavy cloaks. The cracking of bones.
A ritual. He was at its center.
When Aezur opened his eyes, the void was gone. The primordial darkness too. There was reality now. Tangible. Oppressive.
His skin, pale like ancestral ash. His eyes, devoid of color. Reflecting the flickering light of strange crystals embedded in the damp, cold walls of an underground chamber.
The air was dense. Mold. Blood. Something ancient. Metallic. Saturating the stone. He felt the weight of the world outside. Broken. Falling apart. On the brink of collapse. Few dared to acknowledge it.
At the chamber's center, a stone altar. Runic symbols pulsed with latent and feverish energy. And atop the altar… a book. Bound in dark leather. A single eye engraved on its cover.
The book watched him. A window into an abyss. Knowledge. Madness.
Aezur felt the pull. Irresistible. The book called to him. Whispering ancient secrets. Forbidden truths. He reached out. Corporeal fingers. Almost touching the cover.
Then… a voice. Not audible. A resonance in his mind. Deep. Ancestral. From the depths of time.
"You have awakened, Echo. The ritual is complete. The truth was distorted. But it cannot be erased. The world outside is rotten, Aezur. You are the key. You are the curse. And the game… has just begun."
The eye on the cover glowed. Intense light. Aezur felt a wave of energy sweep through his being. It didn't strengthen him. It changed him. Distorted him. The rules of the universe bent around him. The laws of reality unraveled.
The cost. Sanity. Humanity. Everything was at stake.
Aezur Valin, the Echo of the Primordial Void, knew. His journey had just begun. And it would take him to places the human mind could not conceive. To truths that could drive gods insane.