Before the First Breath

There was a place before time, a waiting room in the folds of nothingness. There was no darkness, but there was no light, either. There was nothing but complete stillness. Potential beings drifted here and each offered a vision which was the life that would be theirs, should they choose to step through the veil into existence.

One of them — call it a soul, or a spark, or simply a question — opened its eyes to see what awaited.

A vision bloomed. Hunger. Cold. A cradle rocking in the middle of the night. There was also the ache of wanting, the weight of labor. Love, yes, but always fragile and bound to loss. Empires rose and fell. Violence was passed down like an heirloom. Laughter was sharp and fleeting before being swallowed by silence. And at the end, the long erosion into death.

The being considered. Others leapt eagerly, as if dazzled by the brief shimmer of joy, or blinded by the promise of meaning. They hurled themselves forward into the gamble of flesh. Just one, just this one, lingered though. It watched and it knew: every joy would be purchased with pain. Every heartbeat a debt to entropy. To enter was to be consumed. All of this and it turned away.

In its refusing, it became something else; not a person, not a ghost, but the purity of absence. Freedom unscarred by time. A truth only the unborn could carry. Simply not entering the game was the only victory the game could never touch.