and the abyss stares back

What most would tell you about death is always different. Some get pearly gates and clouds, others a wasteland of brimstone and fire. Some would get a flowing river of lost souls, a feasting hall, or even their own ancestor's awaiting arms.

This soul certainly didn't think that this is what would happen once Death would reaps what Life sowed. It wasn't instant death and then rebirth. There was a place that came before, though it could barely count as a place.

It was nothing.

It was a Void.

This soul had been part of the Void for awhile, and had expressed confusion. Why had it not become nothing? If it had become part of this great nothing, why could it still think for itself?

None of that mattered. It was part of the Void, and the Void was part of it.

(It would never leave.)

The Void pulled against it, though it pulled with little strength. The Void understood that struggles would come.

And it had an eternity to wait.

Blessed with patience, waiting for the soul to surrender whatever the Void needed. The soul struggled against it, against the vastness of it all, for it was too vast to understand. Too vast for any entity to understand. It was a small piece of something in all of space and time, submerged in an incomprehensible mess of nothing. The Void began slipping itself into what little self there was of the soul. No pain came, yet there was a sense of wrong. How could one feel something, yet nothing at the same time? The soul, desperate to make sense of the Void, compared it to an idea. The Void

existed, with no form and no inherent power.

Yet it was the most powerful thing that the soul could imagine, the most imposing presence ever, even without anything to give it a presence.

So the soul clung tight, to feel safe against the abyss. Clung tighter and tighter. Compressed itself so tight, it became itself again. An act so impossible, so improbable, that it may as well be a miracle.

A tight curl of something, in a vast expanse of nothing.

For a while, it floated. A something in nothing. Before it understood that by doing so, it had to leave the Void. For the Void was nothing, and it could not exist with something within it. Perhaps, the soul thought, that the Void would not accept it until it was ready to truly die. Perhaps the soul would be barred from here until it was ready to let go of all it is.

And with that, it felt a sort of peace. A strange tranquility, it supposed.

At peace with the choice it made, the soul did not fight when the Void began to push it away.

Then everything came back at once, and pain filled its entire being.

It slammed against a riot of physical sensation, and this alone was unbearable. Sight came back, and it felt awful. Light stabbed against its eyes, and what little it saw made little sense, for it saw giants and dancing shadows. It was colors and colors and too many colors.

If seeing was bad, hearing was infinitely worse. The noise was deafening. All it heard was an opera of debilitating voices, a woman's voice standing out among the rest, for she was screaming.

Then the soul felt itself being changed.

It felt its memories being erased.

The soul clung tightly to its most precious memories, desperate to keep what little of its previous life it had left.

Then the soul felt itself shrink. Or rather, it felt a part of itself shrink, along with the memories.

Tucked away in a tiny corner of its own mind.

Then the soul felt nothing more.

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During a cold summer night on September 12th, Vyfity Gwynedahlia was born in a nameless town, and his loud cries filled the night air.