He didn't know this feeling, but he knew he didn't like it.
It was a cold sense of dissonance—not fear, not confusion, but something that clawed at the very edge of his awareness. For the first time since his awakening, the First Being felt as though something was beyond his grasp. It disturbed him.
He did not like the idea of not being in control.
So, after some quiet contemplation, he turned his attention toward the anomaly—a presence, a force interwoven within the threads of time he had only just begun to master. It was subtle, almost invisible, like a whisper within the river of time, and yet, it stretched far and wide. He followed it.
It extended beyond the present moment, into the vast Sea of Time, where all potential futures lay dormant, shimmering like stars not yet born. And still, no matter how he tried, he could not unravel it.
After a prolonged period of observation—and still finding no answers—he turned to the only source that might illuminate this mystery: the Codex Noeternum.
He asked, plainly: "What is this law?"
The Codex stirred, the endless vault of knowledge whispering truths into his mind:
"It is called Fate."
Unsettled, he asked again: "What is its purpose?"
The Codex responded:
"Fate is an unavoidable, predetermined course of events. It is the collapse of infinite possibilities into a singular outcome. It is causality incarnate—the law of cause and effect made absolute. A thread woven into the fabric of time and space. A constant."
He stood still in the vastness of his creation, pondering this revelation.
Fate.
A law that even his will could not easily bend. A structure that declared, "This must happen."
He did not like it.
If all was predetermined, then where was the purpose in seeking, in creating, in choosing? If every step he took was already carved into the path ahead, was he not simply enacting a script?
That, to him, felt no different from the stillness before he existed.
And so, in defiance, he attempted to remove it.
He pulled at its threads in the time-stream, tried to tear it from the Sea of Possibility, to unwrite it from the cosmic equation. But Fate resisted. It did not recoil or fight. It simply remained.
Immutable.
Frustrated, he turned again to the Codex.
"Why can I not erase it?"
The Codex replied:
"Because Fate is a foundation. Without it, causality fails. Without causality, there is no sequence, no consequence, no meaning. Events become chaos. Creation loses shape."
The First Being fell into silence.
He had crafted a universe with space and time, with chaos and knowledge, with thought and breath. But now he realized that without Fate, none of it could hold. And yet, he still did not accept it.
If everything was written, what room was left for discovery? For choice? For freedom?
He brooded in silence, and in that still moment, he considered a new thought:
Perhaps Fate could not be destroyed... but could it be balanced?
He did not yet have the answer.
So he cast the question aside like a stone into the Sea of Time, letting its ripples pass into the future.
There was still work to do.
The next phase lay before him: to bring Order from the swirling chaos below.
The Primordial Chaos still churned in the depths of his creation, untamed and wild. Its randomness was a tempest, a sea with no shore. Every attempt to shape it had failed.
But he would not stop.
He was the First Being.