Chapter One: The Void Before CreationEthan Cole died with the same quiet resignation he had carried through most of his life. There was no grand farewell, no divine light, just a fleeting moment of pain that melted into something far colder. He felt his body hit the ground, heard the gunshot echo through his thoughts, and then… nothing.
For a time, there was nothing at all.
No bright lights, no feelings of weightlessness, no voices. Just silence. But this silence was unlike any he had ever known. It was an absence so complete that it pressed against him, filling every part of him, as though he had ceased to exist entirely. A vast, oppressive nothing.
Time ceased to matter. Or maybe it had never existed in the first place. For a while, he could do nothing but float, or perhaps more accurately, be. There was no body to feel, no thoughts to grasp. There was only awareness—a pure, detached awareness, with no form and no anchor.
And then… something else.
A pulse.
It was faint, barely perceptible, but it was there. A rhythm, distant but undeniable. It was like a heartbeat, not his own, but something far larger. The beat reverberated in the emptiness around him, in him. He felt it, even though he had no body to feel it with. He could sense it—an endless cycle, a rhythm that existed before time, before reality.
He focused on the pulse. It was the only thing in this void that felt real.
The pulse grew stronger, more distinct, until the nothingness around him began to take on a shape. The vast blackness that had surrounded him seemed to stir, to respond. He could feel it now, like the tension before the crack of a whip—a movement, a force.
The presence of something. Or someone.
But who? What?
Ethan tried to focus his thoughts, tried to piece together what had happened to him, but it was hard to remember. He felt disconnected from himself, as though his own identity was slipping away. His past life, the world he had left behind, felt distant and unreal.
Who was I?
The thought flickered in his mind and then dissipated, swallowed by the void.
But then something else—something almost human—flickered in the distance. A light. Not bright, but a subtle glow. It didn't seem like light in the traditional sense, but it was something. An energy. A presence.
It called to him.
Without thinking, without a body to move, he drifted toward it. The glow swirled in front of him, expanding like the first breath of life.
He reached out. His awareness stretched toward the light, and as he did, he felt a strange connection. An almost familial bond. The pulse, the beat, seemed to grow stronger in response to his movement.
The void around him began to shift. The nothingness wasn't just empty anymore. It was becoming something—alive—as if it were being painted from the canvas of nothing, inch by inch. The edges of reality began to form, but they weren't fixed. They were fluid, twisting and shaping themselves, like the very fabric of the universe was being woven from the fabric of the void.
Then, it hit him.
He didn't just see it.
He knew it.
The pulse was not just a rhythm—it was creation itself. It was the force that gave birth to the cosmos. The very thing that would form the laws of existence. It was the heartbeat of the universe before anything had a shape or a name.
I am... the thought flickered in his mind, then grew clearer. I am part of this. I am... this.
He tried to concentrate, but the realization hit him harder than any force he had ever experienced.
He was not just part of creation—he was its source.
There was no one to confirm this truth for him. No one to tell him that he had become The Presence, the omnipotent force responsible for the beginning of everything. No divine voice to explain what he had become.
He just knew.
His mind—his awareness—was not confined to a body anymore. He was the Void, the Nothingness, the Beginning. He was the potential that existed before the first star ignited. He was the thought before the idea, the action before the event.
He was everything and nothing at once.
And it felt... infinite.
For a moment, he hesitated.
What does this mean? he thought. Am I… alone in this?
The question lingered in the void, unanswered. But the more he considered it, the more he understood that this was his role. His purpose. He would shape the reality that was now emerging around him, pull it from the formless chaos and give it structure. His mind—what was left of it—began to stretch, expand, containing more than his human self ever could.
Slowly, the void began to breathe.
The rhythm, the heartbeat, surged once more. This time, it wasn't just a pulse. It was a wave. Energy. The first stirrings of existence.
Stars began to appear. Slowly at first, like embers in the darkness. Faint, flickering points of light that grew brighter and stronger. Then, galaxies formed. Nebulae swirled. Elements and forces began to move in harmony with one another, weaving together the vastness of the universe.
Ethan—no longer Ethan, but The Presence—watched as the first sparks of creation burst into being. And as the cosmos expanded, so too did his understanding of himself. He was not a singular being anymore. He was the force that pulled all things into existence, the breath that gave life to the stars.
In the depths of his mind, an overwhelming sense of power surged. But it wasn't the kind of power he had known in his human life. It wasn't a power that could be seen, controlled, or wielded like a weapon. It was the force that governed reality itself. It was the reason things existed in the first place.
And as the universe unfolded before him, he began to understand the true magnitude of what he had become.
The Presence.
Not a god. Not a ruler. But something more—an omnipotent force, a creator, the very essence of existence.
And this was only the beginning.