Adrift. That was the only word that came. Not a physical sensation, for there was no body to feel the currents of a stellar wind or the pull of a gravitational tide. It was a state of being, a conceptual homelessness in an expanse of shimmering, pearlescent nothing. There were no stars, no planets, no celestial landmarks to chart a course by. Only the unending, luminous void, and a single, persistent thought: I am. But what I was, and where I had been, were questions that echoed in the emptiness, unanswered. Memories, once a vibrant tapestry of experience, were now a tattered cloth, shredded and scattered beyond recognition. A name, a face, a purpose – all lost to the void. There was only the here and now, a disembodied consciousness suspended in an ocean of light. And a growing, insistent feeling that something, somewhere, was terribly wrong.
Then, a change. A whisper in the light, a subtle shift in the pearlescent sheen of the void. It was not a sound, but a feeling, a resonance that vibrated through the very fabric of this place. A point of darkness, no larger than a pinprick, materialized in the distance. It did not grow, but it became more... defined. It was an absence of light, a tear in the otherwise seamless reality. And it was pulling. Not with the brute force of gravity, but with a gentle, insistent tug, a silent invitation to a destination unknown. The disembodied consciousness, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, had a direction. A purpose, however fleeting. It began to move.