PROLOGUE: The Beginning
Have you ever wondered how the world came into existence?
Not the version they teach in school. Not the simplified explanations, the diagrams, or the confident answers people give like they were there to witness it.
I mean really wondered.
Because if you think about it long enough… something starts to feel off.
Before everything—before the sky, before the ground, before the idea of "before"—what was there?
Silence?
Darkness?
Or something else entirely?
Most people would say nothing.
But "nothing" is a strange thing.
Because even nothing… feels like something.
There was no time.
Not "time was slow" or "time hadn't started counting."
There was simply no such thing.
No seconds. No movement. No change.
Just existence.
Endless.
Unmoving.
Unquestioned.
And yet—
It wasn't empty.
Something was there.
Not alive. Not dead. Not even aware in the way we understand awareness.
But present.
Like a thought that hasn't fully formed yet.
Like something waiting… without knowing it's waiting.
Then, without warning—
It changed.
Not slowly.
Not gradually.
There was no process.
Just a shift.
A break in what had always been.
And from that break, something new emerged.
Not light.
Not darkness.
Not matter.
Something deeper.
Something that would later become everything.
Three forces.
Not created by anything.
Not born.
Just… there.
As if they had always existed, but only now decided to reveal themselves.
The first was Time.
It didn't tick.
It didn't flow.
Not yet.
It simply existed as the idea that things could move forward.
That something could become something else.
That a moment could end… and another could begin.
The second was Soul.
The quietest of them all.
It carried weight.
Not physical weight—but something heavier.
Meaning.
Identity.
The reason something is itself.
The third was Nature.
Wild.
Uncontrolled.
Endless.
It wasn't calm or balanced.
It was everything at once.
Growth. Decay. Creation. Destruction.
They did not speak.
They did not think.
They simply were.
But together—
They formed something greater.
A balance.
A system.
The beginning of something that would one day become… a world.
And then—
For the first time—
Time moved.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just… forward.
And with that single motion—
Everything else followed.
But balance is fragile.
Even at the very beginning.
And even now…
Long after the world has taken shape…
Long after people have forgotten where it all began…
Those three forces still exist.
Watching.
Waiting.
Choosing.
And sometimes—
Without warning—
They choose again.