Aris awakened to absolute darkness.
Perhaps surrounded was the wrong word as there was nothing outside it, nothing pressing against it. For what felt like an eternity, he struggled to keep his mind clear. He couldn't feel anything because there was nothing to feel: no weight to his body, no air, no heartbeat.
Only an overwhelming cold and a silence so absolute it seeped into him like water into stone. He wasn't sure where the silence ended and he began.
I can't feel my body. As the realization struck, panic surged through whatever was left of him. He tried to force his eyes open, but the attempt felt strange and distant, like commanding a severed limb.
Then, mercifully, his sight returned. Relief washed over him, until he realized the view before him was no different from absolute darkness. A vast, silent expanse stretched in every direction, scattered with distant, glowing stars. Only their faint light marked the difference.
For a long moment, he stared, caught between awe and creeping dread, his mind churning. Where... where am I? Is this hell? Heaven? Some kind of transition? Do those things even exist?
He looked down instinctively and quivered. Where his hand should have been, there was only a faint, pale mist, a wisp of white energy, something barely existing. When he tried to clench his fist, his fingers dissolved into drifting strands that pulled apart before slowly, reluctantly reforming.
So I'm in a soul state. The realization settled over him, dragging with it the memory of his final seconds in the vault. He still couldn't believe he'd died. So suddenly. After every plan, every meticulously executed move, before he could kill the traitors. Before he could save the world.
He turned, and froze. Something indescribably massive was shifting in the distance. It was so vast it blotted out the stars, a gap of perfect darkness carving through the light where light should have been.
He hung there, frozen, his mouth open, his mind refusing to process what he was seeing. Slowly, an entity came into view. A serpentine being too immense to comprehend, coiling through the void like a living constellation. Its body spanned the distance of a star.
As his perception strained to grasp it, a primal, existential dread flooded through him. The entity shifted slowly through the darkness, its massive scales emerging one by one from the void, each one glowing gold laced with blue. With them came an ancient, immeasurable pressure that pressed against his fragile soul.
He recoiled instinctively. It felt as though the entity was approaching him specifically, though he couldn't judge the distance between them. Light-years? Galaxies? It didn't matter. He felt the creature's gravity anyway, and for the first time, his formless soul felt weight in the void.
One word screamed through his mind: Run!
But where? In this endless darkness, there was nowhere to go, nothing to hide behind—not that hiding would matter. Besides, he didn't have the power to flee from something like that in the first place. He just floated there, gripped by the slow-burning horror that paralyzes.
Even then, his mind raced, churning through theories. Should I beg? Should I act defiant? Try to impress it? But no matter how fast his thoughts spun, he knew the truth: in the face of absolute power, no mortal trick or cunning was enough.
{Fear not, child}
The voice formed fully in his mind; deep, ancient, and calm. It made the void itself feel small, yet somehow carried a strange warmth.
{I mean you no harm.} A deliberate pause. {Not yet.}
Aris's fear spiked. Not yet? The words hung in his mind, and the terror tightened its grip. But beneath the fear, something stirred, the part of him that had always refused to break. Or perhaps it simply realized he wasn't in immediate danger of being erased.
Surely an entity this powerful wouldn't waste its time on my measly life. If it wanted me dead, I'd already be dead. He clung to that thought like a lifeline. So stop. Calm yourself. Think.
{Hahaha..}
The sound rumbled through his mind—not quite laughter, but something akin to it. Ancient amusement, vast and alien, like thunder heard from across an ocean.
{Even trembling before me, you still attempt to compose yourself.} A pause, and he felt the weight of eyes he couldn't see pressing upon him. {As expected of someone who could destroy my plans. You are an interesting child.}
Aris forced his soul form to bow. As he willed himself lower, the mist complied.
Destroyed its plans? Asking what plan I prevented without even knowing it exists seems... unwise. But I have to ask. Despite lacking a body, his voice emerged. He didn't dwell on how.
"May I ask why a being of your magnitude would summon someone as insignificant as me? And how could someone like me even begin to foil your plans?"
The massive, serpentine shape shifted. Then, a golden eye opened in the darkness—vertical-slit, vast beyond comprehension, hanging like a moon unto itself.
{Aris Seldon.} The voice spoke as though turning a page, as though his entire life were a book already read, closed, and shelved among countless others. {You are not insignificant. You are one of my countless children. But the only unpredictable one I did not account for.}
Aris stiffened. Children?
{But your actions have deprived my children of their future.}
A chill rippled through his soul. "Your children? Their future?" he asked slowly, an inkling of the accusation coiling in his mind. "Surely it can't be—"
{All of the human species. The present, the past, the future. They are my children.} it's head emerged from the darkness, it was an eastern dragon, immense beyond measure, its whiskers drifting like nebulae smoke.
{And I...} The word hung in the void between them. {...am their Providence.}
Aris fell silent. For the first time in his life, his mind refused to cooperate. The words lingered, their meaning circling him like wolves around a dying fire, never quite closing in. Humanity's luck. Personified. Is that even possible? But looking at his situation, at the dragon before him, at the starlight bending around its whiskers and the nebulae reflected in its scales—the question answered itself.
{The biochip you pursued with such fervor was humanity's rising destiny, the dragon continued. A breakthrough millennia in the making—from the Stone Age to now. Through it, your race would have escaped the ranks of weak civilizations after countless eons of struggle. You would have joined the ranks of the universe.}
It paused, its golden pupil settling on him. Coercion was too small a word for what he felt. He could only submit, meek and weightless.
{But your greed and hatred shattered that future.}
Guilt surfaced within him like a corpse rising in a still lake. It was an emotion he'd suppressed for years, rationalizing away the innocent lives he'd affected with twisted logic. Now, it was unavoidable.
"So you brought me here to punish me?" he asked, his voice barely a ripple in the void.
"No." The dragon's voice remained calm, as always. "I brought you here because of what will happen next."
A faint golden light began to gather around Aris, swirling like a vortex, tugging at the edges of his soul. Wherever it touched, his mist-like form flickered and dimmed, as though he were vanishing piece by piece.
{The biochip was destroyed. Yet its core merged with your soul.} The dragon's gaze narrowed, as if peering through him. {Technology and soul should never fuse as they have in you. Even more so for a mortal with such a fragile vessel.} A pause, and the golden light spun faster. {Yet... they have.}
"So I'm some kind of accident?" Aris asked.
{Perhaps 'variable' is the better term.} The dragon's voice remained calm, but the words hung in the void like the toll of a single bell. {In the human race, to say the least.}
The golden vortex intensified, spinning faster, pulling harder at the edges of his soul.
{And therefore... } The dragon's ancient eyes closed, as though reaching a monumental decision. When they opened again, something in them had shifted. Not hope, for hope was too small, and not desperation, for desperation belonged to mortals and their weakness. It was something else entirely. Something that, from a certain angle, looked like conviction.
{My final gamble.} A pause. {Your species' final gamble.}
The golden light tightened around him, and his soul began to spiral, blurring into the glow.
"Wait—" The word came quick and desperate. "A gamble? What are you planning to do?"
{You will return.}
"Return where?"
{To the Primordial Era.} The dragon's voice was distant now, already fading. {To a time before the Great Shattering.}
Aris's mind reeled. "You're sending me back in time?"
{Indeed.} it pause that felt like eternity. {And no.}
The vortex spun faster. His soul unraveled, strands of gold pulling into the mist.
"A gamble? You're a god. Gods don't roll dice unless they've weighted them. If I'm the variable you're betting on, show me the data. I can't change a destiny I can't see."
{Be careful with your curiosity, Aris Seldon.} The dragon's voice softened, almost sad despite its words. {In the River of Time, a single word can be a boulder that shifts the entire current. Carrying the map of the future into the Primordial Era invites the heavens to strike you down—and worse, to erase us all.}
A final pause, heavy as worlds. {The fate of your species rests on this gamble. On your hands.}
Panic surged through him. "Hold on! You're sending one of your children into another world with nothing?! If not information, at least give me something to defend myself—"
{You already possess what you need. Sending you back has already cost enough to wipe us out.}
The dragon's voice was distant now. Fading. Like words spoken from the far end of a long corridor.
{The biochip will be enough. Your mortal soul cannot carry anything else through the River of Time.}
Aris opened his mouth to argue, to beg—
{Keep your head down, Aris Seldon.} The voice turned solemn, almost human. {For I will not be able to save you again.}
The golden light pulled harder. {For you... the future of your species depends on you.}
The vortex collapsed inward. Aris vanished. The void returned to silence.
The colossal dragon slowly shrank, its golden scales dimming. Its once-mighty voice was now barely a whisper. {Almost all my providence energy... gone.} Its massive body coiled weakly among the stars. {I hope this gamble was not my final mistake. I hope he doesn't waste the three Providence drops. For if this fails... The dragon closed its eyes. My children will vanish in the next cosmic cycle.}
•••
Aris tumbled through what felt like nothing and everything at once. He passed through light that wasn't light and darkness that wasn't dark. All logic dissolved. Every law of physics he knew unraveled, not that they mattered anymore.
The golden vortex screamed around him. Or perhaps he was screaming. He couldn't tell. There was no sound, only pressure, only his mind shrieking I exist, I exist, I exist into the endless collapse. The sensation of being pulled apart and pushed together simultaneously overwhelmed him.
For what felt like an eternity, he thrashed desperately against a current he couldn't perceive. But he persevered.
And finally—weight. It was a weight he hadn't known he'd missed until it crushed him. He felt heavy. Impossibly heavy. Then came the pain, like being born through fire, every nerve waking at once and screaming. His lungs seized. His heart stumbled. For one endless moment, he existed only as agony.
Slowly, the pain became specific. His ribs ached. His swollen face throbbed. Raw air scraped through a throat unused for too long.
He tried to open his eyes. His lids resisted, gummed shut. With effort, they parted. The world was hazy, then blurry, then slowly, painfully, it came into focus.