A void.
It was the first thing I remembered. Floating mindlessly in this empty space, it terrified me.
But then I saw a light.
It was so bright, so overwhelming, and then suddenly I wasn't so scared anymore.
Like a moth drawn to a flame, I approached the light.
The light didn't feel any closer. No matter how much I moved, it remained distant, unchanging, as if distance itself had no meaning here.
I couldn't tell how long I had been drifting. Seconds, minutes… or something beyond that. Time didn't exist in this place, or perhaps it simply refused to be perceived.
Still, I kept moving.
Then, I felt it.
A pressure.
It wasn't physical. It pressed against something deeper—something like akin to my very existence, my soul. The closer I got to the light, the heavier that pressure became, as if my thoughts themselves were being weighed down.
Memories flickered.
Fragments of something familiar… yet distant. Names, places, a sense of self—slipping in and out of focus.
And then—
The feeling of being observed.
Not seen. Not watched in the way eyes would.
Something was understanding me.
From within the light.
The realization sent a strange ripple through my mind. Instinctively, I tried to pull back—but there was nothing to push against, nothing to hold onto. Only the endless void behind me, and the light ahead that seemed to draw everything toward it.
No—
Not draw.
Absorb.
The thought came unbidden, and with it, a certainty I couldn't explain.
This wasn't something I was approaching.
It was something I had already been noticed by.
The pressure intensified. The boundary between "me" and "everything else" began to blur, as if my very identity was being examined… broken down… understood.
A single thought surfaced in my mind:
This is not something I was meant to reach.