The glow of the computer screen faded as Robert slumped back in his chair, a sigh escaping his lips. After an intense gaming session of Crusader Kings III, the thrill of conquest had finally taken its toll. His heart pounded—too fast, too erratic—as the digital kingdom he'd spent hours building collapsed into ruin on the monitor.
Just one more month…
But his body had other plans. A crushing weight pressed against his chest, his vision tunneling. The last thing he heard was the distant click of his mouse hitting the floor.
Then—darkness.
Robert opened his eyes—or at least, he thought he did. There was no light, no darkness, only an endless void stretching in every direction. He tried to move, but his limbs met no resistance. It was like swimming in a starless ocean, weightless and untethered.
Am I dead?
The question echoed in his mind, louder than any voice. His last memory was the glow of his computer screen, the ache in his chest, the sudden, suffocating stillness. Had his heart given out? Had he simply… slipped away?
Then, a presence.
It wasn't a sound or a shape, but a knowing, as if the void itself had turned its attention toward him.
"Robert."
The voice was neither male nor female, young nor old. It was all voices, none at all—a whisper that resonated in his bones.
Robert tried to speak, but words were meaningless here. Instead, his thoughts formed the question again: Where am I?
"Nowhere. Everywhere. The space between lives."
A flicker of light appeared—no, not light. A figure, though it had no true form. It shifted like smoke, human one moment, something vast and incomprehensible the next.
Who are you? Robert thought.
"You," the being replied. "And not you. A version of you that has finished the journey."
The words made no sense, and yet, they settled into his mind with eerie clarity.
Am I… in the afterlife?
The being—the god?—seemed to ripple with something like amusement. "Afterlife, between-life, another life. Words are cages, Robert. You are free of them now."
A sensation like a hand brushed against his consciousness, and suddenly, memories that were not his own flooded in.
—A woman in ancient Rome, weeping as her child took its last breath.
—A soldier in a war not yet fought, firing a rifle with shaking hands.
—A king, a beggar, a thief, a saint—
No, no, no— Robert recoiled, but there was no escape. The lives kept coming, endless, overlapping, his.
"You are everyone who has ever lived," the voice said, gentle and terrible. "And everyone who ever will."
The Egg Theory. The realization struck him like a physical blow. He had read about it once—some philosophical thought experiment about the universe being a single consciousness experiencing itself in infinite iterations. A cosmic egg, cracking open over and over.
But reading about it was one thing. Knowing it was another.
So I… I've been everyone?
"Yes. And you will be again."
But why?
The presence enveloped him, not with answers, but with something deeper—understanding.
"To learn. To grow. To become."
Robert wanted to scream, to laugh, to weep. All the pain, the joy, the love and loss—it was all him. Every cruelty he had suffered, he had inflicted. Every kindness given, he had received.
How many times have I died?
"As many times as it takes," the voice replied. "But you… you are the last."
The words hung in the void, heavier than galaxies.
The last?
"The final iteration. The one who remembers."
The figure—his higher self, his godform—stretched tendrils of light toward him, and suddenly, Robert understood.
Not just memories. Purpose.
He had lived every life, died every death, suffered and loved and raged and wept across millennia—all to reach this moment. To ascend.
The void trembled. Colors bled into shapes—not of a new life, but of all lives, woven into a tapestry of time. He saw empires rise and fall, civilizations burning and blooming, the endless wheel of history turning, turning…
And he saw how to grip it.
This is my crusade.
The voice echoed, now his own:
"You have conquered a thousand kingdoms in a thousand lives. Now, conquer time itself."
Power surged through him—not a rebirth, but an unshackling. The void peeled away, revealing the raw threads of existence, the moments where history could be remade.
And there—the age before Rome. A blank canvas. A world of scattered tribes and unclaimed thrones.
Robert smiled.
He reached out.
And began.