I returned to the world I shaped instantly, as if everything remained within reach, and it vanished beneath me.
The moment I touched its soil, the continent fractured, skies dimmed to black, oceans ceased to exist, and the stars scattered like dust.
Time failed to register my presence. Reality did not collapse; it ceased.
I had become too vast, too final, too detached from the mortal shape of cause and effect. My very existence rejected the order I had created.
So I stepped back and rewound the moment.
Again.
This time, I approached with intent.
I would not abandon this world. I would walk within it, but not as myself.
I would become.
I shaped a vessel, a child, not an avatar bound to my image, but a form capable of containing a sliver of my essence within this world's order. No soul was placed inside. I was the soul, and the beginning of it.
A mortal shell, born of flesh and name.
Velmuth Nox, the second son of Baron Hadren Nox, lord of a quiet borderland estate nestled deep in the countryside of the empire.
To others, I would be a child, fragile, innocent, but beneath that mask, I remained silent, watching, learning.
A name shaped from silence and shadow. I did not choose it; they did. But somehow, it still belonged to me.
Then came the descent, not in light, not in fire, but in stillness.
For the first time, I experienced growth from within. I curled inside the warmth of a womb, listening through layers of flesh and memory. Time, which once bent before me, now moved slow and steady, heartbeat after heartbeat.
I heard voices. A woman's soft laugh, my mother Lady Evelyne Nox speaking gently to the life inside her. A deeper voice, calm and reserved, reading beside her, my father Baron Hadren.
Once, a third voice chimed in. Playful, proud, a girl, my sister. Only a few years older, yet already joyful, like a guardian.
I had not yet seen them, but I knew them.
Then, I was born.
Pain, light, cold.
A scream, mine. Then others followed. The wet sound of tears, a voice cracking with joy, another filled with tired awe.
I was held, cradled in arms trembling with wonder, my mother's. I could feel it, the warmth, the awe, the love.
"Hadren, he's beautiful," Evelyne whispered.
"He'll be strong," came the calm reply. "Like his mother."
The chamber buzzed with activity. Familiar presences surrounded me. Maids moved with practiced care. A steward stood quietly near the doorway. A tall man in black observed more than served; I think his name was Karl.
Even as an infant, senses dulled and body fragile, I could see their potential and combat power. I could perceive what mattered, not just see it, but feel it. That was something the void had never taught me.
And so, I let it happen.
I, who had once silenced dimensions and shaped everything, now listened to lullabies.
I, who had erased and created time, now counted days through sunlit windows.
Even limited, I remained unmatched.
But I did not reach for power. I did not silence beasts. I did not reshape fate.
I watched, I listened, not to rule, not to destroy, but to understand.
There was something still unknown to me, something I glimpsed during my endless drift through the void.
The meaning behind choice, the feeling behind sorrow, the reason behind hope.
These things live only in limitation, in experience, in time.
That is what this form offers me.
To walk, to learn,
to remember not how to create and end,
but how to live.