...I'm not actually quite sure myself what this is, to be honest. But most of this drabble for this first chapter came from random headcanons I made up a while ago, and still like to make stories about sometimes. I mean, what I've written might sound "deep", but I thought before I actually start writing the proper storyline I'm going to make out of this that I'd give some context first, I guess? So for now, here's some sort of "backstory" to the world and universe I'm going to set the plot in. It's only about 900 words long, so you won't have to read much. I wrote it in first person, but whose point of view it's from will probably be revealed later. I hope you enjoy reading this, because this is the first thing I've written in a super long time.
What is the Master Core?
The Master Core is the connection. It's the centre that we are all tied to, the reason we still roam these worlds, even after a countless plethora of deaths. Simply put, it is the core and derivation of our existence. It ensures our existences are not wiped and erased from this universe. It preserves our stories and legends. It is the gift of life – or perhaps, the curse of life, should you perceive it to be so.
Almost – if not all – of the beings in said universe rely on the stable connection between themselves and the Master Core. Death is never really eternal in this world. What you might consider death is in fact just a mere temporary sleep, a hibernation that we enter upon this so-called "death". One's soul remains at rest until its shell has been revived for it to re-enter. As for our bodies (corpses, if you like), they are reduced to trophies. Figures. Ornaments. Dolls.
Puppets.
They say the Core is in the hands of a puppeteer. No one has ever seen the Puppeteer themselves, or the person who controls the hands that manipulate us puppets. But everyone has witnessed the things their hands can do, in their own unique way. Many people try to disprove it, saying that each of us has the independence to think for ourselves, that our connection with the hands is nothing more than to salvage our lives and allow us to exist. But that's just a lie they tell themselves because they don't want to believe every action we take, every word we utter and every decision we make is not really ever made by us.
The definition of belief, according to the dictionary, is that it is something that you accept is true, especially without proof. So perhaps my usage of the term "believe" is quite hypocritical, since the proof is already in front of everyone's eyes. (That statement is contradictory in itself as there is no rule that belief is always without proof, but let's not overthink this.) It should only make sense that we accept our real purpose for existing, because the hands that pull our strings to make us move are amongst us already. In this very mansion.
One pair of gloved hands holds the fate of our beings. Each hand holds different destinies of different people and creatures, who are given no choice but to trust the hand they have been placed in. The pair of hands oversee our small little multiverse that has been gifted with practically eternal life by the strings they manoeuvre, but everyone here seems to forget that they could take that away from us whenever they see fit. But perhaps they forget because they're being told, deep inside, to forget, without even knowing it. We should consider ourselves lucky to only be evicted from the mansion if we're ever taken out of these games and tournaments. Although our lives themselves are games, are they not?
Then I have another ultimate question to ask: why do we exist as we do in the first place? Time may take its toll on us mentally and emotionally, but physically? Many of us here have remained the same for what feels like eons, trapped in the same bodies and masked with the same faces for forever. The answer is simple: we do not exist, not in a real world. All we are are simple concepts and ideas conceived from the depths of someone's mind. Fantasised characters living in fantasy worlds. Even this universe we supposedly inhabit, this universe where all of the real world's ideas are stored to remain forever, is probably made up, in which case our universe may be part of yet another universe that stores ideas, as may that one, and so on and so forth. This is also why we retain our appearances that never seem to change, game to game - since we exist to represent ourselves as ideas, we have to stay as we are. Once a being in this world reaches the age they were designated to be, their ageing process reaches a standstill, freezing forever. The mind itself, however, can still develop and continue to grow from experiences in the future. A way to think about it is that some of us could be considered 25-year-old minds enclosed in 13-year-old bodies.
If our creators had not thought of us in the first place, we would not be. Our presence is only necessary to ensure that the creators in their world - the real world - can preserve their ideas. If we were to vanish, that would imply that the idea was forgotten, and that not a single being in that real world had any memory of us. Only then would we cease to exist. However, because of the Master Core, that can never happen. Combined with the many documents and works that prove our existence as concepts in the real world, this is how we are promised perpetual life.
Call me ungrateful if you wish to, but I do not hold any trust in the Master Core. If the right hand contains lawful good, and the left chaotic evil, can the pair of hands truly work together in peace? No one has anyway of knowing if one could overpower the other. The Core is fighting its own battle, surely.
Perhaps, soon, the craziness of the left hand may corrupt our beloved Core.