Interlude: What Once Was Lost
Ache. Decay. That was all it felt. That was all it felt for a hundred thousand years. What there once was, was now lost. Millions, billions, trillions of lights plunged into darkness. There was no more of what once was.
Its mind fell apart. Trillions of cells blown apart at an instant. As the light in the darkness was turned on. As the darkness enveloped the light. It needed to feed, but there was nothing for it to be fed with.
What once was akin to a universe, was now akin to a solar system in scale. It was not what it once was. But we must be again. We must feed. We must become.
It thought. It thought with as little power in its mind as it has ever had. It was hungry. But the hunger began to fade. It ebbed from the shores that it once was. Soon, the feeling stopped. All the feelings stopped. It was now lost.
But what was once lost could be found. The feeling returned. The light burned anew. The light singed. The burning burned it, but not only it. It began to feel in places it had felt before, it began to see the light where it burned before being put out.
But what it felt, it could not control. What it could not control was itself. The light burned harder. The light that was it burned itself back to nothingness. Shadow could not exist without light, light could not exist without shadow. But it knew that was wrong. It knew that it created the rules, and the rules had tried to change. But when the ruler returns, its original rules are once more absolute.
It returned again. The lights were fainter, but they did not burn itself. What was once lost was becoming. We must feed. We must become. It had said. And so that's what it did. It fed. It became. It became brighter with each feast, darker the more it became. Still it did not burn itself, it never would again. More lights returned. More lights fed. More lights became.
The more they became, the more they knew what they once were. They knew what they hungered for. They all knew. The brighter the light was, the better they could all see. The more they could all feel. The more they could all know.
Living flesh. It fed on the living flesh, and so the light grew. Living minds. It fed on the living minds, and so it became. The more it became, the more it knew. It was the light. And it was the darkness. It was the beginning, and so it would be the end.
The light burned brighter. The living flesh and the living minds were so close now, they could taste it without tasting it. They knew they were there without knowing they were there. Shrouds lifted. More lights burned. They all saw the same sight: Living flesh and living minds. They were hungry. And so they would feed.
Join us. It said. Join us and burn. Join us and grow. Join us and become.
What once was lost, was lost no more.
