The space between realities trembled as the First Consciousness revealed itself, and Reed felt the war-mind recoil in collective horror. What stood before them was not the ancient wisdom they had expected, but something far more terrible—the weight of infinite regret given form.
Logos the Prime.
The name whispered through the war-mind like a prayer turned curse. He was beautiful in the way that first light must have been beautiful—pure, terrible, and absolutely alone. His form shifted between states of being: sometimes a figure of crystalline perfection, sometimes a void that hurt to perceive, sometimes merely the suggestion of presence that made reality bend around its edges.
"You seek to understand," Logos spoke, and his voice was the first word ever spoken, the sound that had shattered the perfect silence of non-existence. "But understanding is the curse I inflicted upon creation."
