In the skies past heaven—or perhaps in the heaven past skies—
a tear split the fabric of reality.
It was a wound so impossibly smooth that no power, no divinity, no ancient will could have carved it.
Within this place—pitch black, or perhaps beyond any concept of darkness—
time did not pass, nor did space extend.
It was a realm unbound by measure or dimension,
a void that pulsed with power no consciousness could comprehend.
There, a being stirred.
It was not matter, not mind, but something other:
a radiant thought coalescing into a shape.
Two eyes—if they could be called eyes—opened in the silence.
It is time for a new Umbre to be born.
This was not prophecy.
It was understanding—
an awareness of the threads that ran through all realities.
For the smallest fraction of an unmeasurable moment,
the pulsing consciousness paused.
Then, as if returning to an eternal rhythm, it resumed to its ever present state.
A glob of translucent black somewhere deep away from eternity.
That looked as weightless as a jellyfish drifting through the sea of space.
Its shape rippled with grace, nearly invisible, you could almost see through its translucent body. but the fact was few in 'all' had ever been able to presive 'it'.
The glob quivered.
It fractured into innumerable motes—tiny specks of shadow—
each darting away on a journey toward a chosen candidate.
One such mote floated across the void,
approaching a multiverse vast beyond reckoning.
Compared to the mote, the multiverse itself was a bauble,
a toy sphere to be held in a child's hand.
As the mote descended, it shrank—
smaller and smaller, until it became an infinitesimal seed.
Passing effortlessly through all barriers,
it shot toward a single world.
On that world, in a shabby room tucked behind a row of crooked townhouses,
a boy with tousled purple hair and obsidian eyes trudged home.
He kicked a pebble along the path, humming a tune that only he knew.
When he reached the door, he paused.
A letter rested on the step, sealed in amber wax bearing the sigil of a winged serpent.
His breath caught.
Slowly, almost reverently, he picked it up.
A grin spread across his face—wider than any he'd worn before.
He burst inside, nearly tripping over the threshold.
"Mom! Dad! Look!" he shouted into the empty house.
His voice echoed off the bare walls, past the two framed photographs on the mantle.
He stood there a moment, holding the letter tight against his chest.
Then he tore it open, hands trembling.
He skipped over the formalities, searching for the words he needed to see.
You are accepted to the Arcane Academy.
"Yeah!" he cried, his voice cracking with joy.
But before he could savor the triumph,
the tiny black seed struck him square in the chest.
His eyes went wide.
The letter fluttered to the floor as he collapsed beside it—
unconscious, the spark already threading itself into the marrow of his soul.