I stood on the edge of Nothing and gazed out over its endless expanse.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been here, but it still felt foreign to me. The void never stayed the same from one moment to the next, and it had been a long time since my last visit. I try not to come here too often. The swirling, shifting masses of Nothing always leave me with a densely palpable sense of longing. Were I any lesser being, I would be consumed utterly.
Mortals believe that the void is empty. In a sense, it is; but in a greater sense, it is not. Mortals cannot comprehend that Nothing has substance. It is perfect disorder, and as such it cannot be defined nor measured. But it is matter. It is merely undefined.
And it fills me with longing, as if all creation were undone forever.
More accurately, as if it all had never been.
It is a small wonder to me that benevolent beings have always sought to tame this disorder, that they are zealous to create and reluctant to destroy.
As for me, I simply hide within creation and avoid this place (which is as much not a place as it is one) as much as I can. In this instance, however, I found myself with no other choice.
No, not true. There is always a choice, always some other option, just as there is always some other permutation of Nothing to be not formed. In truth, options are endless. It is only perception that has limits, and even then, such limits are voluntarily drawn by the one’s own self.
To be more truthful, then, my chosen option was the least unfavorable of those I would perceive.
If only I had searched longer . . . but never mind. What is done is done, and we all now face the consequences.
Consequences that, by Justice, I should bear alone.
If Justice there were anymore.
I ought to bear the execution of Justice for having executed Justice. I ought to be hanged for having hanged hanging. I ought to be beheaded for having beheaded beheading. But it is too late now, and I am filled with irreconcilable remorse. Remorse? No, a longing for remorse. I ought to be able to feel remorse for what I have done, but Justice is dead, and thus remorse is no more. All that is left is longing. Longing, and paradox.
Such as the paradox that I long to be required to die for my sins.
I should have chosen some other option or faced Justice while I still could. But all of that is moot now. Justice is dead, and only a benevolent god can undo the Anomaly I called forth there on the edge of Nothing that swallowed up Justice in its jaws. This is our only hope: for a god to make Order of this Chaos.
But I wonder: can gods yet exist when Justice itself has died? Surely without Justice, there is no Order, and gods and everything that “is,” as mortals put it, must exist by some sort of Order. Have gods themselves then been undone by my folly?
And if they have, how is it that I yet exist?
I stare now over the endless expanse of Nothing. No limits confine it, and nothing other than Nothing exists as far as I can discern.
And I am filled with longing, inexorable longing, because of the end of all creation.
As if creation never were.
I now wonder if indeed it ever was . . .