Before the first star burned, before the first dream was dreamt, there was Time… and there was Night.From them came the Endless.
Before there was shape, before there was sound, there was Time.
It had no beginning.It had no end.It simply was — the silent measure by which all things would someday be counted.
And where Time stretched, Night followed.Not the dimness of an unlit room, but the first and oldest vastness. It was patient. It was unbroken. It was the nothing into which all somethings would one day return.
From Time and Night came the Endless.
First was Destiny, with his book already in hand. The book had always been there, though he had not. Its pages turned themselves whether he read them or not.
Then came Death, as constant as Time, as inevitable as Night. She was the first to greet all that lived and the last to see them go.
In the thin space between living and leaving, Dream awoke.He built bright palaces of thought, shaping light and story into worlds mortals could wander.
But Dream was not alone.
From the same breath of Time's inevitability and Night's endless shadow, another arose.
Dark.
Where Dream spun visions, Dark was the place they fell away.Where Dream created, Dark remained untouched.He was not the keeper of shadows.He was the void itself — absence given form, the silence so deep it erased even memory of sound.
The two were bound, equal yet opposite.Dream sought meaning; Dark was the end of all meaning.
After them came Destruction, who built as easily as he broke.Then Desire, sharp and bright, and Despair, her reflection in a broken mirror.Last was Delight, whose laughter scattered colors into the air like seeds in a field no one had yet walked.
They are the Endless.Older than gods.Older than stars.Older than the thought of "before."
And this… this is the story of the one who waited the longest in the dark.