There was no light, at first.
No sound, no shape, no gravity to speak of.
Only the stillness — heavy, endless, infinite.
And then, a breath.
It was small, uncertain, the kind of breath one takes upon realizing they still exist when they shouldn't. It rippled through the dark like a soft note in an empty hall, and from that note came the faintest stir of thought.
Again?
Azrael — though the name no longer fit — tried to remember what came before. Something about rain. A city. Music. A turtle, absurdly enough. The memory flickered at the edge of his mind, both laughable and sacred, as though the universe itself were smirking.
He wanted to laugh too, but laughter required lungs, and he wasn't sure he had those anymore.
Instead, the thought deepened.
The spark that had lingered after death unfurled like a seed cracking open in the soil of the void. He felt expansion — awareness spreading beyond comprehension. Space bent around him. Time coiled. Concepts brushed against him like gentle tides.
He existed in every direction.
And yet… he felt small.
"What am I?" The question didn't echo. There was nowhere for it to go.
The words weren't words — they were intent, a ripple in the nothing. The nothing stirred.
Something vast and shapeless responded.
Not with speech, not even with awareness, but with a pulse — like the heartbeat of creation itself acknowledging his presence.
The void shimmered. Or perhaps he shimmered. It was hard to tell where he ended and everything else began.
Shapes began to form, faint and uncertain: colors with no names, notes that weren't sound but emotion. A current of meaning threaded through it all — possibility.
And suddenly, he knew.
This was not the afterlife. This was the before-life.
The thought came with both awe and a hint of disbelief. "Of course," he murmured, though there was no one to hear. "I die by turtle, and somehow wake up in… whatever this is."
The nothing did not correct him.
Instead, it unfolded.
Where once there was silence, now there was rhythm — a pulse, a song older than stars. He could feel it, like the rain he'd once heard tapping against his window. Soft, patient, alive.
The spark within him reached outward, curious, touching the rhythm — and the rhythm answered.
The two merged.
A surge of energy tore through him, brilliant and wild. His awareness shattered and reformed, fractal and infinite. He saw galaxies bloom like flowers and collapse into silence. He saw seas rise from vapor, mountains from ash. He saw the first dreams — primitive, formless — ripple across the surface of the newborn cosmos.
And with each image, he felt something awaken within him.
A purpose.
A connection.
A truth that was both alien and familiar.
He did not create the dreams. He was them.
The first sigh of imagination.
The first whisper of "what if?" in the silence of existence.
He was reflection given form.
It was beautiful — and terrifying.
For every wonder he sensed, there was an echo of fear. The same mind that imagined light could also imagine shadow. The same dream that birthed hope could summon nightmare.
He did not recoil.
He understood.
It was balance. It was necessary.
"Dreams," he thought, feeling the word reverberate through creation like a prayer, "are the universe's way of saying it still believes in itself."
The phrase comforted him, though he had no reason to believe anyone — anything — could hear it. It was something he'd said once before, as a man. The memory shimmered faintly, ghostlike, refusing to fade completely.
He found that reassuring.
He wasn't gone. Not entirely.
Fragments of Azrael Eisenhardt lingered — the human who loved poetry, coffee, and absurd irony. The man who died laughing at the unfairness of the cosmos. The part of him that found beauty in small things.
They became his anchor. His humanity.
The more he remembered, the more shape he gained. The void bent around him, threads of color and energy weaving into form.
Arms.
Hands.
Eyes that opened and saw everything.
He stood — or something like standing — upon a surface that wasn't solid yet felt as though it remembered being so. All around him stretched the infinite, painted in drifting hues of violet and gold. The air, if it could be called that, shimmered with the sound of unspoken thoughts.
"This," he whispered, gazing into the vast horizon of formless stars, "isn't Heaven."
No voice answered.
Only a soft wind that wasn't wind at all — perhaps the exhalation of the universe itself.
He felt something move beside him. Not seen, not heard, but felt. A presence both kind and immense brushed against his awareness.
It was like standing beside an ocean that knew your name.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The presence did not answer in words. Instead, he saw — not with eyes, but with understanding — the image of a great stillness. The peace after endings. A horizon where everything stopped and yet continued in memory.
Death.
Not as he'd imagined her, but as a concept made visible — serene, inevitable, beautiful.
She regarded him quietly, not judging, not welcoming, simply being.
"You're not supposed to be here," she finally said, her voice the sound of the last breath before silence.
He almost smiled. "Story of my life."
Her expression softened. "No. Not your life anymore."
He glanced around at the shimmering landscape of thought and dream. "Then what is this?"
"The breath between worlds," she said. "The moment before meaning. You weren't meant to survive it."
"And yet…"
"And yet you did."
The rain began again.
Not literal rain, but memory — droplets of sensation falling through the cosmic air. Each drop shimmered with fragments of his human past. He could feel the texture of it: laughter, frustration, the smell of coffee, the sound of thunder rolling over rooftops.
He closed his eyes and let it wash over him.
When he opened them again, Death was gone.
In her place stood an expanse of light, slowly coalescing into something that looked… familiar. It reminded him of a dream he once had, where cities floated in clouds and stars bent like rivers. Shapes moved in the distance — silhouettes made of imagination itself.
The air hummed softly.
It wasn't Heaven. It wasn't Earth.
It was the first heartbeat of something new.
And deep within him, he knew what it was: the Dreaming.
He felt it — like breathing for the first time. Each thought, each potential, each unspoken wish gathered around him, whispering softly, waiting to be shaped.
"Is this… mine?" he asked the emptiness.
The emptiness responded with laughter — faint, musical, endless.
Not mocking. Joyful.
"You were always part of it," the laughter seemed to say. "Now it's part of you."
He reached out, fingers brushing the shimmering air. Stars scattered at his touch, forming patterns that shifted like living constellations. He could see lives unfolding within them — creatures dreaming for the first time, their fragile hopes drifting toward him like sparks.
He felt them all.
Every sleeping mind.
Every flicker of imagination.
Every nightmare that would ever whisper.
It was overwhelming — and magnificent.
He realized then that he wasn't merely alive. He was necessary.
The universe needed someone to tend its dreams, to shape its endless reflections. Someone to remind it that creation and meaning are never truly separate.
He smiled — softly, almost shyly. "Well," he murmured, "I suppose that's better than dying by turtle."
The Dreaming pulsed in agreement.
And somewhere, far away, the stars began to hum — a melody both ancient and new, faintly reminiscent of the song he'd heard on that rainy Tuesday morning.
Azrael — the man — was gone.
But something greater had taken his place.
He looked into the infinite horizon, eyes shimmering with galaxies, and took his first true breath as the Dreaming's heart began to beat around him.
The breath between worlds had ended.
And the God Who Dreams had begun.