The void did not change, yet something within the God did.
He became aware of his own presence, not as a thought but as a tension, a quiet weight that separated him from the nothing surrounding him. Before, there had only been drifting. Now there was the faint sense of being contained within a shape, even though shape itself had not yet been defined.
He existed. The realization did not arrive fully formed. It surfaced slowly, like something rising through an endless depth. With it came a strange division. There was the darkness, vast and untouched, and there was him. The space between those two ideas was small, but it was enough. The God turned inward, though inward was not yet a direction. Something within him observed something else within him, and this loop of awareness folded again and again, growing heavier each time. From this repetition came the first echo of identity. He did not know what he was, but he knew that he was not the void. That difference mattered.
The God felt a pull, not from outside, but from within himself, as if some unseen center was asking to be acknowledged. The sensation was unfamiliar and unstable. It was not hunger, nor desire, but the beginning of wanting, raw and undefined.
Loneliness followed.
Not as emotion, but as absence recognized. The void had always been empty, yet only now did its emptiness press against him. There was nothing to reflect him back to himself. No response. No answer. The God lingered in that realization, and the silence deepened.
With awareness came memory, though there was nothing to remember. Even so, the God sensed that this moment would not vanish. It would remain, layered upon whatever came next. For the first time, he did not drift unconsciously. He remained still by choice, holding onto the fragile idea of self, uncertain of what would happen if he let it go.
Somewhere far beyond him, existence continued forming without his notice.
But within the God, something irreversible had begun.