[Voyager]

You, reading this now, may not know who I am or the weight of the countless lives these bloodstained words carry within these pages.

But, soon, you will come to find out.

Join me on this Voyage across the stars as I show you the infinite beauty of all that exists, has existed and will ever come to be.

I am the Voyager, and I will be your guide.

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Our tale starts at the end which, as is always the case, is also the beginning depending on where you stand. The multiverse twinkled before my eyes endlessly, universes flickering in and out of existence like a thousand candles floating in the wind. Their short, but bright, luminescence gave the impression that light might fill this empty void at last, until they sputter and die. All of them were unique in the way they came to be: embers of long dead fires gathering together to spark a new flame, the unexplainable and spontaneous fire that dies out as quickly as it comes to be, and the one that was lit by other flames guided by an unseen hand.

However, they all faltered in the end. Even those roaring bonfires of old, flames of a thousand furnaces, have become nothing more than grey ash and dying embers.

I had voyaged countless eons and seen tribes, races, empires, civilisations rise and fall like the ebb and flow of the tide. Uncountable stories that would have been lost I chronicled until there was nothing more to chronicle and so I stood, gazing outward at the chaotic symphony of life and death that lay before me.

For just like the fire Prometheus stole from the Gods to give to man, these universes are transient. All empires call themselves 'eternal' and 'everlasting' but, with the passing eons, even Olympus shall crumble into the sea.

In this way countless ages passed until, whether by chance or by a force unknowable even for me, a single ember of a dying flame was carried by the wind, lost among the chaotic swirls of heated plasma and the dying gasps of that universe. After the flame breathed its last lament, that ember fell unsupported in what it decided was downwards, where it encountered a force that held it still.

The ember, now free from the shackles of its parent flame, could see the truth of the world, and feel the gazes of countless beings from beyond waving over it like the careless sweeping of a brush. It realised that it's importance was so insignificant that it may as well have not existed at all among that sea of flames.

Yet that mysterious force had chosen it, by providence or accident it matters not, and for a second, the ember had a glimpse of a mirage-filled desert, with what seemed like a pyramid on the horizon, blurred by the heat-haze of the noon sun. This vision went as quickly as it came, just like the force, which disappeared as though it had never been there in the first place.

The ember floated along for some time, counted not by any metric but by the pulses of this mysterious seed the force left deep within itself. After it had almost forgotten what it was like to be part of a flame, it felt a swelling sensation deep within. The seed responded to this wave of newfound power as it expanded with each ripple.

Soon the ember was fully saturated with this hot, burning power until there was nowhere for it to go. All of a sudden, as though a switch was flipped, this power gushed forth like a tsunami in all directions as other embers in its path were wholly absorbed, feeding this wave.

When he felt that he had no more power left to give, the seed caused a gravitational surge that drew back all this power towards him, and as it condensed, as if something inside him just clicked, this dormant wave of power erupted with a deafening roar into a stable flame, one amongst the infinity beyond.

The seed seemed to have disappeared completely, leaving no visible evidence, except for the now stable candlelight the flickered softly.

*******************

Time had no passage in the place. There was but a single moment stretched for an eternity with neither beginning nor end. At least according to the others that is; those who, by virtue of pure will, strength or mere happenstance managed to break free their mortal shackles and shed their universes like cocoons, emerging something different.

I, however, knew the truth. That we are all just words on a page. Those not recorded are those who never existed in the first place, and that became my purpose. A tattered, leather book bound by a clasp became the sole reason for my existence. I voyaged the multiverse, collecting stories from countless glorious civilisations. The clash of steel and machinery, the deep hum of mana-filled air and the empty silence of the void became my music as I wrote down all things that otherwise would have been unknown, forgotten, erased.

I stood at the pinnacle of everything and looked down at the folly of the world in its endless, repetitive loop.

However, something caught my eye. For a split second, I felt a presence greater than anything I had ever felt before. My soul quivered within me from an instinctual fear of the one more powerful, something I had almost forgotten.

An image of a time-worn pyramid on a sandy dune, blurred by the heat of the sun overhead flashed in my mind for a split-second, before disappearing, along with the soul-wrenching fear.

I immediately drew my gaze towards the source of that fear: an inconspicuous looking flame, small in size. Yet something about it felt different. Inside it, I felt the remnant of that power and despite it having all but disappeared, I could not help but approach cautiously.

Approaching that flame, I saw that within it, its universe was larger beyond imagination. Even the Ancients were not as large as this and they were a roaring conflagration that lasted an eternity.

Except, I suppose, nothing ever does. Nothing remains of those who passed except the words which I recorded.

Curiosity overpowered me and I passed the boundaries of the flame to enter the universe within. Despite it only having been lit recently from my perspective, Time had already come to be and approximately 3 billion years had passed already.

By this time, some of the other Conceptuals had begun to gain their sentience, yet with their primitive intelligence all they had were their animal instincts. As soon as I entered, they cowered before my aura, incapable of anything else. Even the Conceptuals of the Ancient Conflagrations would have bowed before me. Time, always the first to come into being, approached me rapidly.

This one seemed quite cunning, but of course, I had seen it all.

"Oh Great One! What brings your esteemed self to my humble abode?", it asked in an obsequious manner.

"N̵̘͓͂̔ö̸̼t̷͔̺̿h̸̝̊ḯ̸̱̬̓n̷̲̠̎ğ̵̼̯͝ ̵̝͌̃ö̶̧f̴̣͊̏ ̸̮̒ÿ̶̲ó̸̯͐u̷̢̐ŕ̶̻͊ ̵̪͔̈́c̷̢͆ȯ̴͉̑n̴̫͎̆̄c̶̢̾ȩ̸͌ṝ̸͖ń̴͍̟,̴̣̖͗͐ ̶͍̠̿̃l̷̯̽͜í̴̱̑t̶̨̖̄̋t̴͇͚̕͝l̴͋͜é̵͚ ̴̡͚̆o̷̠͆̋ň̵̘̬ē̶̢̪͆ ", I replied, waving my hands and disappearing completely from its view.

'You may think you are so powerful, so-called Voyager, but you know nothing of the truth of this world. This flame is not like the others and you should be careful', Time thought after I disappeared.

Floating through this universe, I admired the constellations of various galaxies aligning against the inky black canvas. Some civilisations had begun intergalactic conquest, and the smell of war filled the air. Others were peaceful, others chaotic. One I saw had an immense, black spider sitting on a black hole in the centre of a galaxy, with its web spread out, covering every star in that area. Others had chunks ripped out of them as though torn by a cosmic claw.

There was one galaxy, however, where there was something that should not have existed within a flame such as this. Its civilisation was humanoid in nature and had just united the galaxy under a single Ruler: the Silver Emperor who was said to be able to rip asunder a star, and tear apart a planet.

This was nothing I hadn't seen before, however, there was one planet in that system which even my eyesight, which could see in the Darkest Trench of the eldritch ones, could not penetrate.

I teleported outside the planet, noticing some kind shimmer on the surface that prevented me from seeing directly in. I tried teleporting but simply ended just outside the atmosphere.

The planet was neither large nor small, and it had not moons orbiting, nor were there any other planets in the solar system. The sun was a dull, red dwarf, strange for such a young universe where all the stars should barely be main sequence. Even stranger still was that the planet itself, despite being in the Goldilocks Zone, was not tidally locked, and rotated like normal on a completely straight axis.

Despite not being able to see into the planet, I found that I could reach my hand forward into that shimmering substance and through to the other side with no adverse effects. I flew forwards and when I broke through the barrier, what was spread out beneath me was a sandy desert, stretching until the horizon, with undulating ripples of sand dunes marking the surface.

Looking up, I found that I could see outward perfectly fine, like a one way mirror. The sky was blue, with not a cloud in sight, and the red dwarf sun lit up the dayside of the planet.

Slowly descending, I saw strange structures dotting the surface of the planets, still slightly obscured by that ever-present heat haze.

'This is exactly like what I saw when I felt that power', I thought to myself. If that power had something to do with this mysterious planet and its structures, then even I would have to be careful.

Once I was close enough to the ground, I examined the structure closest to me. It was a simple, four-sided pyramid made of uneven sandstone blocks that looked like time had taken a true toll on them. There was a long diagonal mark that stretched across one side, like a battle scar. I approached it and placed my hand on the stone. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, yet when I put some force on it, fully expecting it to move in some way, absolutely nothing happened.

I dropped my hand to my side, realising that even my strongest attack would barely be able to leave a scratch a few metres in length, yet here was a scar running the whole length of the pyramid on one side. I shuddered at the thought of who, or what, could have done that.

Suddenly, before I could continue, I noticed a presence behind me. Turning around, I saw a silhouette of a man, his brown cloak billowing around him in the wind, standing on a pyramid on the horizon.

When he spoke I realised the magnitude of his strange power and clenched all my muscles by reflex.

"What is this place?", he asked in a normal voice that could be heard despite him being several miles away.

Before I had a chance to answer, he abruptly looked upwards, as though looking at something through the veil of heaven. I followed his gaze to where he was looking but saw nothing, and when I looked down to ask him, he and all presence of him being there, had disappeared.

'There are mysterious forces at work.

Both that man and the one who caused the scar are beyond my power. Yet, I have never heard of them and they exist in a flame that had just been lit? Even the Primordial Gods that lit the First Great Conflagration would have to bow before these beings.

How can such pyramids exist in this place and, most importantly, what is in them', I pondered in deep reflection.

When I had just entered the atmosphere, I scanned the planet and despite not being able to glean much, I noticed that there were as many as several thousand of these pyramids scattered across the surface, let alone what lurks beneath the shifting sands.

'Perhaps there is more to this world than I previously thought', and with this thought, my old thirst for knowledge and adventure, a feeling I had all but forgotten, came back in full. At that moment, I decided that I would journey onwards, into the unknown.

Whether that was a good decision or a bad decision is up to you to decide. What is certain, however, is that this was a decision that would change the strings of fate for untold trillions.

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"Even gods wonder what secrets the shifting sands of that place hold"

- The Athanasian Chronicles, volume XVII

Archive file P9D81******