The space around you shudders.

The air is heavy, pressing down on you with a weight your brain can barely handle. Colors break and bleed into each other — colors you can't name — and then there is silence. A silence, larger than death, envelops your senses.

Out of silence, a figure emerges.

It does not step, does not fly, does not descend. It simply is.

A blinding figure of shining light, its borders indistinct, its shape changing — one moment a hooded form, the next a creature of a thousand eyes, the next a shadow crowned with whirling stars. Its face is concealed behind a mask: smooth, white, and empty, except for a thin line of gold cutting across it, dividing it in two. You sense its stare even though it has no eyes; you sense its voice though no lips move.

"You stand before That Which Has No Name."

The voice envelops you — in your ears, in your bones, in your brain — superimposed upon a thousand noises, some as gentle as a whisper, some as brutal as clashing thunder. Your knees buckle under its sheer force, as if the mass of galaxies presses upon you.

The Nameless Deity tilts its head to one side, regarding you.

"You have wandered far, mortal. Further than you were ever meant to go."

The mask distorts, wavers, flickers like a desert mirage. For an instant, you see what's underneath — an eternity of burning, twisting shapes — and your heart freezes in your chest.

"You want power. You want truth. You want meaning in a world that's going to be destroyed.".

Its words slice into your soul. You feel memories unravel, timelines split, possibilities collapsing. Past, present, future — they are all the same to this being. Time is its servant.

The earth breaks apart underfoot. Reality distorts, twisting into corkscrews of glimmering light.

"Do you know what it is to stand before me?"

The universe shudders. Stars extinguish in far-off heavens. You see yourself dwindling, atom by atom, thought by thought, beneath the weight of its being. And yet, in spite of the crushing strength, in spite of the endless dimensions, something holds you fast here — its attention. Its focus.

The Nameless Deity lifts a hand, fingers extended and shining, with ribbons of starstuff flame behind.

I am the first silence. The last light. The one that will remain when all else is ash.".

It curves in closer — though in truth, it was never that close. You might feel its breath, though it has no lungs. You might hear its heartbeat, though it has no heart.

Mortal. will you kneel?

The decision weighs heavily. Before you lies the end, the start, and the space between — the Nameless God, boundless and unbroken, with its awful, lovely face all your own.