He was falling.

All infinity stretched before, across, and into him. He felt the Totality of it – the machinations of numberless spirits, the resentment of the Un-Creators, and the mind-shattering screams of the Aedra. It was like music to him; swirling down through shades of proto-mythic cognizances, bearing in his Self the reflections of despair, hope, and anthropomorphic nihilism all at once. They flittered across his consciousness like the archetypes designed by Magnus would/were/will dart across the encasing Firmament. Primordial flickerings of emoto-perception danced through his awareness.

He was aware.

This experience, in light of the millions to come, was the strangest. It was new, it was terrifying, it was…living. Infinity flared into psychic bandwidths of untranslatable distortions; and his mind struggled to interpret this new epistemology. What he would later term hypnogogic-omniscience peeled away from its measureless perception in tangled threads of vestigial amniosis, spiraling into fragmented amnesias. All that remained were the confused sparklings of a kinetic energy he did not understand. He reached for the vortices of inherent meaning that ran like vibrant streams through the fabric of Infinite Possibilities; but dull shadows played before his understanding, sending sensations through him.

He knew fear.

He had spoken beautifully. He had spoken hopefully. He had spoken joyously. But the world was not a world of Love or Parenting or even Transmogrificational Conflict. It was Confusion. It was Darkness. It was Terror. He could hear the mocking jibes of the Un-Creators and an overwhelming panic creased his understanding with kenosis. He was reeling. He was falling. He was afraid.

And his first experience of the world was Pain.

His movement ceased and he was surrounded with a cyclonic symphony of impressions. They lit through him demanding every nanosecond of his awareness, and then something expressed itself from within him; he would recognize it later as his own screaming. Though his comprehension had ceased its movements he was still falling – he would always be falling; and he was diminishing. He could no longer sense the sublimity of his Beginning Place, nor Remember with Perfect Memory the Wheel spinning inside him. He was lost…lost…

He lay in the grave of his own birthing.

He did not understand the meaning of his parts. Even as all he had been flew away from him he began to specify and cognitize what he would come to know as his Experiences. He had movements. He had perceptions. They were frail, pale shadows of what had been. Strange limitations generated with his desires; curious shapes moved before his perceptions. Sight; that was what Julianos had called it. He wondered at the oddities his sight presented to him. Some of them he appeared to control – bizarre shapes like straight lines with shortened fractal expenditures. Kinetic energy sparked in him and the expenditures flexed, as though making shapes. Hands.

He lay a long time, trying to discern his meanings.

There were other experiences. His hands met with materials that were not a part of him; he experimented trying to discern their purpose. He learned of his hearing and comprehended the screams of the other Aedra. They were lost in…in…misery. In a moment of startling revelation he recognized the locus of his sight was eyes. He had eyes. Had Magnus planned them? He could not remember. He marveled at the unbearable beauty of seeing. He learned of his breathing, his tasting, his smelling. He let air escape his lungs and felt himself fill with wonder. In that moment his Heart felt peace.

Lorkhan falteringly stood in his birthing-grave, brushing the dust from his body like the last fragments of divinity. A world stretched out before his sight and his Heart beat with something he would one day name joy. It was broken, bleeding; the world had not become what they thought it would be. But it was his; and in its imperfection it was perfect. The world was an invitation. He stretched out his arms as if to embrace it.

“You must not tarry long,” came a voice at his side.

He could not see her, not like he had before. She was a shadow, a whisper of a forgotten-and-yet-remembered First Cause. They had known each other Before, and some part of him knew her still. It would be long cycles before he would create language that could describe her Beauty.

Nocturnal touched his face. “They will come for you, my love. They will punish you for what you have done.”

“I have given them so much,” he told her. “I would give them all if only they would know the joy that I know.”

The darkness of her lips brushed his face. “They cannot see it. They are in pain, so much pain that they cannot know the gift, the invitation you have given them.” She stood back where he could see her, resplendent in her longing and emptiness. “Return to me, my love. Am I not in your Heart?”

Lorkhan took her in his arms and shed his first tears. “Your are, and ever shall be, the Heart of my Heart. But this world is mine and I am the world’s. We are bound in Unity. And Belief.” He held her face in his hands. “Can you not come to me? Will you not stay?”

Nocturnal slipped from his grasp, fingers trailing along his arm. “You are the heart of my heart. But as you are this world, so I am the Void and it is me. I cannot come down to you.” Her form flickered like a memory of smoke. “In all the cycles of the world should a time come when the world no longer holds you in Belief and Unity…remember me.”

And she was gone. Lorkhan felt her image play across his mind in his first experience of loss. And grief. It would not be his last.

The world was new, and though it was filled with the cries of mourning et’Ada, though it was scarred by kenosis and misunderstanding, he felt Hope welling up through the soil at his feet. And possibility. He would fill the world with his love; he would fill it with joy. He would heal the wounds of the et’Ada, and show them the way. They would all dream new dreams…and know love. A feeling grew inside him that he would one day call Pride, or Contentment, or Bliss or all three. It felt warm, and it was welcome. And it was Time.

The world was waiting for him. Placing one foot before the other, Lorkhan moved into the first steps of Satisfaction.