A vast chamber stood forgotten beneath the earth, swallowed by darkness older than memory.
Its walls were lined with towering statues — stone giants rising more than fifty meters high, silent witnesses to the ages. Cloaked in shadow, their faces seemed to watch the center of the room with eyes that no longer saw.
There, alone upon a simple altar of cracked stone, rested a single egg.
It was large—nearly the size of a man's torso—and black as obsidian. No light touched its surface, and yet, if one looked close enough, faint lines of dark crimson pulsed beneath the shell, like veins beneath skin.
No warmth radiated from it. No sound stirred the air.
But within, something was waking.
A being yet unborn, caught between worlds, caught between memory and oblivion.
Matter coalesced, bone and sinew weaving together, breath forming where no breath had been.
And then—
A thought.
A voice.
Raw. Disoriented.
'Eh? Where... am I?'
'Why... can't I move?'
Silence pressed from all sides, a suffocating stillness where no sky, no ground, no air existed—only the cold, unyielding shell.
'Hello!? Can anyone hear me!? Why... why aren't my words coming out?'
'Am I... trapped? What kind of prison is this?'
Panic surged. A storm of thought with nowhere to go.
He tried to thrash, to scream, to push outward—but nothing responded; no arms, no legs, no voice, only the unbearable sensation of being trapped.
'No. No, no, no. This can't be real. I'm stuck here? But... why?'
Then the confusion deepened.
A blank void stretched across his mind—vast, empty.
'I... can't remember. Anything.'
'Not my name. Not my face. Nothing.'
But through the darkness, one thought drifted up like a dying ember.
A word.
A name.
Zev.
The moment it surfaced, it echoed louder, as if it had always been there, buried deep.
'Zev...'
'That... that's me. My name is Zev.'
He clung to it like a lifeline.
'Alright, Zev. You have a name. You're not nothing. Now... how the hell do you get out of here?'
Time passed.
Within the vast stone chamber, untouched by the outside world, the egg remained.
No footsteps echoed in those ancient halls. No voices disturbed the silence. Only the slow, steady breath of the earth itself—deep and distant.
Seasons shifted beyond the unseen walls.
Cold seeped in first, sharp and merciless. Frost kissed the altar's edges, turning the egg's obsidian shell pale beneath a thin sheen of ice.
Then came warmth, creeping and gentle. Cracks in the ceiling allowed slender beams of sunlight to filter through, bathing the ancient statues in gold and dust.
After that, the air grew thick, heavy with heat. The stone seemed to sweat beneath the summer sun, though the egg remained still, its surface unchanging.
Finally, leaves unseen danced beyond the hidden chamber as autumn's breath swept through the cracks, whispering forgotten stories through the dark.
And then it began again.
Sixteen times.
Sixteen winters, sixteen springs, sixteen summers, sixteen autumns.
Each cycle etched itself deeper into the stone, into the statues, into the silence.
But within the egg, something had begun to stir.
A faint pulse stirred within, followed by a subtle shiver—an unspoken promise that the silence would not last forever.
The silence was ending.
A faint tremor rippled through the chamber.
Dust drifted from the towering statues as the altar groaned beneath an unfamiliar weight.
The egg shuddered.
Once.
Twice.
Then again—stronger.
From within, awareness surged.
'Eh? What's... happening?'
'I can feel it... I can move!'
The shell quaked under unseen force. Tiny fractures webbed across its surface, glowing faintly with pale light.
'Something's breaking. The shell? Am I—?'
The cracks deepened.
A sliver of blinding light pierced the darkness.
'EH!? Light! I... I can see it! I can finally get out of here!'
Energy surged through the forming body, instincts driving each pulse of movement.
The suffocating prison that had bound him for so long was weakening.
'Come on... come on! Break!'
The shell split wide with a resounding crack.
Light flooded in, searing his newborn senses. Shapes blurred. Sound returned in distant echoes. The air tasted sharp, cold and new.
Somewhere, just beyond consciousness, a sound—no, a voice—rang out.
[Welcome, Zev.]