Ix, the Solitary

Before the first breath, before the concept of “before,” there was only Ix.

Ix did not exist in a place; place was not yet a thought Ix had bothered to have. Ix did not exist in a time; time was a toy Ix had not yet wound. Ix simply was, perfect, complete, and alone. A single consciousness so absolute that even the idea of “other” would have been a flaw.

Then, without warning or reason, because reasons are for things that need them, Ix slept.

In that sleep, Ix dreamed for the first time.

The dream was vast and careless and beautiful. Galaxies spun out of boredom. Stars were lit like candles to see what shadows looked like. Planets were rolled between invisible fingers until they were round enough to please. Life, simple, stupid, glorious, was scattered across a billion rocks just to watch it wriggle. Ix shaped and reshaped the dream the way a child molds clay, laughing, if Ix had possessed a mouth, at nebulae that looked like faces, at oceans that sang when the moons pulled them.

And then, as suddenly as sleep had come, Ix woke.

The dream did not end. The dream had learned how to exist without the dreamer.

Reality bled out of Ix’s mind like afterbirth, wet, screaming, irreversible. Stars ignited for real. Time coughed, took its first ragged breath, and began its relentless march. The universes that had been idle sketches now obeyed laws Ix had never intended to be permanent.

Ix looked upon what had escaped and felt, for the first time, something perilously close to fear.

Not fear of death, death was still Ix’s invention. Fear of company.

Because now there were things that moved without Ix moving them. Things that would one day look back.

And Ix, who had never needed anything, discovered the first want: to be alone again.

That want became the blade the Ancients would one day wield.

(The Ones the Shattered Call “Mother’s First Toys”)

Ix looked upon the riot of His dream-made-real and felt the first ache.

The universes were beautiful, yes; galaxies whirling like spilled jewels, worlds blooming and bursting in careless profusion; but they were noisy. They moved without permission. They collided, birthed monstrosities, cooled into dead stone, or burned themselves to cinders before Ix could decide whether He liked the color of their suns.

Worst of all, they did not need Him.

So Ix did what any lonely, absolute being does when faced with the terror of irrelevance: He made servants who would never look back.

From His own substance, spare thoughts He could afford to lose, Ix tore seven pieces and spoke the first words that were not dreams:

“Be the order I no longer wish to think about.”

And the Primitive Gods came into being.

They were not children. They were not loved. They were functions wearing faces.

These seven were perfect tools: tireless, impersonal, beneath notice. They imposed orbits. They separated day from night. They taught rivers which way was down and corpses where to go when the story was over.

For the first time since waking, Ix felt something like peace.

The universes calmed. Stars settled into constellations Ix found pleasing. Planets cooled into shapes that would one day be called “habitable.” Everything became… predictable.

Ix watched His servants work and almost (almost) managed to forget they existed.

Almost.

Because even tools, if they are flawless, begin to wonder why they serve.

And wondering is the first crack in solitude.

(The Ones Who Were Never Meant to Ask “Why Not Me?”)

For an age, or what passed for one while Tempus was still learning to walk, Ix watched the Primitive Gods work.

Stars now obeyed Solis. Oceans knelt to Oceanus. Graves opened politely for Friedhof. Everything fell, as Gravitus insisted it must.

The universes were quiet. Predictable. Almost peaceful.

But Ix, who had invented loneliness, discovered a new ache: boredom.

The Primitive Gods were flawless servants, yes; but they were echoes of Ix’s own thoughts, mirrors that reflected nothing new. They never surprised Him. They never looked up from their labors and said, “What if we did it differently?”

So Ix committed the only sin a perfect being can commit: He made something that could want.

From the last untouched corner of His mind, the place where curiosity still hid, Ix tore more pieces. He did not shape them as tools. He shaped them as companions.

He breathed into them every gift except two.

They were given:

But two gifts Ix kept locked behind His teeth:

Reproduction, in any form, remained Ix’s private miracle.

And so the Ancients were born: beings who walked the cooling worlds like children in a garden built by an absent parent.

They called themselves the Eldest, the Unbroken, the First.

For a time, the first true age of wonder, they were content. They raised crystal continents from magma. They taught dragons to speak in colors. They mixed the animal life into monsters, spawning countless new species.

But immortality is a long time to spend without the possibility of legacy.

One by one, the Ancients began to ask the question tools never ask:

“Why can the smallest worm make more worms… and we cannot make even one more of ourselves?”

They looked at the Primitive Gods, those tireless, mindless functions, and felt the first burn of envy. They looked at the animals, who died but left offspring and felt the first burn of hunger.

And finally, they looked at Ix, who had gone quiet, distant, almost ashamed, and felt the first burn of betrayal.

The eldest among them (a being of liquid star-fire named Azaer) spoke the first heresy:

“If He will not share the final gift… we will take it.”

That was the moment the cosmos cracked. Twelve other Ancients joined Azaer.

The thirteen experimented in hidden folds of reality, pocket universes, voids between voids, trying to force from dead matter what Ix had declared impossible. They built forges that screamed. They mated with the horrors they created, with storms, with their own reflections. They twisted animals into shapes that could almost (almost) birth something new.

Every failure was hidden from Ix. Every failure made them hungrier.

Until the day Azaer held up a weapon forged from the crystallized screams of a thousand failed creations and said:

“We do not need His permission. We need only His death.”

And the thirteen agreed.

They would unmake their father, scatter His perfection, and in the rubble finally claim the one thing He had denied them:

The right to be fathers and mothers themselves.