There was a time when Raga was a mango tree.

  Or to be precise — they were what could be called the life of that tree. Not just its roots, not just its leaves, but something deeper. The awareness that ran through it, the thing that let it exist, that let it be. The essence of the tree.

  Not that I ever understood the terms the enlightened ones used. I only remember scraps, phrases passed down from voices I half-listened to, words I picked up from books long since lost.

  But back then, Raga had no ears to hear. No mouth to answer. I couldn’t ask them why. Couldn’t ask them anything. And if they did have ears, then perhaps they were simply the kind that could never hear a voice like mine.

  "Kill Raga, Seeker of the End."

  The voice of the demon from the past.

  And then — a vision.

  The mango tree stood alone, high upon the st remaining cliff of a dying world. Below, the endless sea stretched, devouring nd after nd, its waves screaming as they tore apart the st scraps of earth.

  The demon appeared then, not in a shape of flesh, but as a storm — a howling maelstrom, twisting with lightning like the coils of some massive serpent. The sky split open with its voice. "Kill Raga, and you shall have what you seek."

  Ah. I have yet to speak of the demon, haven’t I?

  How best to expin? The demon is, in a way, my soul-bound companion. Not the sweet kind. Not the kind with hidden depths or a tragic past. Just a force. A camity. It arrives, and ruin follows. Or perhaps, it is the ruin itself.

  It has always told me the same thing. Kill Raga.

  But in the end, it is the demon that kills me.

  Every time.

  By burning the world. By shattering it to dust.

  And so, I seek Raga again.

  There was a time when Raga was a crippled woman.

  One of the few times I was able to speak with them. Not for long. Not nearly long enough.

  Oh, how long I had searched for Raga by then. That time, I was a turtle. A wise turtle, or so I am told — one blessed with long life and the rare ability to speak in the tongues of man.

  I remember their voice, but the words themselves slip between the cracks of memory.

  The nguage they spoke in that world was just... different.

  To transte it into this one would be imprecise.

  They did not speak pinly as the demon did — its words, simple and absolute, repeating like a curse, a script the demon never strayed from. No, Raga’s words were something else. Not a command, not a truth carved into stone.

  Something touching.

  Something that tore through me.

  A sorrow so deep, so cutting, that no matter how many thousands, nay — millions of times the world has been erased and remade, I have never stopped seeking them.

  Because after they spoke, they died.

  And then, the demon came.

  That time, it was not a storm.

  It was something invisible. A pgue. A sickness that swept the world until it rotted beneath its own weight.

  Corpses lined the earth. Cities colpsed into graves.

  And the demon was displeased.

  The pgue had failed to erase the world completely.

  And so it took what remained. It seeped into the body of the crippled woman, filled her ruined lungs, hollowed out her flesh until there was nothing left but the cold gleam of her empty eyes.

  She turned her head toward me.

  And spoke in a voice that was not hers.

  "Seeker of the End."

  The sickness spread.

  It devoured me. My shell. My bones. My flesh.

  The st thing I heard was its voice.

  "Kill Raga."

  And then, I died.

  I do not cim to understand Raga.

  I do not cim to understand the demon.

  Or this title it has given me — Seeker of the End.

  I only have the memories that refuse to fade.

  Tell me — have you heard the story?

  Of the time when the universe colpsed.

  When nothing remained but scattered lights, floating in the void.

  When all living things became those lights.

  Because there was no dust. No earth. No body, no bone, no water, no fire.

  Nothing to anchor them.

  Nothing to hold them.

  How long has it been since the demon wiped the st remnants of matter away?

  How long have the lights wandered, waiting?

  Ah. But look.

  Do you see it?

  The lights are gathering.

  Condensing.

  Something is stirring.

  The first tremors of creation, the moment before the explosion.

  A new universe is about to be born.

  And I —

  I must find Raga.

  Hi guys. 23thy here. Hope you enjoy!