Chapter 1: Before the Beginning
Before time existed, there was no beginning to remember and no past to look back upon.
There were no stars, no worlds, no heavens, and no life.
There was only the void.
And within that endless emptiness, a light existed.
It had no origin that could be traced. No path that could be followed. There was no direction from which it came, nor anything that could explain its existence.
It simply existed.
From a great distance, the light appeared to take the shape of an enormous tree. Its vast silhouette stretched across the endless void, resembling something ancient and immeasurable.
Its form seemed to have branches reaching outward, with countless shapes resembling leaves extending from them. From afar, it looked like a tree unlike any that would ever grow in any world.
Yet the closer one came, the less it resembled a tree.
The branches were not truly branches.
The leaves were not truly leaves.
And the towering shape that appeared to be its trunk was not made of wood.
There were no roots buried beneath the void. No solid surface could be touched, and no physical structure existed beneath its appearance.
There was only light.
A light that appeared as a tree when seen from afar, yet was never truly a tree at all.
It was known as the Celestial Tree.
The Celestial Tree and the void had come into existence together. Neither had existed before the other, and neither could be placed earlier or later in time.
For there was no time by which their beginnings could be measured.
There was no witness to their arrival, no voice to give them names, and no world in which their existence could be understood.
They simply were.
And so, the Celestial Tree remained within the endless void, its light extending through an emptiness without boundaries.
Nothing surrounded it but the void, and nothing existed to comprehend the strange light that appeared within it.
There were no stories to tell, no memories to preserve, and no destinies waiting to unfold.
Not yet.
For in that boundless emptiness, the Celestial Tree continued to exist—unchanging in its presence, mysterious in its form, and beyond the understanding of anything that might one day come to be.
And for a time that could not be measured, nothing else existed.
