The first thing it felt was the hunger. It did not know what this feeling was, or how to rectify the pain it caused. It did not know where it was, what it was, or why it was there. All it knew was a deep gnawing agony, a demand for something it had not provided.

  For the sake of sanity, the ‘it’ in this story, the being that will be the center of a conflict it never finished, will be referred to as Prime. Please do not mistake this as that being having a name. Prime did not have a name, nor would it ever have a name. That is a mistake that we must not make again. With that said, let us resume.

  Prime's first memory was of hunger and pain. Any other being in Prime's position would have recalled a time before the starvation took hold, but that was not Prime’s fate. What was Prime's fate? A chance at the impossible.

  Prime was the first of its kind. A being beyond the norm of time and beyond the imagination of now. I reiterate once more that Prime's first memory was of hunger, starvation… famine. In a body that it had no idea how to move, with no concept of what this empty, agonizing feeling was, Prime’s eyes opened to a world without light. In a place beyond the sun's warmth, beyond the view of the sky and stars, out of reach of even the strength of the gods, Prime took its first proverbial steps.

  Prime was not large then. Prime was no larger than a worm with a body spanning less than the distance of my small finger, and he weighed even less than one. Perhaps that is what Prime was before the all-consuming hunger, a worm deep below our world. At that size, not many things could fulfill the role of food, especially in as sparse an environment as that one. Even if something akin to sustenance was near Prime, it was in no position to consume it. As I mentioned, Prime had no idea how to move. Its body was as foreign an entity as the concept of hunger was. So Prime sat where it first gained an ego. It was in constant pain, its minuscule body eating itself and regrowing larger than before.

  You may think this impossible. ‘Nothing could survive like that. No beast could survive eating itself from the inside out. And even if it did, it wouldn't grow larger from the ordeal. If those were your thoughts, then you'd be correct. Even Prime was not beyond this rule. Prime lived the same way a more familiar entity survives. A husk does not eat, and its body is less than capable of even mimicking the act. Both Prime and husks survive passively, taking in the miasma, the tainted energy around them.

  The difference was Prime had a body fully capable of eating, fully equipped to sustain itself like any other. So, Prime took in miasma from the space around it, but its stomach remained empty, and it continued to digest itself. Like this, Prime grew, slowly but surely. One may believe that the hunger would fade after the mind learned it was at no risk of dying. The empty feeling would vanish, or the pain would shrink as time passed, and you realized neither was worth focusing on. I wish that this was true, especially in the case of Prime. The reality, as Prime grew, so too did the pain and the starvation.

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  Eventually, Prime learned to move. It took years, perhaps more than we imagined. None can tell you why it took so long, only speculate. Maybe the pain stunted Prime's mind early on. It’s possible Prime's mind was not fully formed before the hunger came. It is also conceivable that Prime wasn't originally something capable of moving. Every single idea is no more than supposition, and each is just as worthless as the last. It doesn't matter why Prime took so long to learn how to move. It doesn't matter if Prime's mind had to grow new connections to the body to get it to respond.

  The first thing Prime did when it learned to move, is what matters.

  If fate had been kinder, Prime wouldn't have learned to operate its growing body. If fate hadn't been cruel, nothing would have been near Prime when it first reached beyond its mind. If fate hadn't played games with life, Prime wouldn't have encountered what it did.

  At a size comparable to the ends of my fingers to my elbow, Prime took its first intentional action. For Prime, it was probably no more than the flexing of an unknown muscle. That is an assumption; of course, I do not know what Prime was trying to do. For all that I know, it knew what it was doing and chose to do so anyway.

  What exactly did Prime do? What could have gone so badly so early on in the life of this new creature?

  Well, the answer is simple. The first muscles Prime ever moved was that of its jaw. A single open and close of a malformed structure with too many teeth. Under reasonable circumstances, this would do nothing; you'd never be so lucky as to have food jump right into your waiting jaw. Except, that's precisely what happened to Prime. Another smaller creature just happened to be nearby when Prime moved, and Prime coincidentally happened to eat it. That was the start for Prime. A single minuscule creature managed to make its way directly into the waiting jaws of a predator that didn't know of its nature.

  Prime learned that the pain of starvation needn't be constant. In a matter of moments, Prime went from a creature feeding on the ambient energy and barely able to move, to an entity with a goal of filling the void inside.

  For now, I will end this story. Because Prime's tale is not one we tell in a single sitting.

  You might ask why I'm telling it to you in the first place. What bearing does it have on the rest of this story? What does this have to do with anything?

  I'll answer your questions with one of my own.

  Were you aware that each life a soul lives will leave permanent marks on the soul that impact every life it leads? You can't use these to identify who you were in the past. No, they are far too faint for that. But someone who becomes the best mage in the world leaves trails in their soul that makes it significantly easier for all incarnations of that soul to become mages.

  Now, with that said, I must ask. What if a creature born without a soul cobbled together one from the pieces it ate? What lives would a soul like that be inclined to lead?

  For now, I will let you return to a storyteller better than I: One who lived through what they speak of in their winding words. But remember my questions, and when I return to tell you more, remember that the entity we call Prime must not be given a name, not ever again.