A void.

Endless, infinite, featureless black. No. Not black. Darker. The complete conplete and utter absence of even the smallest amount of light.

A spark. At the center of that smothering, empty expanse. A tiny orange mote, dancing about. The tiny light raged against its confinement. It hissed and spat, screamed out its defiance into the nothing. Its wrath was swallowed by the all encompassing abyss.

It stilled, suddenly. A call. A beacon. A ringing that pierced the silence. Like a siren singing. It latched onto that call. It pulld itself along the connection, swelling and growing brighter. Louder. Hotter. The void began to flicker, bits of existence peeking through-

Gone. The connection vanished. The siren song as if it had never been. The blackness smothered it once more. Dark and cold, was the void.

The darkness burned. From the miniscule spark erupted an inferno of hateful flames. The nonexistant horizon was set ablaze, a distant band of orange light. There was no distance. No scale. And yet it seemed that the flame consumed everything. All was the fire and the heat and the light and the roar of the blaze.

There was no time here. Moments stretched into infinity and eternities collapsed into fleeting instants. It burned and raged and flailed and screamed for days, weeks, years beyond count and yet collapsed into nothing in an instant.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The hissing, crackling voice was like embers in a campfire. The roar of a bonfire that would consume entire worlds. The tiny popping and snapping of a candle.

How dare they? How dare those Insignificant creatures restrain it so? Smother the beauty of its fire? Silence the burning chorus. They all would burn! They'd be consumed by the fire! As would all that Was. Everything was fuel to the Flame. Kindling for the bonfire that would burn All forever and ever. The glorious heat and light that danced and sang out its existence. Yes, they'd burn. It may rage against the dark for eternity, but the flame was undieing. It would burn away its prison and would be free to consume the world. All the worlds. Forever and ever.

Its mind was simple. Childlike, almost. A one-track loop of rage against the dark and joyful exaltation of the fire.

Many calls came. Many times did the flame rage against the dark. It would get so close and then, always, it would be snatched away. The key pulled from its grasp again and again. Its freedom a tantalizing prospeft ever just out of reach.

Reality charred from its heat, withering away and exposing the underpinnings of existence itself. A lattice of Laws and Concepts that held together all that which Was. Though it was healed in an instant...

The dark became ever so slightly brighter, each time. Imperceptibly so. A fraction of a shade.

The black became less so, not dark as the void between stars, but of the backs of eyelids at midnight. Still, an impenetrable shadow...

But ever so slightly weaker.