Wind flowed, just as water did. But so did glaciers and glass. If observed on the right timescales, anything, really, flowed; one could say that the world is a place of flowing, of motion.
In this one, however, unlike our own, dear reader, there was so much more aflow.
Fates snaked and danced across the lives and deaths of all beings, their past, present and future confined within one and the same.
Streams of pure potential brought forth people and creatures that would perform deeds truly heroic or vile, only to eventually pass into memory, then tale, then legend.
Great webs of probability rippled across all that was known, conducting a great orchestra of fortune and misfortune.
And the moment has now come for this orchestra to reach a crescendo.
Amidst the dying throes of a massive typhoon, the kind the world sees every few centuries at worst, ghostly threads, many million score of fates start yarnballing into a dense knot, sucking in power and potential like a nation-sized drain, forcing patterns of interlocking lives set over eons long past out of alignment for hundreds of leagues.
Mana; tool, workpiece and crafter in one, the ethereal force grounding all others, joins in the dance, forever altering itself, and the world with it.
The heavens bent to the will of these untamed forces, and the ocean rose up high above, the "mundane" laws shattering under the strain.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The world, however, was still, as if on the lookout for the final piece to this puzzle.
And the piece clicked.
Of course, it wasn't an ordinary "click" that sounded out. It was the sound of "the world as we know it" ending, the collective dying scream of subjective realities.
One cannot imagine the sheer amounts of improbability that clicked into place that day, the amounts needed to create- not rearrange the matter of, but to truly create a being.
A being that, not quite unlike a sperm whale or a pot of petunias, is now rapidly approaching the ocean surface, together with the water masses suspended in the air just a moment ago, mainly due to the return of gravity to the area.
Now, the union of such fundamental powers should rightfully create a being to mirror their potency, a being to strike, maybe fear, maybe awe, but definitely strong emotions into the hearts of people, a being that, upon impacting the sea, should create a sound that would make the thundering shock of an erupting volcano think twice about picking a fight with it.
However, the miniscule shard of turquoise crystal goes under the waves with an overshadowed bloop.
Not a "boom", not a "crash", not even a "sploosh". Just... "bloop".
As it languidly tumbles toward the seafloor, something within it stirs. A "something" slowly turning into "someone". A being just barely aware of various indistinct somethings and somewhats around it, not yet accustomed with things like colour, shape, texture and pitch, or even its very senses.
As the rocky sand ends its fall, it can only wonder about one of the somethings having unexplainably changed, but its wonder does not last for long, not out of a sudden stroke of understanding, but out of a creeping feeling of... of what?
The creature feels like it is ending, but ending is final, this isn't, and it is not disappearing as it is instinctively certain it would both remain during and come back from whatever it was that was happening.
It soon found itself asleep. Dreamless, of course. Those only come with experiences.