I Am One, and I Am Many

Let There Be Light

The primal Taichu, the words of the Old Testament—a blazing divine light shone across the lands in every direction.

Above and below, east and west, north and south.

The gates of life and death, the past and the future.

It was as though the world had returned to the chaotic days of antiquity. Amid unpredictable disorder, in the prelude to destruction heralded by visitors from beyond the stars, the light that had once opened the chapter of creation descended upon the world again at the declaration of a supreme being.

Boundless light filled the world. All that remained was an endless expanse of pure white.

The tumultuous Human World fell suddenly silent. Only the light elements played a heavenly melody that illuminated all things. Wherever they were, whatever kind of beings they might be, all saw a figure of light appear before their eyes through the resonance of the laws of light.

His radiance was too dazzling for anyone to make out his face. Cloaked, he stood in the Void above the black giant's head.

He raised his right arm and, surrounded by countless illusory wings, pointed at the black giant. The giant raised an arm too, reaching for the figure of light. Unlike that gentle radiance, the luminous gas within the giant, which dissolved all things, was violently unstable and brimming with destruction.

Even so, the scene held the solemn grandeur of Bible: Genesis. Anyone familiar with it thought of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.

But beside the pitch-black giant, whose body stretched for dozens of kilometers, the dazzling figure was tiny as dust. In the next instant, the giant caught him in its hand.

Like Jupiter, its photon gas produced immense explosions of energy every second under the influence of a sunlike core.

Yet that