"Am I going to die?"
The old man lay in his hospital bed, watching the medical staff come and go through the ward's doorway. The doctors all shook their heads.
"So I really am going to die."
The old man gently closed his eyes, seemingly looking back over his seventy-two years of life. His parents had died when he was sixteen, and his grandparents had raised him.
When he was twenty-seven, his grandparents had passed away one after the other. At twenty-nine, he had felt that he no longer needed a high-paying job and ought to do something he enjoyed instead, so he quit his accounting job and became a piano teacher at a music shop.
By forty, he had made quite a name for himself in piano circles and was invited to teach piano at a university. For the next thirty-two years, he lived for music.
It wasn't that he had never loved anyone before forty, but for one reason or another, those chances had all slipped away, leaving only regret. After forty, he no longer had the inclination. Perhaps he had grown used to being alone, or perhaps his mind simply wasn't on romance anymore. Before he knew it, thirty-two years had passed.
Looking at the middle-aged doctor in charge, the old man's thoughts seemed to return to a few years earlier, when he had learned that one of his students' fathers was a well-known doctor in the city.
He had begun making plans for his future, giving her special attention at every turn and even writing her a recommendation for admission without an entrance exam. At last, he had established a connection with the doctor.
First, he had pledged to donate his body, then contributed his life's savings to the doctor's research project. After developing brain cancer a year earlier, he had stayed in this hospital ever since. Now, he was about to die.
"When you think about it, it's rather ironic."
The girl's talent was mediocre. She certainly hadn't deserved that recommendation, yet to secure his own future, he had become the very sort of person he had once despised most.
"Hah... hah..." His consciousness began to blur, and the sounds gradually receded, as though he were sinking into a lightless ocean. His body slowly descended.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw countless spheres of light. They shone in all manner of colors, and the largest flickered with a violet-blue glow, dim and mysterious.
Where am I? he wondered silently.
"This is beyond time and space. Or you could call it the Final Void." Countless murmuring voices seemed to form words he could understand.
"Who? Who's speaking?" Although he already had an answer in his heart, he still opened his mouth to ask.
"Don't you already know the answer?"
"Who are you?" he asked, looking around.
"Me? I have far too many names. Some once called me the truth of all things, ultimate knowledge, the symbol of wisdom. And you have called me God..."
Taking in the scene around him and those answers, the old man had already formed a guess. He wasn't a rigid, old-fashioned person.
Reading novels had been one of his pastimes when he was young, and from what he knew, a member of a niche mythos that had emerged in modern times fit the "god" before him remarkably well.
"It seems you know who I am... or who you understand me to be." Countless murmurs reached him.
"So why am I here?" the old man asked.
"Your appearance here is both chance and inevitability."
The old man said nothing, and the voice continued.
"Among infinite possibilities, you were bound to appear here eventually. Though it should have been a little earlier..."
Then the spheres shining in all manner of colors suddenly grew much brighter.
"My delayed awakening caused that. As for why you are here, it is because you are me."
"Hm?" The old man was slightly startled, but soon grew calm again. Whatever happened was fine. Yes, anything was fine. He was already dead, after all.
"Then come back." The countless murmurs sounded once more.
Countless bubbles drifted past. They were worlds, universes, realms, and planes. Countless things were reflected within them: knowledge, souls, emotions, time, and space.
His consciousness sank into the deep sea again. Unlike before, he was surrounded by countless lights of every color, and a sensation called discomfort spread through him.
Everything spun. There was no solid ground beneath him. His body drifted, his consciousness tearing apart and fading, until a dazzling beam of black-violet light shot out from the boundless sea of lights.
Countless memories poured into his original memories. His own memories were like Sand Mountain in the ocean.
The incoming memories were like gentle yet unending waves, beating against Sand Mountain.
His reason seemed to be gradually disappearing. He could no longer think about anything. Another beam of violet-black light shone through. The waves vanished, along with most of Sand Mountain, but he seemed able to think again.
Slowly opening his eyes once more, he still saw the spheres flickering with countless lights, along with the largest sphere of violet-black light.
"It worked," a young man sighed.
"Retaining reason with our current abilities was indeed no easy feat." Once again, countless murmurs reached him.
The man chuckled. "But it worked, didn't it?"
Silence. Nothing but silence remained around him. The sphere of light did not answer.
Finding it dull himself, the man spread his hands. "So next comes reclaiming our authorities, right?"
... Silence surrounded him again.
"All right, all right. The game of talking to myself is over."
The man began sorting through the memories in his mind.
The infinite multiverse was all a dream of the Blind Idiot God, the core of primordial chaos, the chief of demon gods, the lord of all things-His Great Majesty Azathoth.
The infinite multiverse had been born within that dream, but dreams would eventually end in awakening. After a span that could not be described in terms of time, His Great Majesty Azathoth awoke.
Everything met its end in stillness. From the very moment of his birth, he had known this final outcome.
Over that indescribable span of time, he had used all his authorities and stolen a trace of another great being's presence to create his previous incarnation-the old man.
After all things had fallen silent, when everything revived, he had used his previous incarnation as an anchor, the emergence of the concepts of time and space as his opportunity, and the shattering of his authorities as the price to crawl back out of "nothingness."
And all of it had worked.
The young man rubbed his chin and muttered to himself.
"Then next comes reclaiming my authorities. Hmm, let me see how badly they've shattered... Tsk, tsk, tsk. Time has 1.6% left, space still has 17.2%, omniscience has 52.9%, and there's almost nothing left of the others. Not bad."
"Then let's start reclaiming them. Time doesn't mean anything to us anyway, does it?"
The countless murmurs sounded again.
"Unless necessary, do not draw Origin's attention. Facing that being as we are now would be no small trouble."
"I know. 'I' symbolize reason, and 'you' represent chaos. I'm far more cautious than you think."
Through the countless spheres of light, the man saw bubbles floating in the sea of chaos.
"Then you'll do."
With that, he vanished from the place where the spheres of light gathered.
"It's fine if I mention your name, right?" the man's voice suddenly rang out.
"No sound that can be uttered holds any meaning for my true name."
"Good, then. My name will be Yog-Sothoth!"