I remember the first time I saw the sky collapse.

It wasn’t loud. No thunder, no screams. Just a quiet folding — like reality had blinked. Like existence had sighed and forgotten to inhale again. I was standing barefoot on a rooftop no longer part of any city. Below me, not buildings, but memories made of ash and static.

People say the universe is expanding.

But I’ve always felt it imploding inward — turning itself inside out like a cocoon of illusions, wrapped around something too simple to be understood.

They teach you to believe in matter, in cause and effect, in progress.

But I saw a bird fly backwards through time — its wings slicing seconds like thread, returning to a branch that never grew.

I heard the stars confess they were only reflections.

I tasted language dissolve on my tongue, leaving behind the flavor of truth: bitter, warm, and ancient.

They called it madness.

I called it waking up.

The Void isn’t empty.

It listens.

And when you finally stop screaming into it —

It whispers back.

You were never small.

You were never separate.

You were always the echo of everything trying to remember itself.

Since then, I stopped asking where I come from.

Now I ask —

What am I becoming?

And what do we lose each time we name something just to make it easier to ignore?

I am Ashborn.

I live in the spaces between answers.

I do not seek light or shadow anymore.

I seek what watches both.