I was nowhere. As philosophically as it may sound, that was the sad reality. Once the universe swallowed me back then, I was hanging in this empty void. I could even tell whether I had the body to begin with, given how there was absolutely nothing that could induce any sensory experience in it.

Stuck in this abyss of nothingness, I couldn't even conjure any of my abilities as there was no space for them to manifest in. Unable to perceive, do or accomplish anything, I was unable to even tell how long has it passed ever since I appeared in this void.

Was it a second? Did I leave the world where my wife remained just a damned second ago? Or was it ages ago? Stuck in this abyss, I had no way of telling.

It wasn't like I didn't make any attempts at returning. But nothing of what I attempted to accomplish seemed to have any effect. There was no universe around me to rip a hole in it and create a portal that would connect me back with the world. There was no space around me that could allow condensing my magic so hard that it would turn into an object I could use as a tool.

Surrounded by nothingness, I was unable to change its state either. After all, I wasn't a god.

Maybe that was the difference between me, and the being that moved me from one world to another. Or maybe that god who stole me from earth would be as powerless in this void as I was? I had no way of telling.

After all, I couldn't tell anything if there wasn't anything to talk about.

No space, no objects, no drama, no events, no matter, not even the time itself!

Humans talked in order to communicate with others. With no one else to talk to, even trying to talk to myself… Wait…

There was no time?

This sudden thought struck me like a bolt of lightning. Given how I couldn't even tell where was the last time when I felt something, instead of being perturbed by it, my entire self was thrilled with that long-forgotten sensation. Even if it steemed just from my mind alone.

The reality, or rather its lack, dangerously close resembled the legend of what awaited humans after their demise of one of the major religions. Stuck in the abyss, they would remain there for as long as their very sense of self would deteriorate completely, decaying away.

But that forced my mind to keep working at its utmost rate. After all, I wasn't that eager to die in the first place. Not before I would find a way to return to Eve, witness the birth of our child, spend my entire, nearly endless life with her, and wither away together in her loving embrace!

But how could I fix the lack of time?

This question should pose some hardship for me to answer as I was absolutely not an expert in what the time was in the very first place. Thankfully, even without the ability to connect with bonger, the changes he did to my body and mind remained.

And that empowered me to recall all the memories I had from my life on earth. Along with all the details of the extremely deep, educational videos about the space and physics behind it that I watched to lull myself to sleep at times.

Sadly, without the proper knowledge about the very basics of the science, no matter how much I thought, I was unable to even guess what some of the phrases could mean, not even after rewatching the same memory for over a thousand times.

But if I can't figure something out, then I could always come up with something on my own, couldn't I?

The one thing that I managed to understand from all those videos now that I analyzed and thought about every second of them, was that the time was ultimately just another dimension of the universe. The fact that humans experienced it as passing, steemed from the fact that they themselves were stuck in a lower dimension, making them unable to affect but only to experience its effects.

But how could there be time without a universe, to begin with? Given how it was supposed to be just another dimension, I had to somehow create all the other dimension to make it work in the first place!

Sadly, the main problem remained. Stuck in this endless void of nothingness, I was unable to create something out of nothing.

Or was I really?

One of the other things that memories of those videos outlined was that ultimately, with a scale big enough, the entire universe was devoid of anything. Considering time as just another plane to move around, reaching its high enough stages would present me with a universe where all the matter decayed, all the energy was used up, a dead universe.

In the entire vast limits of its space, not even a single particle moved anymore. It consisted just of space alone.

But space by itself… was not a thing. It was just a concept that humans came up with to put the limits on the infinity. In reality, space was just the area that was influenced by energy. Be it in form of mass, wave, force or oscillation, it wasn't a thing. It was the location.

And the location itself didn't require any energy to exist at all, didn't it?

Once that idea struck my mind, something clicked.

Holding the picture of the completely dead universe in my mind, I somehow pushed my perception to perceive the nothingness around me as the insides of such a universe. And given how it was all nothing less but a projection of my mind, I still held the reins of how I perceived the dimension.

And that gave me the power to reverse the time.

Within a single fraction of an instant, an explosion occurred. An impossibly small portion of my magical energy vibrated…

And knocked over the stability of the endless mass of void that filled this dead universe. This wave that spread through the unending expanses of nothingness, was the first step for the birth of the universe I imagined.

Just like the legendary Big Bang theory outlined, everything changed all at once. But that didn't mean it happened fast. But with all the time that I was given, I suddenly realised two things.

With how infinitely dense the void was, sparking just a single vibration in it was more than enough to knock it out of its stable position. Before long, this infinite mass of void gave birth to an infinite mass of magical energy. And said magical energy in turn, condensed into the matter itself.

Then, I witnessed the true Big Bang, with all its intricate details I knew from those space movies, now appearing right in front of my eyes. I was now able to physically see the ongoing changes in this violent, young universe.

As for the other thing I understood, was that I didn't reverse the time. After all, given how it was just another plane, it was wrong to claim there was any right direction in it in the first place. What I did, was start the time of an imaginary, dead universe.

And it was from that point when said universe manifested and grew right in front of my eyes.