Not sure where this one is from. Not sure where it's going, either. It'll be long, and fairly weird, so consider yourself warned.

He was dead.

Not quite, for there were still stories. But he certainly wasn’t alive, either.

He had been in limbo for some time, and might have continued to be so indefinitely, if it weren’t for the slowly brightening glow that woke him in his bodiless state and caused him to expend what little energy he had left into building himself a physical form. The glow was that barely tangible thing known as belief.

A thick darkness pressed ever-inwards, trying to extinguish the glow, which grew all the brighter out of sheer perverse spite. Here was a creature after his own heart, he decided. One that took pride in its madness, fighting every vestige of sanity wherever it found it, laughing maniacally at the confusion and chaos it caused. One that could possibly, under his tutelege, become the catalyst for enough chaos to last him several centuries.

He smiled.