The cosmos is divided into twelve phases, twelve states of existence differing in properties beyond the comprehension of human and beast. All creatures are bound to their respective states, or shifts, as the common folk of the majority state called it. However, "shift" is a common misnomer; states and shifts are different things and there hasn’t been a real shift since before the longest reaching memory of the oldest creatures alive.
In fact, a shift is so rare and dangerous that its true meaning had been lost. Some said to shift is to willingly rip one's soul from their body and cast it into the swirling chaos of the nothing. Others proclaim the shift to be a colossal reformation of the hierarchy of states -- a shuffling of the cosmic deck.
A reset.
Of course, to understand the true meaning of a shift, one must understand the states, but few in existence remember even the myths. Those who ceased or never existed, however, knew all too well. For to not exist -- to be one with the nothing -- was to experience no pain, no death, no life or love, nothing except the knowledge of everything beyond your reach, including a shift back into the twelve.
How can those who can not be... know something, you ask?
The limits of my knowledge are challenged in this question. Know that there stretches a vast reservoir of unreachable information where our capacity for knowledge ends. Our feeble minds would saturate and abandon us at any real attempt to cross that threshold. And so here we sit, with an ugly paradox flapping its tongue and but a snippet of the universe within our grasp.
How unfair...
Be warned, the threshold was designed for a reason, for without it us humans would go mad with the truths of the universe. We would wield power beyond our control and we would tear the flesh off of our faces before we found a way to live with them. To cross the threshold, even dip one's toes into the waters of the unknown, is enough to imbue us with immeasurable power and risk the very balance of the cosmos.
You would do well to remember this.
