She is as old as time itself, for she is time itself. Unnameable yet named, she presides over all of creation in silence, aware of everything one could be aware of. She is the First Predator.

From across the nothingness of non-dimensional barrier-space, fundamentally outside the Multiverse does she make her home amid the infinite Onyx Forest. A black, inscrutable plane of endless trees and infinite night and howling winds with neither animal nor artifice in sight, save for insects almost never seen and the static rush of occasional rivers and creeks and streams and lakes. Beneath an endless ocean of clouds and winds and untruthful stars does she move through her unending territory, alone, forever. She moves as one with the forces, for she is the forces.

In all of creation, there are two forces that make up all things: Nature, and Artifice. All processes and things that occur as a byproduct of entropy and reality's inherent states are what is called Nature, omnipresent and undefeatable, immutable. All things crafted by consciousness and cunning are what is called Artifice, stronger than Nature, yet dependent on her and only found in small pockets where it has room and time to feast on her. And these processes, so intrinsic and integral to Reality, are alive and conscious in a very solid sense. She is the former. She is Nature. She is the forest she lives in and all of the forests of infinite creation. She is every fish in every body of water, every gust of wind ever felt, she is every orbiting moon and asteroid in every galaxy, she is every lightning strike and every blade of grass and every predator's feast ever partaken in. Yet at the same time, she is an entity, a personality, with preferences of her own and a will that is unique.

In herself, of herself, she is but a will with no consciousness. But as the cycle of life, just as Nature devours itself and artifice alike, so does she devour in order to become. Those in the Multiverse who can reach her realm are few and infinity between, but anything that does is doomed, for she takes anything and anyone that enters her forest in her great maw, sooner or later. Some are devoured the instant they set foot, her waiting on the other side for them. Some flee through her woods for hours as she chases and toys with them. Some return to standard Creation and live out their lives until old, forgetting of her, before one day, she appears before them to collect their flesh-debt. She makes their essence, the very concept of themself, one with her own. She then knows their secrets and their feelings, and she is their secrets and their feelings. And across infinity, she has infinite prey to choose from and absorb, and thus infinite knowledge that she takes for herself. She sees everything in Existence all at once, and her power is beyond any that the Multiverse may muster, making escape truly impossible. She is second and subservient only to Pan, the All-King.

But as a ravenous predator, the First Predator, she is not cruel or evil. She has a consciousness and a conscience, and those who encounter her outside of her home where she is not strictly inclined to feast may speak to her and hold a meaningful conversation. She is quite polite, sophisticated, and friendly in her mannerisms. Many have befriended her and loved her, and many have seen her reciprocate their feelings, if only for an infinite fraction of her life, and despite an infinite number of others who came exactly before them. She preys not because she is cruel, but simply because predation is Nature. In truth, she cares for those she feeds on.

Across the Infinite, many have known of her and her behavior. Whether they be in those great interuniversal civilizations that are able to reach her forest, or lesser civilizations that stumble upon those rare remnant gates leading to her forest, there have always been those who would worship her and make offerings to her. Members of such groups would often enter her forest and actively seek her out, knowing fully well that their last moments among the living world would be the embrace of her great hungering teeth. They wander in her forest, calling out to her to embrace them. They call to her by many names. The Howler. Alpha. Mother. The Eternity. Madness. Chaos. Praeotha. But most often, out of properness, they call her by the very name she chose for herself.

Xïl.