At the very beginning, there were only particles.

Countless particles swirling without form in the dark abyss, but over time, that changed. The bits and pieces somehow found each other and began to gather, as if they believed that by standing together, they could endure the darkness. That by finding each other, they could become something better than what they could be on their own. More and more particles were pulled in closer and closer together, and together they began to create heat. One day their numbers had grown so much and their combined heat was so great that they produced the spark.

Suddenly they weren't "they" anymore.

They became it, they became a star.

It was massive. It began to burn with fantastically bright light. The light the star gave off shone through to the very ends of the universe, and its heat warmed hundreds of worlds. Most of these worlds had no inhabitants to appreciate the light, but there were the rare ones that did. They saw it and were grateful for its presence.

For what seemed like eons, the star burned ever onward. Smashing together pieces of itself to make even greater and more massive substances that would be used to start the process again, and as this went on, so it grew. It grew to even more gargantuan proportions that it had ever even dreamed to see. There didn't seem to be an end.

The star thought it would be able to light the universe until time ended, but nothing lasts forever.

One day the star realized there was no way to sustain the pace it had set. That there just was no way to get any more energy out of what it was creating. Soon there would be nothing left to keep the light burning. There had to be a way to keep going; this was not the end.

But it was, it was the beginning of the end.

Panicking, the star burnt more and more and more, furiously trying to find the next stage but there was none. This frantic feeding of the flames was just eating up what pitiful resources it had left. Finally, one fateful day, there was nothing to burn.

The star went out.

The great size that had been the star's pride began to fall in upon itself. Everything it had built over these many many years was collapsing inward now that there was no intense heat to keep everything stable.

It grew smaller and smaller as all of its remains were pulled toward its center. Just when it seemed like there was no possible way for the star to fall even further from its former glory, from the titan-like size it used to be, the iron core began to collapse inward, making it even smaller. On and on this went, until the star didn't think there was anywhere else to go, but suddenly there was a shift.

The star had fallen from grace to such a depth that its very nature had changed.

No longer a source of life, giving light and heat to the universe, it was now the very antithesis of the essence it had fought so fiercely to save in those last frantic days of burning. Now it was dark. Now it was ravenous and had no conscious.

The black hole began to consume without remorse.

Nothing was safe from the its new found appitite. The nearby stars that had been the ex-star's close companions thoughout the millenia were the first to go, being dragged unceremoninously into the gaping maw of the black hole. It shredded its former compatriots into smaller pieces, devouring the chunks at an alarming rate. The black hole was lamenting the loss of the smaller stars while demolishing them when something unexpected happened.

The black hole began to shine brightly.

At first it believed that it had miraculously rekindled its mighty furnaces, that it was going to be a star once more but it realized that this was a falsehood. To its horror, the black hole realized the cause of its newfound lumousity was the energy required to destroy the stars that it was now feeding on.

It was only able to shine again at the cost of other's vitality.

For a brief moment the black hole felt guilty for what it was doing but the obsession to shine again, to be a source of light and heat for the galaxy, was too overpowering. It consumed. It needed more fuel, needed to burn brightly once more.

It was almost like being a star again except instead of being self-sustaining, the black hole tore into others and took their fuel and, by exstension their lives, by force. Even the planets that the former star had been so happy to provide light and warmth to were not safe, they too were caught up in the black hole's insane need for fuel. The more stars and worlds that were pulled in, the larger it grew, expanding its reach further and further into the dark. Soon all of the nearby stars were gone, as well as the planets, and the stars beyond them were within reach.

The black hole fell upon them, viciously tearing them into pieces to feed the light it needed to keep glowing. It didn't realize it had fallen into the same trap that had led it to this lowly position of cannibalizing its lifelong friends just to obtain some phantom of former glory.

Its size had grown too large to sustain.

There just wasn't enough sustenance within its grasp for the black hole to keep going. It had burned through almost all of the possible fuel sources and the cruel irony was it knew this but it could not stop. It couldn't even justify this hunger with wanting to give light anymore. The black hole had begun to swallow its victims whole and without the energy gained from eviscerating them, its bright light had faded to a sickly faded glow.

It could see the end coming.

Still the black hole consumed, getting slower and more sluggish at the inevitable got closer and closer. It could see that there were only a few solitary stars left within its grasp but it had knew that there was no way out of this. This was the end.

It dragged the last star to the dark abyss at its center. It swallowed the tiny thing without any hesitation, accepting its fate.

The black hole became silent.