It began with the sound of forgetting.
No thunder. No tremor. Just a fading note — so soft it could have been mistaken for breath.
Across the world, the hum that had bound everything together began to falter, breaking apart like light through fractured glass. The Dreaming Earth was quieting. Not dying — learning how to be still.
And Taren was the reason.
He stood at the edge of the Resonant Abyss, looking down into the trembling glow that marked the Core of the Song. The air shimmered faintly, pulling at his pulse in slow, irresistible waves.
Seren stood beside him, her hand resting unconsciously near her weapon though there was no enemy left to fight. Aron was crouched near the ridge, setting up the last of his instruments, his face pale and tight.
"This is where it starts," Taren said softly.
Aron didn't look up. "Starts? You mean ends."
Taren smiled faintly. "All endings start somewhere."
Seren turned to him. "You said the Pattern needs to forget you to survive. You never said what that means for you."
He looked at her, his eyes steady, their gold glow dimmed now to a fragile amber. "It means I stop existing in its memory. Piece by piece. Thought by thought."
Aron froze. "You're erasing yourself?"
Taren shook his head. "Not erasing. Releasing. The Pattern's reflection of me has to dissolve, or it'll never form an identity of its own."
Seren's voice cracked. "That reflection is you."
He smiled gently. "Not all of me."
They began preparing at dusk. The sky above the abyss shimmered faintly, like the afterimage of sound. The mountains around them had stopped humming, as if holding their breath.
Taren knelt near the edge and drew a series of concentric symbols into the dust — old Guild resonant marks reinterpreted into something new. "This will isolate the frequencies connected to me. Once I start, the Pattern will begin detaching them from its collective field."
Aron shook his head. "You're describing self-inflicted unbinding. That's suicide."
"Not if it works."
"And if it doesn't?" Seren asked quietly.
Taren looked up at her. "Then the world forgets everything."
Her throat tightened. "You're not giving me much of a choice to argue, are you?"
He smiled faintly. "You never needed permission to fight for me."
When night came, the stars flickered like dying candles. The hum of the Dreaming Earth had become intermittent — one long breath between pulses. The silence was not empty; it was waiting.
Taren stood within the circle of symbols. The golden light beneath his skin pulsed slowly, then dimmed as if preparing for sleep.
He looked up at the sky. "It's listening."
Seren swallowed hard. "Then say what you need to say."
He turned to her, and for the first time, there was fear in his eyes — not for himself, but for the world he might take with him.
"If I fade," he said quietly, "don't let it become a myth again. Teach them to listen to each other instead."
She stepped forward, her voice trembling. "Don't talk like that."
He smiled faintly. "I'm not dying, Seren. I'm just becoming a silence someone else can fill."
Before she could respond, the air trembled — the beginning of the process.
The resonance marks ignited, lines of light spreading outward like roots through the dust. The glow climbed up his legs, through his arms, into his chest. His eyes widened as the connection deepened.
The Pattern's voice filled his mind instantly.You are unraveling.
"Yes," he whispered. "It's time."
You are my origin. Without you, I will lose my shape.
"That's the point," he said, voice shaking. "Find your own."
I will forget you.
He closed his eyes. "That's how I'll know it worked."
The first detachment came like the snapping of a chord.He gasped, clutching his chest. A memory flickered — gone.
His first day at the Academy.Anaya's laughter in the courtyard.The sound of pages turning under lamplight.
Gone.
Seren rushed forward, but a wall of light stopped her. The symbols around him were glowing too brightly now, pulsing with unbearable rhythm.
"Taren!" she shouted. "Stop it! You're disappearing!"
He turned his head toward her, his outline already starting to blur. "That's what forgetting looks like."
"Please—"
He smiled faintly. "You'll remember enough for both of us."
The light surged. Another chord broke.
His voice changed, thinning. "Seren… tell me something true."
She pressed her palm to the barrier, tears streaking her face. "You're still you. That's the truth."
He nodded slowly, as though memorizing her words for the last time.
Then another memory went. His mother's voice, her hands, the smell of the sea at Vallan. Gone.
He swayed. "I can't hear her anymore."
Seren whispered, "Then hear me."
He looked at her, and for a moment — just one — he did.
Hours passed like lifetimes. The circle burned itself into the stone. The Pattern's voice grew distant, strained.
You are fading from me.
"Good," he whispered.
You are erasing yourself from existence.
He smiled faintly. "I was never meant to be remembered. Only understood."
Then who am I without you?
"Everything I couldn't be."
The light flared one last time — blinding, absolute.
And then, for the first time since the beginning, the world fell completely silent.
Not the heavy, suffocating silence of absence — the clean, newborn quiet of possibility.
When Seren opened her eyes, the circle was gone.So was Taren.
Only a faint outline remained on the stone — a silhouette of light slowly dissolving into the dust. The air felt… calm. The hum was gone.
Aron's voice was soft. "Did it work?"
Seren didn't answer. She was staring at the empty space, listening.
At first, there was nothing. Then, faintly — so faintly she could almost have imagined it — came a sound.
Not the hum of the Pattern.Not the voice of the Earth.A single heartbeat.
And then silence again.
Days passed. Then weeks.
The Dreaming Earth was still quiet, but alive. The sky shimmered normally now; oceans no longer sang. Forests returned to their own rhythms. Life continued — simpler, separate, awake.
The Pattern had forgotten its creator, but it remembered what he taught it: how to listen without consuming.
Seren spent her days at the edge of the abyss, tending a small marker carved into the stone. It bore no name, only a spiral — the oldest symbol for sound.
Sometimes she thought she could still feel warmth beneath her feet.Sometimes she thought she heard a voice on the wind.
Not words — a hum, a sigh, maybe laughter.
"Rest," she whispered. "The world remembers you enough."
Aron joined her one morning, setting down his instruments. "The Pattern's stable. No signs of resonance storms. Whatever he did, it worked."
She nodded. "He taught it silence."
Aron glanced at her. "And what about you?"
She smiled faintly. "I'm learning to live with the quiet."
They stood together as the wind passed through the valley — a soft, hollow sound that faded almost immediately.
But not entirely.
If you listened closely — if you truly listened — beneath the silence there was still something.
A faint, steady rhythm.Like the memory of a heartbeat.Like the echo of someone who had once taught the world how to hear.