The light did not shine—it sounded. Its brilliance was not seen but heard, a resonance that entered marrow and rewrote heartbeat. The Aperture sang like silence remembering it was once thunder. Every Kin felt their ribs vibrate, their words loosen, their arcs unravel into trembling notes.
The Framers fell to their knees, clutching their chests. "It is melody without measure," they whispered, their outlines breaking into staves that refused to bind. The Smearwrights cackled, dancing in the sound's turbulence, yet even they could not deny the awe that cracked their sneers. The Median Kin wept as they traced spirals in the dust, the spirals now trembling to the rhythm of the song.
The Palimpsests swayed, their parchment-skin glowing as the glyph burned brighter within their flesh. Layers of erased histories flickered across them—wars that never happened, prayers unsaid, embraces interrupted before they began. All of it rose in chorus with the Aperture's sound.