Verse:
There are beats not meant for mortal ears,
Echoes that drown in the breath between drums.
But the blade… the blade remembers.
The cavern's walls pulsed.
No light. No sun. No torch.
Only rhythm.
Not heard. Not even felt.
But known.
Rin stood in the silence beneath the Broken Range, beneath even the sleeping bones of the mountains. The Shard of the First Rhythm vibrated faintly against his chest—its frequency not aligned with the world above, but below it. With each breath, something in him shifted, like a string once too taut now finding its sacred pitch.
He had come alone. Not because he had to. But because no other soul could enter this place.
The Beat Untouched, it was called in the old texts—not a place, but a condition. A state of the world left unmarred by Crown or Conflict. A pocket of stillness where rhythm was neither forged nor stolen, but born.
His steps did not echo.
Even the air refused to hum.
There were no drums here, no chants, no marching cadence. And yet Rin's heart pounded not in defiance of the silence but in reverence. A rhythm not taught. Not learned. But remembered.
From a time before war.
Before crowns.
Before blades even knew to sing.
He sat.
Cross-legged. Palms to the stone. The Shard at his center began to glow—not in light, but in tone. A whisper of note that only the earth could carry. He did not move. Did not close his eyes. Instead, he listened—not for sound, but for something beneath it.
And it came.
A resonance from the world's marrow. Older than gods. Deeper than silence. It welcomed him. Not like a friend welcomes a friend. But like a blade welcomes the forge.
And the forge, it had begun to burn.
Memory Interlude: The Blade Without a Rhythm
The vision surged.
He was no longer Rin.
He was… someone else. A boy. Or a man. Or both.
Naked. Cold. Kneeling before a forge without fire.
"Make it sing," a voice whispered—not with words, but rhythm. "Make it sing without me."
The blacksmith's hands were calloused. His fingers bleeding. The anvil before him was cracked, jagged from a war that had stolen even the sound of hammers.
He struck.
The metal did not ring.
He struck again.
And again.
Until his heart pounded louder than his strikes.
And then it did.
One strike.
A tone.
A rhythm not from the blow, but from the defiance.
The First Blade was not forged from steel, but from silence broken with resolve.
The vision ended.
Rin gasped, clutching his chest where the Shard of the First Rhythm had merged with him. It pulsed now with clarity. Not just a relic, but an invitation.
Above him, in the world of war and marching, the Crownless Vanguard searched for his return. Rhythms of war stirred again—crowns converging on broken territories, each chanting their own dominion into reality.
But here, beneath it all, Rin had found something none of them knew existed.
A root rhythm.
Untouched. Unclaimed.
His blade, resting beside him, began to hum.
Not a song of war.
Not yet.
But a prelude.
To something older than rhythm itself.
To the thing the Crowns once feared before they learned to sing.
Verse (End):
He who listens beneath the world,
Shall strike not for rhythm,
But for truth.