"In the silence between screams, I learned the language of pain."
The world had been quiet for too long.
After the slaughter, after the ashes of the Fractured Plains turned to black dust beneath my feet, silence had become a companion. Not peace — there was no such thing here — but an emptiness that hummed in rhythm with my pulse.
This realm, this dying carcass of a world, was collapsing in slow motion. Cracks split its surface like veins of forgotten gods, bleeding faint light into the void above. The air reeked of decay and nostalgia — of something that once wanted to live, but had long since surrendered.
I watched it die, and I learned.
For months — or maybe centuries; time here was nothing but breathless repetition — I listened to the frequencies of existence. The way energy quivered when life approached. The subtle vibration of fear before bloodshed.
That was when I discovered it. Resonance Manipulation.
Not a gift. Not a curse. A realization.
Everything was vibration. Sound. Pain. Light.
And I could twist it.
When I whispered the [Voíd-tongue glyphs], the world shivered — and I felt it bend.
The Elarin came at dusk, or what passed for dusk in this broken place.
Shards of light in human shape, their bodies crystalline — pure, once. But corruption clung to them now, black lines spreading through their glasslike skin.
They moved like priests on a funeral march, chanting as if their words could erase the darkness that had devoured their kin.
"Cleanse the impurity. Restore the Light. Burn the Void's spawn."
Their voices rang — perfect harmony, broken by the static of fear.
I stood upon a ridge of bone and crystal, watching. Their radiance flickered against the fractured sky, pitiful and beautiful. They hadn't seen me yet.
A part of me wanted to wait longer, to listen. To study how courage tried to mimic strength.
But curiosity — that faint, dangerous thing — won.
I stepped forward.
The light dimmed.
Their leader, a tall Elarin with golden fractures down his arms, froze mid-step. His crystal eyes widened as the air itself distorted.
"Wh–who disturbs the Holy Cleansing?"
His voice trembled like a chime in the wind.
I didn't answer — not yet. Instead, I spoke softly, inwardly, in the [Voíd-tongue].
[Vae'shar… thren'ul…]
The resonance rippled outward. Sound and light fractured. Their voices warped into a choir of agony.
Some fell to their knees, clutching their heads as the harmony they had been so proud of turned against them — their own divine song twisting into shrieks.
"Stop—! Stop this!"
"He's… inside our light!"
Their leader tried to summon his weapon — a blade of condensed radiance — but the vibration shattered it before he could lift it.
I descended the ridge slowly, each step echoing like a drumbeat of inevitability.
"You call yourselves pure," I said at last, voice low, steady, almost curious. "But tell me… does purity bleed?"
They screamed as their light cracked.
The answer was yes.
Resonance Manipulation wasn't power in the way most creatures understood it. It wasn't fire or lightning or steel. It was art. Precision.
Each frequency a thread, each cry a string I could pluck.
One Elarin, on his knees, tried to pray as his body convulsed.
His voice hit a note — desperate, trembling — and I caught it in the air.
"Mercy—!"
I twisted the tone. The plea became a scream that tore his throat open from the inside.
The others broke soon after.
"You… monster!"
"This is blasphemy—!"
Their words dissolved into static as I tuned their suffering into a melody.
For the first time, I spoke more than a few words. My voice echoed, deeper than the void around us.
"Do you hear it?" I whispered. "The music beneath your screams?"
Their leader spat blood and light, glaring up at me with cracked eyes.
"You feed on pain."
I tilted my head.
"No. I reshape it."
He tried to charge me — a flicker of faith in his motion.
I let him come.
When his hand met my chest, his arm exploded into shards. The resonance recoiled through his body, and he disintegrated in silence.
When it ended, the battlefield was a cathedral of ruin.
Shards of crystal corpses lay like broken stars. Their light bled into the dust, dimming with each breath.
I stood among them, my shadow longer than the horizon.
Their echoes still trembled in the air — faint songs of agony caught in the fabric of this dying realm.
Inside me, something shifted.
Not guilt. Not joy. But… curiosity.
That was new.
I looked at my hands. The faint shimmer of the Void pulsed beneath my skin like dark veins of energy. When I focused, the resonance hummed through me — a thousand voices whispering frequencies of power.
I could hear the world now. The heartbeat of the Fractured Realm. The dying hum of the light. The screams that no longer echoed.
And beneath it all… something else.
A vibration unlike the rest — soft, distant, melodic.
It called to me.
Not with fear.
Not with pain.
But with… harmony.
I closed my eyes. The Void within stirred, answering the sound.
It wasn't Elarin. It wasn't Voidborn. It was something between — something untouched by decay or purity.
A whisper in the dark.
[Sa'ren… var'thal…]
The glyphs spilled from my tongue instinctively, as if the Void itself wanted to translate what I felt. The sound traveled through dimensions, a beacon seeking its echo.
For a moment, the dead world stilled.
The corrupted light flickered once more, faintly — like a reflection of what I sensed beyond this realm.
Then it was gone.
I stood alone again. The silence returned, heavy and absolute.
But it no longer felt empty.
Somewhere far beyond this dying world… something had resonated back.
A soul.
A frequency.
A future.
"So that's what curiosity feels like…" I murmured, the words strange on my tongue.
The Void did not answer. It never did.
But I felt it — faint amusement, maybe even approval, rippling through the blackness within me.
The corpses of the Elarin began to sink into the ground, their light feeding the shadows. Their final symphony fading.
And I walked onward — toward the pulse that had dared to call back to me.
The Fractured World's sky shuddered once as I left.
Somewhere deep in its decaying heart, the resonance of my existence carved itself into its foundation — a scar that would never heal.
And in the far distance, unseen, unheard, something stirred.
A soft hum — familiar yet alien — whispering through the veil between worlds.
The faint call of her.
End of Chapter 7 — Predator's Calm