The Echoes of Cosmic Rhyme
By mansio0314 The world I speak of is not one of princes and thrones, nor golden myths polished by memory. It is the shivering, ash-veiled corpse of a world that *once* sang.
It began with the **Cosmic Rhyme**.
Not music. Not words. But a *resonance* so absolute that it spoke existence into coherence. Mountains rose in rhythms. Stars ignited in chords. Every being pulsed with a unique **Primal Rhyme**, sharing resonance with others in an infinite, harmonious web called the **World-Rhythm**.
But perfection is a prison. And all songs, sung long enough, decay into silence.
The **Great Cleave** ruptured everything. No scholar dares say if it was an accident, punishment, mercy... or suicide. The World-Rhythm shattered. The **Flow of Oblivion** followed. Now, all things unravel.
Stone crumbles without cause. Voices forget sound. Hunger endures, but taste does not. Even memory cheats.
From this collapse, the **Beast-kin** endure—not by virtue, but violence. Each tribe clings to a fragment of a lost Primal Rhyme, calling it an **Innate Rhyme**. It governs not merely how a body moves, but how a soul remembers itself.
But these fragments lie. Or rather—they change.
You’ll meet the **Redpaw Tribe**, who burn with defiance and believe fire is truth. The **Hollowreed Chorus**, who whisper fading echoes, preserving death as memory. Or the **Whitetongue Pack**, who sever themselves from rhythm entirely, believing only silence is real.
Each tribe wages sacred war called the **Rhythm Hunt** against the **Rupture-kin**: twisted monsters born of melodies gone wrong. They consume, distort, or erase the very idea of self.
But even triumph in the Hunt brings little hope. All rhythms are fragmentary. All victories are eroded by time’s dissonance.
Sometimes, two Beast-kin resonate so deeply together that a **Harmonic Bond** forms. In that moment, a **Harmonic Melody-Rhythm** may surface. Not a weapon. A *memory* of something whole. Something *before the Cleave*.
And sometimes, when that happens, the Flow pauses. Trees bloom from ash. A color returns. A name is remembered.
But it's never for long.
This world does not strive for peace. It mourns through survival. Identity shivers like a dying flame. Faith is both weapon and delusion.
And yet—it sings.
It sings in the clash of claws, the whisper of withered reeds, the unwilling tenderness between warriors from rival tribes. It sings in flaws. In pain. In bonds.
It is sacred.
It is doomed.
And it remembers you, even as you begin to forget yourself.