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.