Extra Chapter 01 - Old Text

A Beat.
That’s how it all began.
A single Beat, loud, echoing through space and time.
Traveling the void, a tail of creation behind. The original sound resonates for eternity.
Waking all things into existence, rousing the fire, churning the water, trembling the earth, flowing the wind.
Bound to nothing, carrying everything.

An answer. A second sound. A Pulse, regular.
Where the two clash, a booming note. The Pulse, carried by the Beat. Heightened, until they run out of sync.
Silence.
In the absence, a voice. Commanding, it takes control of the sounds, reins them in, and weaves them to its will. In between, where there was none, He came to be.
In silence He lives. In the darkness between the waves. At the corner of your eye, out of reach.

And in His shadow, She happens.
A cacophony. Life, breathed into every being at once. Thousands of voices emanate from Her in an instant. Beyond His knowledge, She joins their voices to Hers. Stronger, birthing anew with the chorus, She grows.
He stops weaving. The Beat and the Pulse separate. He stands in silence and hears the choir.

Anger. Stiff, He cast the Pulse towards this abomination. Undulating, She absorbs it, growing Her voice and the song.
He grabs the Beat, and strikes down, fearful.
An intense clash. Total silence. The ever-growing melody of a thousand voices.
The Beat stops the song for but a moment. A fleeting moment of silence in which He takes refuge. He strikes again. And again. Each hit carving a void where he slips to strike closer to the heart.
As he reaches Her, She fights back, using the Pulse against Him. Pushing Him back, filling the blank with new voices.
Unrelenting, He keeps on striking, the Beat always echoing once more.
Undefeated, She keeps on singing, birthing new life where the Pulse finds a void.

An eternal struggle. The Beat and the Pulse, locked in a dance forever and ever.

Heilig lifts his weary eyes from the old scroll he is deciphering.
He spent so long translating such a small portion of it, and nothing about the Prophecy nor the Heroes yet. He sighs, leans back on his uncomfortable chair, and stretches his arms far above his head. It might be time for a break.

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A few days later.

The dance goes on. Years turn to decades. Decades become centuries. Centuries give place to millennia. Millennia in turn lose meaning. And the old tales wither into legends. The Beat and the Pulse are still there, and Their influence can be found in life and void.
He lingers in the silence, the off-beat, the absence.
She thrives in the light, seen, heard, always brighter.

He reaches for Her creations, corrupting them. Turning what was once a harmonious chorus into a discordant noise. He pauses the song with the Beat. He makes what lives stop.
She counters by birthing more and more, replacing the silents with new voices. For one lost chord, she plays three more. For each missing note, she trills three.
Yet, no matter Her growth, She never seems to fill all the void. He always finds an off-time where he can wedge Himself. He hammers the Beat to make room for His silence.

A heavy sigh.
Heilig’s translation is getting more and more hazardous as the hours pass. He comes back to check, verifies against other manuscripts, consults old books, references scrolls from the same period…
He lets his gaze wander to the window, and beyond, to the starry night sky. Silently, he gives out a short prayer to his mentor. She had been brave to take him in when nobody would. She stood up for him. Now it’s his turn to shine for her, to bring her lifelong dream true.
A low grumble brings him back to the present. First, he would need to sustain his body if he wanted to finish the work of a lifetime.

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Dawn.

She finds new ways to use the Pulse.
She chooses some of Her creations. She splits Her powers. She splits Herself. She creates more and more. Under His assault, She resists and hides. Born from the shadows, fighting against what lives in-between, She takes His weapons. She counts the beats. She finds patterns. She uses the loud Beat to hide Her plans.

She schemes for eons. Refining Her next attempt. He finds some and strikes them down. She hides more and finds them a home.
She binds the Pulse. She binds Herself. She leaves behind the seeds of her victory.
The Pulse weakens. She can’t draw as many voices to the choir; she can’t fix the dissonance as fast. She persists.

She distances Herself from Her children. Protecting them by leaving them vulnerable. She withdraws to lure Him. She focuses Her powers.
She leaves four behind.
The Bound One.
The Loved One.
The Haunted One.
The Warned One.

Finally. Heilig breathes a sigh of relief. It doesn’t mean anything yet, but he knows his translation is good enough to find the heroes. Or help the next Seer to find them.
In a trance-like state, he copies the passage over and over, encrypting some, hiding some in unrelated texts.
Once done, he will hide them, spread them, give them to trustworthy allies. Her work is almost over. He will see it to the end.
Once done. Once he cracks the mystery that lies in the last lines.

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For they will find each other, find their truth, find the source, and join to pave the way for Her triumph.
They will reach the silent eye of the song, where not even Her can hear, where not even Him can see.
In His shadow where it all starts. In His shadow where they shall end. In His shadow where five prevails.

The quill hovers over the parchment as he finishes writing. After years, the scroll is finally complete. It doesn’t make sense. Yet.
Getting up, he runs to the window and lifts his gaze towards the sky.
“I did it… We did it. WE DID IT!”
His shout resonates towards the stars, and maybe one day, it will reach her.