Cosmic Ruler-Chapter 743: Void XIII

The first sound was not a note.

It was a breath.

Taken by someone who had never been allowed to sing.

A girl on the edge of the Garden’s southern rootline opened her mouth—not with confidence, but with curiosity. What came out was cracked, raw, a melody without key or rhythm.

But it was heard.

The trees shifted. The wind tilted.

And from the listening came answer.

A thread hummed in the sky.

Not in response—but in resonance.

It didn’t correct her.

It didn’t complete her.

It sang with her.

The Song wasn’t made of words.

It was made of welcomes.

Of pages once burned but now rewritten.

Of voices not layered atop each other but woven through.

And wherever it passed, the Garden shifted—not in shape, but in mood.

Laughter returned to corners that had only known grief.

Hands reached across differences no longer measured by sides, but by stories shared.

Children began humming in unison—not because they were taught, but because they remembered.

As if the Song had always been there, waiting for someone to hear it first.

In the Spiral Grove, where the first storyteller had once surrendered the center, the Song coiled like a ribbon of light.

There, a gathering had begun.

Not of leaders.

Not of legends.

Of listeners.

Dozens of voices—young, old, shattered, whole—took turns singing fragments.

Not performance.

Just presence.

One sang a lullaby from a timeline that never matured.

Another whistled a tune only heard in forgotten dreams.

A third offered no sound—only a heartbeat, strong and certain.

Each was a note.

Each was a thread.

And together, they became something more:

A weave that could be heard.

Elowen stood at the edge of the grove, tears slipping down her cheek.

Not from sorrow.

From recognition.

"This," she whispered, "was the shape of what we lost."

"And the sound of what we’re finding."

Beside her, Jevan laid a hand against the bark of a Songtree.

It pulsed in time with the music, leaves glowing faintly with every change in tempo.

"We were always meant to build a world," he said softly, "that sings itself alive."

The child of the second seed—now no longer alone—stood in the center of an open ring of singers.

They held no instrument.

No title.

Only silence.

And when they opened their arms, the silence did not break—

It blossomed.

Every voice lifted, not louder, but truer.

And above them, the Atlas glowed anew.

Its threads pulsed not with light, but with tone.

Each a note.

Each a story.

And somewhere deep beneath the soil, in the hidden layers of the Garden’s dreaming roots, the seed of a third story stirred.

Not to lead.

Not to save.

To harmonize.

Beyond the Garden, the Song reached ruins.

Worlds once considered unsingable.

Places where silence had calcified into law.

And there—

A child tapped a stone rhythm.

A soldier exhaled a forgotten tune.

An elder hummed with no one to hear.

And yet—

The Song heard them.

It answered.

Softly.

Patiently.

And when the answer came, it was not from Garden voices.

It came from within those forgotten places.

A truth realized:

"The Song isn’t visiting."

"It originated here too."

And so, the void no longer remained untouched.

It became part of the chorus.

Not erased.

Included.

The Reader stood atop a hill of braided roots, listening.

They held no pen.

No blade.

Only a hand extended toward the sky.

And in it shimmered no power, only permission.

To keep singing.

To keep telling.

To keep becoming.

And all across the Garden—and the galaxies now blooming from its echo—the Song spread.

Not as decree.

As invitation.

To hum.

To share.

To begin again.

Not because it was time.

Because it was chosen.

At the very edge of existence, where ink once dried and stories fell still...

The Song reached the final page.

And instead of turning it,

It sang it open.

And a new line wrote itself:

"The story hums in every one of us."

"Sing what you are."

"And we will sing with you."

The Garden no longer expanded outward.

It expanded inward.

Each story no longer just added space—it added depth.

Not into the soil.

Into the selves who lived within it.

And through that deepening came something the world had long forgotten how to bear:

Harmony.

Not the absence of conflict.

But the ability to remain together through it.

In the western boughs, a disagreement sparked between two Refrains—one who had once been a destroyer of verses, the other a preserver of ancient rhythms.

Their voices clashed.

Not violently.

Honestly.

For three days, they argued.

And on the fourth—

They sang.

Together.

It wasn’t beautiful.

But it was true.

A shared melody born from dissonance, braided with tension, carried by respect.

And as it echoed through the branch-walks above, others joined in.

Adding their own sharp notes.

Their own harmonics.

Until the argument became a chord.

And the Garden bent, not in approval—but in accompaniment.

Jevan sat by a river made of old ink and remembered futures.

He no longer asked the Atlas where to go.

Instead, he listened to the thread beneath each question.

The thread in all of them.

He ran his fingers through the blackwater and saw memories from lives that had never been allowed to finish.

A woman who died on page seventeen.

A boy whose world collapsed before his name was even spoken.

A creature who had only been described in fear.

And all of them sang now.

Their voices, faint but clear, drifting into his chest like smoke.

"We were never gone."

"We were waiting."

"Not to be told."

"To be heard."

The child of the second seed—now known only as Echo—had begun to weave threads between places that had never spoken to each other.

Not bridges.

Chords.

They brought an unfinished prayer from a dying world and paired it with a melody hummed by an unborn star.

And it fit.

Not because they matched.

But because they belonged.

Echo didn’t need to speak.

Wherever they stepped, the air thickened with possibility.

And others followed.

Not as disciples.

As singers.

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