I never thought silence could weigh so heavily. Yet that day, as I stood among the gathering, the air itself seemed to bow beneath the tension.
We were in no temple, no council chamber—only a vast plain beneath a fractured sky. The horizon stretched like a wound, light bleeding through the cracks, and the figures around me waited in hushed anticipation.
Then Wind stepped forward.
Her presence was not overwhelming in the way of thunder or fire, but in the subtle certainty of a breeze that knows no obstacle. Her voice, when it came, was neither loud nor rushed, but it carried through the plain as if the world itself bent to listen.
A Promise of Liberation
“Brothers, sisters, custodians of fading cycles,” Wind said, her hands lifted as though holding the invisible weight of the cosmos. “You feel it, as I do—the suffocation of a reality trapped in endless repetition. Generations forgotten. Wars rekindled. Pain returned again and again. This is not life. This is a cage.”
The crowd stirred, and I felt it too: that gnawing suspicion that perhaps she was right. Hadn’t I sensed the strange loops of memory, the days that folded over themselves like pages reread too many times?
“But we,” Wind continued, “we carry the seed of a new will. A breath that no Custodian, no Singularity, no ancient order can bind. We are not born to be keepers of rusting chains. We are born to break them.”
Her words fell like rain upon parched soil, and I watched faces around me lift with sudden hope.
The Vision She Painted
Wind spoke of a reality without war, where memory itself would no longer trap us in scars of violence and grief. She spoke of a dawn where children would inherit no burdens, where laughter would not be shadowed by fear.
A utopia.
I almost wanted to believe her. The images she painted shimmered in my mind, too bright, too clean. Yet even as I stood there, a knot tightened in my chest. I knew enough of wounds to wonder: if you erase the scar, do you also erase the one who bore it?
Wind’s voice rose, almost tender: “To breathe again, the universe must be freed. To be free, the past must be released. The Window of Origin awaits. Through it, we will cast off the weight of cycles. Through it, we will be reborn.”
My Unease
The plain erupted in murmurs of approval, like waves rushing toward shore. Many bowed their heads, already surrendering to her promise.
But I stood unmoved, listening, and every word seemed both luminous and hollow.
Yes, the loops of reality haunted me. Yes, I longed for freedom. But the thought of resetting—of discarding memories by choice—made my stomach turn. Could liberation be born from erasure? Could freedom be built upon the silence of those who no longer remember who they were?
I looked at Wind. She stood radiant in her certainty, her eyes shining as though she already glimpsed the new reality she desired. For the first time, I wondered: was she speaking for us—or for something older, something hidden beneath her words?
The crowd chanted softly, “New will… new will…”
I whispered to myself, unheard: Or is it only another chain?
