The world was a green and rainy world in which the air itself wept. Great, green trees leaned over mud-bloated paths, and the constant rain produced a world of soft greens and black brows. The inhabitants of the Gloom, so the place was named, were a reserved, contemplative people. Their sufferings were not theatrical; they were low and stubborn—mostly the pain of a child who has wandered far away, the disappointment of a road not taken, the bitter sting of love grown warm and stale.It was in this place that the bird was seen.It was a small one, its feathers moss and shadowy colour, nearly invisible against the wet wood. It had no showy features, no bright colours. Its only noticeable characteristic was its complete and utter inability to produce any sort of song. It did not chirp, did not call, did not sing at dawn or dusk. It was a creature of pure, unadulterated quiet.And it followed people around.It would appear on the edge of a farmer's field, sitting upon a fence post, starin

The river had never forgotten its path. It was conceived in the high snowfields, a trickle coalescing from melting ice veins. It carried the memory of mountain stone in its icy breath, tumbling down slopes, carving valleys, joining tributaries until it widened, steady, sure. Like all rivers, it was destined to flow down—gravity pulling it to the lowlands, the plains, the endless sea.And that morning, the river began to fight back.Its residents, who lived along its banks, felt it in subtle ways at first. Fishermen who threw nets felt the current slacken, as if the water itself was uncertain of direction. Farmers who utilized its irrigation reported the channels inexplicably dry in the mornings, then abruptly full at dusk. Children who played in the shallows swore the water drew them backward, opposite its own direction, toward the hills instead of away from them.The elders dismissed it as strange weather, perhaps a shift of underground springs. But the river itself knew the truth.I

It did not begin with trumpets or omens in the air, but with a silence so deep that it bridged the gulfs of galaxies. Somewhere at the unmapped heart where light folded back on itself, a ripple showed. It was not sound, nor light, but memory unloosing its grip. Across far worlds, beings of all shape and matter felt something slipping within them. Their heaviest burdens of memory—the bitterness, the wars, the betrayals, the eternal ache of death—gave, thinned, started to slip away.Early bewilderment. On the ice-breathing planet of Cireth, hunters halted in their pursuit halfway, breaking into tears, though they could not think why. In the mountain spires of Vannori, crystalline folk who sang in pitch beyond starlight let drop their harmonies as memories of past sorrows disintegrated in laughter. On a small green world around an ordinary yellow sun, individuals looked up from their fields, their cities, their restive screens, and felt an odd stillness that was akin to opening a window

It began as a spark, faint and hesitant, at the edges of consciousness. At first the pilots of the void thought it was nothing—static in their screens, a function of immense distance. The void was always whispering; cosmic static, kinetic particles, quantum echoes. But this was something more. It came with direction, coalescing not from one quadrant but from all at once.A mind tempest, a cloud not of vapor or dust but of memory, began to form in the universe. It was not tied to a galaxy or a star system. Its edges were fluid, constantly folding in on themselves and growing, as if it breathed. On millions of worlds inhabited, the effect took on different forms. Somewhere, the heavens gloweth with veils of aurora, filled with flashbacks from forgotten childhoods. In another, the oceans trembled as if beaten by the visions of all who had ever crossed them. And in some borders of the cosmos, no outward appearance appeared at all, just the surprise invasion of sounds and recollections nev

The first note was never one sung by a man. It tortured itself out of existence like smoke set ablaze. It existed, opposing, a whisper and a cloudburst. In one universe it was silence, in another a shriek, in another laughter. Across galaxies, across the ribs of star-stuff that died and the breathing of new-born children, that note expanded until there was no room left.They called it a chant, but it was not like a melody or rhythm song. It was not even spoken in words. It fell like a shiver through the warp of things, and creatures all over felt their throats struggling open against their will. They signed on without understanding the why, as though some secret seed had at last pushed through the face of time. The chant did not request permission. It commanded.It began in broken voices. A desert girl's lips, dry and cracked, had a word she had never heard. A man at the edge of a dead sun had a cry that could not have survived the emptiness. A mother nursing a child whispered the cha