The Song That Split the Sky

The world outside was silent—too silent for a city floating above a living ocean.
Ren’s fingers hovered over the recorder. The tiny device felt heavy in his palm, weighted with a storm that hadn’t yet ended. He hadn’t dared play the recording since he arrived, afraid of what it might hold. But the silence now—the emptiness of this strange, sterile room, and the weight of unanswered questions—was louder than fear.
He pressed play.
The storm crashed through the Harmony Quarters.
It wasn’t just a recording. It was a memory—living, breathing, pulsing in his ears. He heard the roar of the waves, the hiss of rain, the choked gasp of wind. And then… the melody.
His mother’s lullaby.
The ocean’s voice.
Only now it was clearer, more layered. The notes shimmered as if sung by a thousand versions of himself across time. It wove between echoes of thunder and lightning, threading through the storm like a lifeline.
Child of tides, born of song…
His breath caught. Something inside the room responded. The walls thrummed with harmonic vibrations. Light flickered. The floor shimmered as though underwater.
Sing the world where you belong…
Suddenly, the air cracked.
A high-pitched ringing split the room, and the ceiling—projected stars and all—fractured like glass. A streak of cobalt light burst from the recorder and struck the air, carving it open. A rift bloomed before him: a swirling tear of water and starlight.
Ren stumbled back, gasping. The lullaby continued on loop, its notes spiraling into the vortex.
Outside, alarms wailed. But it was already too late.
The rift pulsed once.
Then the world changed.

---
He fell through light.
Not like before—when the storm dragged him forward through time. This was different. It wasn’t time travel. It was… resonance. The music was guiding him.
Ren landed with a jolt. A rooftop. Familiar, but… older. Or newer. It didn’t matter.
Across from him stood Kai.
But not the Kai he’d just met.
This Kai was younger. Softer. Drenched in rain, barefoot, clutching a necklace shaped like a wave.
He looked up at Ren like he’d seen a ghost.
“You…” Kai whispered.
Ren’s knees buckled. “This can’t be happening.”
The rift still pulsed behind him, a doorway holding its breath.
Kai stepped forward. “You’re real.”
Ren nodded. “I… think I saved you. Once.”
Kai’s eyes widened. “You did. I almost drowned. But someone pulled me out. You… hummed that song.”
The sky thundered.
Ren turned, the rift beginning to collapse.
“Come with me,” he said.
But Kai shook his head. “I’m not ready. You weren’t meant to be here yet.”
And then he smiled.
“Next time, remember this.”
He pressed the necklace into Ren’s palm.
And the world dissolved again.

---
Ren gasped awake on the floor of the Harmony Quarters, the recorder smoking beside him. The rift was gone. The room was still. But in his hand…
The necklace.
Proof.
Footsteps approached. Kai.
Not the younger one. The current one. Sharp. Guarded. But his eyes locked on the necklace—and widened.
“I lost that when I was a child,” he whispered. “In the ocean.”
Ren looked up.
“It came back to me,” he said.
“No,” Kai murmured. “You came back to me.”
The silence between them broke—not with words—but music.
And the song that split the sky played again, soft and low, in both their hearts.