Prologue: What If The Storm Was A Song?

What if the storm was never outside?
What if the winds were only whispers―echoes of grief, tremors of guilt. A choir of memories Dence never asked to conduct?

There, in the hush between volumes, where Ere's final breath folded into silence, Dence stood alone. Not on a battlefield, but in a room without walls―a void lit only by his questions.

What if Ere never truly died?
What if sacrifice was just a symbol, a language of loss too heavy for words?  What if Sam's existence was just an imagination? An echo of a fear he hadn't faced? What if Akuni, the katana-bearing guardian, was only the sharp edge of his own longing for purpose?

He spoke into the silence. Not with shouts, but with songs cracked open by sorrow. Each note a fragment of truth. Each lyric stitched with an imagination he once believed.

He remembered powers ― katana, bridge pins, storms, and howling wolves. He remembered victory. But could not find the scars.

So what if none of it was real? What if the Mirror Realm was a reflection, not of another world, but of himself?

And what if Judith Mirano, the queen of shadows, was real―but her power thrived only because they believed in the nightmares she sold? What if Judith's monsters, her murder of crows, her machines and illusions, were powered not by evil―but by pain?

What if every chord Dence strummed was just a prayer dressed in metaphor? And what if the Voice of Tomorrow was not a show―but a question? A test of memory. Of imagination. Of truth. What if everything―the crows, the cubes, the storms, the scars―were all the language of healing spoken in the dialect of dreams?

What if the storm didn't pass... but paused?

Ere died.

That's the last thing he remember.
Or rather, that's the last thing he felt.

His last cry.
His red cloak.

He found himself in the space after sound. The mirror was gone. The rain had dried. Only silence stayed, like a wound that learned to hum.

Where was Sam? Where was Akuni? Where was Ptr. Isagani? Where was the song?

Or maybe the better question was―Where was Dence?

He is not in a wild battle now. He's in the void between volumes. A place where action becomes narration. Where he speak not to fight―but to remember.

There, in the quiet space after Ere's fall, Dence begin to listen differently. To his own heartbeat. To the pulse of the world. To the sound of light returning.

Lightfall.

They say dreams and hallucinations are siblings. That fantasy is just memory dressed in costume. But what if... what if those battles, those songs, those voices... were fragments of something truer?

This is not the end.
This is not the truth yet revealed.
This is the hush after the thunder.
The breath before the sunrise.
The opening of a door he did not know was ever closed.

And when it opens―let there be light.

Welcome to the next verse.
Welcome to Lightfall.