The single note Arhaan released —
fragile, trembling, human —
echoed through the ruins of Heaven like a spark in a dead world.
The Silence recoiled as if burned, its perfect white form distorting, rippling with fractures of shadow and static.
The Arbiter's puppet-like face twisted in horror.
Impossible.
A mortal note — defying the void itself.
Kael felt sound return to his ears like a gasp of life.
Selara choked on her first breath of noise.
The angels around them staggered as if waking from a nightmare.
The Silence entity raised its blank, featureless head.
The air bent.
The stars dimmed.
Then it struck.
---
THE VOID'S WRATH
The Silence moved without movement —
a pulse of annihilation, collapsing space toward its center.
Reality folded inward.
The throne hall became a tunnel of white emptiness.
Kael shouted, "ARHAAN, MOVE!"
Arhaan didn't move.
He couldn't.
He chose not to.
Instead, he stepped forward into the collapsing void — and the Song flared around him like a shield woven from dawn and dusk together.
The void slammed into him.
Everything went white.
Not light —
absence.
For a moment Arhaan felt himself dissolving, unmade, reduced to pure silence.
He felt the Arbiter's will pressing into him:
> "Erase. Surrender. Become nothing."
And from within the whiteness…
Arhaan whispered,
"No."
The Oathbreaker ignited.
---
THE SONG OF REBELLION
Chains burst from Arhaan's arms — not like before, but transformed:
each link glowing with musical sigils, runes shifting between crimson defiance and golden creation.
He swung the Oathbreaker downward.
A wave of melody exploded outward —
not one note, but thousands, harmonizing, clashing, rising.
The Song of Creation.
The Song of War.
The Song of Choice.
It struck the Silence with the force of a newborn universe.
The void-deity staggered backward.
Its perfect blank surface warped.
Lines split across its body like cracks in a porcelain mask.
From within those cracks, darkness — not void, but fear — leaked out.
Kael shouted over the thunder,
"He's HURTING IT! Silence can be broken!"
Selara cried out,
"He's doing more than hurting it — he's unmaking it!"
---
THE FINAL CHORUS
The Silence shrieked —
not sound, but an implosion that ripped apart everything around it.
Angels fell from the sky like broken stars.
The Citadel's last pillars dissolved.
Mountains of Heaven crumbled.
The entity lunged.
Its featureless white arm stretched into a blade of pure annihilation.
It stabbed at Arhaan's heart.
The blade collided with his chest—
and shattered like glass hitting stone.
The arbiter's eyes widened, flickering with terror behind the puppet-like shell.
> "WHAT ARE YOU?"
Arhaan's voice rose like thunder, like dawn, like every heartbeat that had ever existed.
"I am a mortal who chose his own song."
The Oathbreaker erupted in light.
Arhaan swung.
The blow split the Silence from crown to core.
The void inside screamed — breaking, collapsing, dissolving into fragments of dead law.
The Arbiter's vessel crumbled, turning to dust.
The Silence entity broke apart into a storm of fading white shards, each evaporating into harmless starlight.
And then—
It was over.
---
A NEW SOUND
For a moment, Heaven was quiet.
Not the crushing void of the Silence —
but a true quiet.
A peaceful quiet.
A quiet waiting to be filled.
Arhaan stood amidst the ruins, breathing hard, chains smoking, the Oathbreaker dimming.
Kael ran to him.
"Brother! Are you—"
Arhaan managed a weak smile.
"I'm still here."
Selara approached, tears in her eyes.
"The Silence… it's really gone."
"No," Arhaan said softly.
"Not gone. Changed."
He opened his hand.
A tiny fragment of the Silence floated above his palm —
not oppressive, not destructive.
Just… calm.
"It was never meant to crush," he whispered.
"It was meant to rest."
The fragment dissolved into gentle white dust.
Selara exhaled shakily.
"What happens now?"
Arhaan looked at the broken sky of Heaven —
the cracks of light, the drifting feathers, the new dawn rising from the ruins.
"We rebuild," he said.
"But this time… free."