CHAPTER 10, PART 4 — "The Pulse of Ruin"
The silence screamed.
It wasn't a sound.
It was the absence of one — the violent kind that tears the breath from lungs and replaces it with dread. The chamber shook as cracks spidered across the walls of glass, each one dimming another of the Bound Names.
Serah stumbled back, clutching her staff. "They're dying—Nakala, the rhythms—!"
> "Stay with me," Nakala ordered, her voice trembling with restrained fury. "Histinak is still alive. Listen—beneath it all."
She closed her eyes, feeling the air's pulse falter. The world's rhythm was suffocating under a veil of silence. Each breath she took felt heavier, slower, as if something was pressing down on time itself.
Deep inside her, Esh'ra stirred.
The goddess's pulse, once faint and half-forgotten, began to rise in her chest.
A golden warmth bled through her veins — not gentle, but ancient and proud.
> "You're awakening," Serah said softly.
Nakala opened her eyes. "No," she whispered. "She is."
The chamber's light fractured into violent rhythm. Lines of sound bent around Nakala's form, coiling like serpents of pure resonance. The figure of bone shrieked silently, its body convulsing under the pressure of her presence.
And then it shattered — not into dust, but into waves of sound that struck the chamber walls and reverberated through Zerune. The city trembled above them. Streets cracked, towers groaned, and the sky itself began to flicker with erratic pulses of light.
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For the first time in centuries, the world remembered what it was to hear Esh'ra's voice.
Her rhythm bled through Nakala's body, every heartbeat echoing like a drum of the gods. Yet, even as power surged through her, Nakala felt her mortal frame splintering under its weight.
> You were never meant to carry me, a voice murmured inside her — gentle, sorrowful, divine.
But you are all that remains of me.
Nakala gritted her teeth. "Then help me end this."
> Not end… remind, the goddess replied. Silence does not hate rhythm, child. It only longs to return to the moment before sound began.
The revelation struck like lightning. Silence wasn't a void. It was memory undone.
Serah, watching the transformation, fell to one knee. "Nakala, what are you doing?"
> "I'm giving it what it wants," Nakala said, her eyes glowing gold. "A memory to return to."
She raised her hand — and from her palm, the rhythm of Zerune began to weave itself anew. Every Bound Name in the chamber pulsed once more, their songs briefly revived. The silence recoiled, folding in on itself, writhing like a wounded serpent.
But from that chaos, a deeper, slower pulse emerged — older than Esh'ra's, older than the world itself.
It was the N'gai.
Its voice spoke not through sound, but through the stopping of sound:
> You remember too much.
Every torch, every breath, every rhythm died in that instant. The world went cold and still — except for Nakala's single heartbeat, echoing in the void.
She was the last rhythm.
And she stood defiant.
> "Then I'll remember enough for all of them."
The words rippled through the dark, igniting sparks across the void. One by one, the Bound Names reignited like constellations reborn.
Serah rose beside her, tears streaking down her face as Histinak's pulse returned to her chest. "You did it."
Nakala's gaze remained fixed on the rift ahead — where the N'gai's form now took shape, vast and monstrous, a being built from collapsing memory.
> "No," Nakala said quietly. "This was only its breath. The battle hasn't even begun."
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End of Chapter 10, Part 4 — "The Pulse of Ruin."