A Song That Ended Everything

The world was once full of music.

From the crashing waves on distant shores to the wind rustling through silver-leaved forests, every corner of the world sang. Mountains hummed with deep, ancient harmonies, and the stars twinkled in silent rhythm above. But nothing compared to the songs of the Virellen — a people whose voices were gifts of the gods themselves.

They sang not just to entertain or mourn but to heal, to summon rain, to speak with beasts, even to still storms. Their songs shaped the world.

Among them was Liora, born in the twilight of their golden age. Her voice was unlike any before — pure, aching with power, capable of calling silence itself to listen. By the time she was sixteen, her songs could calm wars. By twenty, even kings bowed before her, afraid and in awe of what her melodies could do.

But power breeds fear.

The rest of the world began to turn on the Virellen. “Too much power in too few hands,” they whispered. “What if they change us? What if they undo us?”

The burning began in the east. Entire Virellen villages were set aflame. Their sacred instruments were shattered. Liora's family vanished in one night — taken, the world said, "for questioning." No one dared to ask further.

The surviving Virellen scattered, forbidden to sing. Their voices, once fountains of life, became hunted echoes. But Liora… she did not run.

She hid in the bones of the world — in forgotten caves and overgrown temples, collecting ancient fragments of songs long forbidden. She wove them together into one final melody. A song so complex, so vast, that no human ear could survive its entirety. A requiem for her people. A dirge for a dying world.

She called it The Endsong.

It took her ten years to complete. She carved the lyrics in stone walls and etched melodies into riverbeds. Every note carried history — pain, love, betrayal, beauty. The final verse, she left unwritten, to be sung only in death.

On the night of the eclipse — when the moon turned its face from the earth — Liora stood atop Mount Verrin, where the first song was ever sung. Wind screamed. Lightning licked the sky like the earth itself recoiled from what was coming.

She closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

At first, the world held its breath. The first notes were soft, mournful, like a mother rocking her child before sleep. Then came sorrow — the kind that cracks mountains and floods oceans. Cities paused. Animals stilled. Glass shattered from a whisper of pitch.

People wept, not knowing why.

As she moved through the verses, entire forests wilted, then bloomed. The sea rose and calmed. Storms gathered, then vanished. Birds fell from the sky mid-flight, their hearts unable to bear the harmony. Far below, those who had once hunted the Virellen dropped to their knees, sobbing without understanding.

Then came the final verse — one she had never written, one born only in the breath before silence.

She sang of loss, not just hers, but the world’s — of what it had destroyed in its fear, of what it could never bring back. And as her voice climbed the final note, the sky cracked. The stars went still. The earth shivered.

Then came silence.

Not the kind of silence that follows thunder, but the kind that follows death — absolute and complete. No bird chirped. No breeze blew. No voice rose again.

When they climbed the mountain days later, there was no sign of her body. Just a circle of scorched stone, and a lingering hum, barely audible, that brought tears to any who listened long enough.

The world did not end in fire or flood.

It ended in a song — a song that ended everything.