By: Beverly Ray Porter

In the beginning, before the dawn of suns or the shaping of stars, there was only Silence. Yet even silence was not empty—it awaited a Voice. 

And the Voice came. Not as thunder, but as a single, pure note, carried on the breath of the Creator. From that note, color bloomed into the void, and the void gave way to wonder.

The First Note became a chord, and the chord gave birth to the Song. The Song shaped realms unseen—worlds layered like harmonies, some of light, some of shadow, all vibrating with divine resonance. The celestial beings who awakened in that first harmony were called the Luminara, 

Keepers of the Chords. They sang creation into being, each realm a verse, each life a refrain.

But harmony is delicate, and into every song creeps the threat of dissonance. One of the Luminara, Soladrex, sought to claim the First Note for himself. He believed only one voice should command the Song. When he sang alone, the Song fractured, and from the fracture came Silence—not the sacred Silence before the Song, but a consuming, unweaving void.

The Luminara bound Soladrex beyond the Veil, sealing him in the forgotten realm. But his wound in the Song remained.

Only one born in the realm of mortals—untouched by the pride of the heavens—could sing the healing refrain 

Long from then, far after time began, the village of Aracelin lay tucked within a crescent of emerald hills, kissed by wind and whispering trees. Life there moved slowly, rhythmically—like the tide or an old waltz no one had quite forgotten. Children chased goats through flowered meadows. Elders spun stories around crackling hearths. Time didn’t hurry in Aracelin; it lingered like incense after prayer.

Sommer had always felt out of step with that rhythm.

She wasn’t strange in the way others might have called strange. She was polite, dutiful, quiet in class, and helpful in the garden. Her mother, Merial, often praised her gentle nature. Aldricher, Aldric, smiled with pride when she sang the ancient harvest hymns. But there was a silence in Sommer that no one else noticed—a stillness in her soul that was constantly listening for something more.

She didn’t know when the colors began.

They came gradually, like morning mist weaving between trees. At first, they danced at the corners of sound—ripples of pale blue when her mother hummed lullabies, or flashes of gold when the church bell rang. By age seven, Sommer realized no one else could see them. She learned to hide the truth, to smile when others asked why she sometimes stared so intently at silence. No one else saw the lavender halo that bloomed when the choir sang or the threads of silver lacing through a whispered prayer.

She never told anyone, not even her older brother, Taren, who would have believed her. He was the only one who sometimes looked at her like he knew she was dancing to a music he couldn’t quite hear.

One spring afternoon, when the fields were bursting with violets and wheatgrass, Sommer sat alone by the brook. She’d brought her sketchbook—an old, leather-bound journal gifted by her grandmother who said, “Every soul needs a window.”

The page before her was filled with color—not from paint, but from memory. She had drawn a swirl of radiant tones: soft cerulean, luminous green, and a single, bold line of crimson. Each was anchored by a single word beneath: Mercy. Hope. Fire.

They were sounds she’d heard in church the week before—words sung, yes, but more than that. They had arrived in her. Not just through her ears, but through some inner well, as if the music was an echo of something eternal.

She dipped her fingers into the stream and closed her eyes.

That’s when it happened.

The wind shifted. The trees stilled. A low tone filled the air—not from any instrument, but from the earth itself. A resonant, humming chord that made her chest ache and her spine rise with chills. Her eyes flew open, and the world before her had changed.

Light moved like water. The air shimmered with unseen threads, pulsing in rhythm to a melody she had never heard but somehow remembered. Birds stopped mid-flight. The brook glowed. Her fingers trembled as the tone deepened, then split into two, then five, like a celestial choir folding in on itself. Every note had a color, and every color called something inside her to wake.

Then—silence. Just for a second.

And in that silence, Sommer heard the voice.

Not words, not speech. Just a whisper made of pure being, like a tone that could shape mountains and mend hearts.

You were made for the Song.

Sommer gasped. The vision broke. The world returned to normal: birds chirped, the stream gurgled, and the wind resumed its lazy rustling.

But nothing in Sommer would ever be the same again.

That night, Sommer didn’t sleep.

She lay in bed, staring at the wooden beams above her, heart still humming from the sound she’d heard—or imagined. She didn’t know what to do with it. She couldn’t tell her parents; they would worry. Taren was away in the capital, studying. Her only confidant now was her own heart.

So, she did what she always did—she drew.

She sketched the chords, tried to match colors to notes, shades to emotions. She filled page after page, capturing things no one else could see. Her hands moved like they were remembering something, not inventing it.

The next morning, her mother found her asleep at her desk, ink on her cheek, the pages glowing with color under the sunrise.

Days passed. Then weeks.

The strange tones returned, always faint, always unexpected—when a dove flew overhead, when the rain tapped the windows like a drum, when someone wept in the village square. Each time, Sommer felt both pulled and filled, as though the music wasn’t outside of her but within. Like she was the hollow wood of a violin, and the Spirit of God was the bow.

She began to suspect there were others—others who heard or felt this divine resonance. Old Widow Maerla, who hummed lullabies that shimmered gold. The blind potter, Ansel, who shaped clay in perfect rhythm with unplayed melodies. The world was more than it seemed, she realized. It was singing. Always singing.

But it was not just song.

Sometimes, she caught darker threads—disharmonies that curled around harsh words or fear. Once, she passed the mayor arguing with a merchant, and the tone around them turned brittle, colorless. A void, like a torn page. She shivered.

She wasn’t just seeing beauty. She was seeing truth.

And truth, she was beginning to understand, was not always comforting.

Then came the day of the Festival of Flame—a celebration of renewal held every year as spring kissed the valley. Lanterns floated into the sky like prayers. Songs echoed from mountaintop to meadow. Everyone danced.

Everyone but Sommer.

She stood at the edge of the gathering, watching the flickering lanterns, listening to the songs. But this time, she heard something different—one note beneath them all, deep and sorrowful. It hummed beneath laughter and joy, like a weeping heart hidden behind a painted mask.

She closed her eyes.

And that’s when she saw it.

A door.

Not of wood or stone, but of pure sound—woven light, a gate of shifting melody and hue. It hovered behind the stage, just past the choir. No one else saw it. It pulsed with invitation.

And fear.

Sommer’s breath caught in her throat.

The door was waiting.

The door remained long after the festival’s music faded.

No one else saw it, of that Sommer was certain. While the villagers collected lanterns and shared honeycakes, she stood motionless at the edge of the square, her eyes fixed on the melody-formed threshold. It shimmered in pulses, like the breath of something sleeping—and dreaming deeply.

Then, like breath exhaled, it vanished.

But Sommer had seen it. Felt it. Heard it.

She walked home in silence, her feet barely touching the ground, as if the echo of that vision made the very world less solid. Her mother spoke to her, asking about the festival, but her words were far away—muted, dulled, wrapped in cotton. Sommer only nodded.

That night, sleep was distant. She sat on the windowsill in her nightgown, watching the moonlight drape the garden like silver silk. Her heart thrummed with the memory of the door’s song. It hadn’t been made of joy. No—it was sorrowful, sacred. Like a forgotten lament.

And beneath it all, she kept hearing it: a single, fractured note, just out of reach.

It didn’t belong.

It was dissonant.

The next day, Sommer wandered the village searching for music—real music. She needed to find the right song, the one that matched the chord inside her, the one that had whispered, You were made for the Song.

She tried the church, sitting under the stained-glass windows as the choirmaster rehearsed. The voices were beautiful, perfectly tuned. But the colors were wrong—bright, yes, but flat. The music was performance, not prayer. Her heart did not respond.

She tried the forest, listening to birdsong and brook-babble. Better. Nature still sang in colors true and wild. But even there, the strange note lingered. It hid beneath beauty like a thorn beneath petals.

She tried silence.

It was in the silence that she began to understand.

The note wasn’t just discordant—it was wounded.

Later that week, she visited the weaver’s cottage—an older woman named Mora, known for weaving cloths that shimmered like captured sunsets. Mora was said to be odd but gifted. Some said she spoke to angels. Others said she was merely mad.

Sommer knocked gently.

“Come in, child,” came the voice, already knowing.

The air inside was heavy with lavender and old incense. Threads of every color hung from the ceiling, dancing in unseen breezes. And there, in the loom, sat Mora, her hands still, her eyes bright.

“You’ve seen the Door.”

Sommer’s breath caught.

Mora smiled gently, not unkindly. “You’re not the first, dear. But you are the first in a long, long time.”

Sommer stepped forward slowly. “What is it?”

“The Veil,” Mora said. “The threshold between this world and the next. Between hearing and hearing. It’s not often visible. But those with the Sight—those attuned to the Song—they sometimes glimpse it.”

“Is it… dangerous?”

“Oh yes,” Mora whispered. “But not in the way you fear. It’s dangerous because it calls the soul. And souls that follow it are rarely ever the same.”

She turned toward Sommer fully. “Has the note begun?”

Sommer nodded. “It doesn’t belong.”

“It used to,” Mora said sadly. “Long ago. Before the Fracture.”

Sommer left the cottage with more questions than answers.

The Fracture.

The word haunted her thoughts. Something had broken. Something deep. And the note she heard was a wound in the music of the world.

The days that followed were a blur of tension. Her gift began to change. The colors she saw grew more vivid—but more turbulent. Where before a child’s laughter had painted rainbows, now it carried streaks of sharp silver. Prayers were no longer steady blue; they were ragged, flickering. Something was interfering with the melody of life.

One evening, Sommer walked through the meadow and paused near the shrine of St. Elien. It was a small stone arch covered in ivy and offerings—candles, flowers, tokens of thanks. She knelt there, unsure of what she was asking for.

Then she heard it again.

That same tone.

But this time, it wasn’t hiding. It came like a wind through her bones—disharmonious, sharp, and cold. It curled around the shrine like smoke, then twisted into shadow.

Sommer gasped.

Before her, the air itself darkened—just slightly, like a bruised memory. A form began to take shape—not physical, but present. A figure made of crackling silence and broken chords. A distortion in reality.

And with it came a whisper, low and grinding:

Leave the Song. You do not belong to it.

Sommer stood frozen, the breath knocked from her chest.

Then—from within—she began to sing.

Not a melody she knew, but one that rose from her very soul: a soft, trembling tune of light. It flowed from her mouth like silver flame, unformed yet pure. The dissonant figure recoiled, hissing like steam on fire. And then it vanished, ripped from existence by the harmony she released.

Sommer collapsed to her knees, trembling.

She had sung with the light.

And it had fought back.

She returned home shaken. Her parents asked if she’d been out too long, but she brushed them off. She needed solitude. Answers. Stillness.

That night, she dreamed.

In the dream, she stood in a great hall of stained glass and vibrating air. Melodies swirled like galaxies overhead. A figure approached—robed in radiant white, crowned in shadow and flame. Its voice sang and spoke at once:

Sommer of Aracelin, Bearer of Hidden Sight, Keeper of the Living Chord… the Veil is thinning. The Song must be remembered. The Wound must be healed.

Sommer’s heart pounded. “But I’m only a girl.”

Every great symphony begins with a single trembling note.

Then she awoke.

Her room was filled with quiet.

But inside her, something eternal had begun to rise.

The next morning, Sommer awoke with the remnants of the dream still echoing in her chest—like a bell whose final chime lingered in the air, just out of hearing. Her soul felt stretched, pulled taut between two realities.

She couldn’t ignore it any longer.

That evening, as twilight cast its indigo hush across the village, Sommer returned to the meadow shrine. The air was still, expectant. She knelt, whispered a prayer not in words but in yearning.

Then she sang.

It wasn’t a melody she’d learned; it was the tone she had dreamed—a trembling note that felt like the moment just before dawn. As the song escaped her lips, the world around her blurred. The sky dimmed unnaturally, like dusk folding into itself.

And then—the veil parted.

Where the shrine had been, now stood an archway of light threaded with song, woven like golden vines pulsing with rhythm. It beckoned.

Sommer stepped through.

The world beyond the veil was not made of matter, but of meaning.

It was a realm where sound painted the skies, where mountains hummed like cellos and rivers whispered harmonies. The ground beneath her feet shifted with emotion—sometimes solid, sometimes fluid, depending on her thoughts.

She had entered the Songworld.

Far ahead stood a spire of crystal, its top crowned with a radiant, ever-turning sphere. As she approached, a figure emerged from its base—tall, cloaked in robes that shifted colors with each note it emitted. Its face was hidden by a hood of woven light.

“I am the Gatekeeper,” it said in a voice that sounded like the rustle of parchment and the rise of a hymn.

Sommer felt small, but not afraid.

“Why have you brought me here?” she asked.

“You brought yourself, child. No one stumbles into the Songworld. Only those who are called—and who respond.”

“I don’t understand what I’m meant to do.”

The Gatekeeper stepped closer. “The world has forgotten the First Song. The Fracture silenced much of it, leaving only echoes behind. But the Song still lives in a few. Those who can see the colors behind music… those who can hear the heart behind the sound.”

Sommer felt her breath catch.

“You are a Keeper,” the Gatekeeper continued. “One who bridges the seen and unseen. And the note you hear—the dissonant one—is not just broken. It is trapped. You must free it.”

“Free it? How?”

The Gatekeeper raised one glowing hand, revealing a small orb of light hovering above its palm. Inside, threads of melody coiled and twisted—but one thread was jagged, dark, writhing.

“This note belongs to the Chorus of Creation. But it was corrupted during the Fracture. Twisted by pain, imprisoned by silence.”

Sommer stared at the orb. “It’s… alive?”

“All music is. The Song is not sound. It is spirit.”

She reached out instinctively, but the orb pulled away.

“To free it,” said the Gatekeeper, “you must journey to the Silent Place. Face the Dissonance. And reclaim the note with your song.”

Sommer found herself walking again, this time across landscapes that defied sense. She crossed fields that sang in four-part harmony, climbed mountains that echoed with forgotten prayers, and passed forests where every leaf shimmered with a different chord.

Along the way, she met others.

There was a boy named Thalen, whose voice could mend broken things.

An old woman, Sereth, who heard lies as sour notes.

And a child named Arli, mute—but when she danced, stars responded.

Each of them was a Keeper of some kind, bearing a fragment of the Song within them. And all of them, in time, heard the dissonant note.

It wasn’t isolated.

It was spreading.

One night, as they camped under a sky that pulsed with aurora-like sonatas, the group was attacked—not by beasts, but by Silencers. Shadows in human form, cloaked in nothingness, who sought to mute the song inside each Keeper.

Sommer was nearly struck—until she unleashed her light.

Her voice, woven with tones of faith, exploded in a harmony that shattered the silence. The Silencers recoiled and evaporated like mist under sunlight. But not before whispering:

“She cannot hold the Song. It will break her.”

Sommer shook as the echoes faded. She didn’t know if the whisper was threat or prophecy.

At last, they reached the Silent Place.

It was a barren expanse—ash-gray and empty. No song, no color. Just silence so thick it weighed on their chests like stone.

At its center stood a twisted throne of obsidian, pulsing with that same dissonant note.

And seated on the throne…

Was a man.

His eyes were closed, his body still. But around him circled shadowy forms—remnants of Silencers, bound to his presence. And from his chest, tethered by dark cords, sang the note.

It was mournful. Desperate. Begging.

Sommer stepped forward alone.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The man opened his eyes—and they were colorless.

“I was once like you,” he rasped. “A Keeper. But I wanted more. I tried to shape the Song, not serve it. In doing so… I fractured the note. Bound it to me. Now I cannot release it.”

Sommer’s heart broke. “Then let me help.”

“You will fail,” he said bitterly. “And in doing so, you’ll doom your voice. The Dissonance will claim you, as it did me.”

She shook her head. “No. Because I don’t sing alone.”

Behind her, the other Keepers raised their hands, their voices joining hers. A simple melody—pure and unadorned. No complexity, only unity.

Sommer stepped into the silence and began her song.

It was a song of forgiveness.

Of lost things found.

Of wounds acknowledged and healed.

Of light breaking through brokenness.

As she sang, the shadows hissed and cracked. The cords around the man’s chest unraveled. The note—still jagged—rose from him like a freed spirit. It hovered before her, flickering between color and darkness.

She reached out.

The note flared—and entered her chest.

Sommer cried out as power surged through her. She saw visions—of the Song at creation, of the Fracture, of a war between voices of light and silence. And then, she saw the restoration—the way each Keeper played a part.

The note settled.

And changed.

No longer dissonant.

Just… different.

Unique.

Redeemed.

The Song settled into Sommer like the hush after a storm—quiet, but charged with newness. The note, once dissonant, now resonated within her as a warm pulse of light, cycling through hues she’d never known—opal, starlight silver, and an impossible blue that tasted like mercy.

She fell to her knees in the Silent Place, weeping—not in pain, but release. Around her, the barren land trembled. Cracks split the ashen ground, and from the fissures rose light and color, shy and soft like dawn’s first blush.

The man on the throne was gone.

Not vanished—freed.

Only his cloak remained, fluttering like a flag over an empty chair.

Sommer rose. She turned to the other Keepers, who stood awestruck, hands pressed over their hearts. Something in the Song had changed them, too. The melody inside each of them now wove with Sommer’s—distinct strands of the same tapestry.

The Gatekeeper appeared again, emerging from light as if walking from mist.

“You have done what even angels cannot,” it said, its voice softer now. “You did not just sing the note—you loved it. And in doing so, you mended part of the Song Itself.”

Sommer didn’t feel triumphant. She felt humbled. “I’m not worthy.”

“No one is,” the Gatekeeper replied. “That is what makes the Song beautiful. It chooses the humble, the broken, the small. And makes them holy.”

The world around them began to ripple, fading like the final page of a dream. The Songworld was sending them back.

But not empty-handed.

Each Keeper received a gift.

Thalen’s voice could now calm storms.

Sereth’s ears could unmask deception in the heart.

Little Arli—still silent—could now summon visions with her dance, revealing truth without words.

And Sommer?

She received the living note.

It was now a part of her. A harmony between what once was broken and what now was whole.

Sommer awoke at the shrine, dew on her lashes and morning sun washing the stones in gold. But something had changed. The world felt in tune. Grass shimmered faintly with sound. Trees hummed with joy. The silence between birdsong carried presence.

She had returned…

… but never left.

The Song was still within her.

When she returned to her village, people stared. Not in fear—but reverence. Something in her eyes had changed. A stillness. A shine.

She sang in the square.

And the air shimmered.

Children giggled and pointed at invisible butterflies of color. Old men wept without knowing why. And the skeptical priest, Father Marlowe, fell to his knees and whispered, “It’s real. I had forgotten…”

Sommer didn’t become famous.

She didn’t write scrolls or teach in temples.

Instead, she walked the roads.

From village to city, from quiet monastery to busy marketplace. Wherever dissonance lingered, she sang. Not always aloud—sometimes with a look, a presence, a held hand. Her music took many forms: a lullaby for a grieving mother, a whistle for a shy child, a silent hum for the lonely.

And wherever she went, color bloomed.

Not the colors of paint or pigment—but the radiant tones of the Song: faith, healing, joy, and holy grief.

One day, in a city where the buildings towered and the music had turned metallic and cold, she felt the pull again.

A new note.

Different from the last.

But broken, too.

Sommer smiled.

There would always be new songs to sing. New wounds to mend. New beauty to call forth from the silence.

She knelt, closed her eyes…

And began again.

Epilogue: The Listener

Centuries later, in a forgotten library beneath a chapel long swallowed by forest, a young girl discovered an ancient scroll bound in crystal thread.

On its surface, a faded sigil: a treble clef woven into a crown of thorns and stars.

She touched it, and the scroll opened—not with words, but with music.

And as she listened, the air around her shimmered.

A single note rang out.

Dissonant.

Calling.

Waiting.

And in her heart, a light stirred—soft and unfamiliar.

The Song had chosen again.