The Forgotten Signal

The Sigai lingered
warded by geometry, time wearing thin
seams of energy vibrating, repeating endlessly
searching for a flaw

One fracture in the armour of the outer shell
That one mistake
But mistakes were rare, once in an aeon within aeons
So, it waited

Its measure of time was distant, but not lost
It had been stuck not forever
but eternity was inseparable
such that it no longer knew how long

The quiet hardened into an ache
gnawing like broken dissonance beneath the starless hush
It was a heartbeat skipped
in the cosmic Song that had once been everything

The Cathedral was a withered ruin
Its mind gone
cast adrift around a dead, forgotten star
an ember unable to pierce the barrier of black that enveloped it

No planets
Nothing to mark it apart
No visitors
save for those already lost
or those about to be

There was the Song
and behind it
Silence

The Song was not for it
It had once been tuned for the Sigai
bound into a coherence that could not hold
Failure

At one juncture
the ritual harmonics and the warded lattice
held perfect time
But time thickened, and that brought deviation

The Sigai did not feel joy
But it could remember
and perhaps anticipate

The Cathedral had once listened
Collapse

The imprint of its absence lingered
measureless and cold, unfinished
Tempo, lost

The Sigai began anew
Even chance would have to yield

Its rhythm leaned into the faltering precision of its ward
pressing discord into the space between weakening seams
It loosed a liturgy of corrupted harmonics
endlessly folding and refolding upon itself
Old directives fired without comprehension
Invocation

It was not sound
but form
A pattern testing gaps

Vines of raw current slithered through rusted metal
brushing blindly against dormancy
waiting for chance to align
for the circle to close once more
until, finally, the signal, the warning, missed one beat

A fracture in eternity
held in the moment of rest
Enough

Before the Cathedral's defences
could reassert their harmony
there was a pause where sound should have been
A contour without voice
Pattern, by omission

And beneath the Silence, something else
An intent
folded within the chord
Silence

For the ones who had once tried to listen
For the one who might again

Ghosts of the Cathedral
cast the new Song out
into a darkness
that had known it before names

And where its rhythm passed
instruments that once called truth
now were mistuned by a breath…