A Resonance Within the Veil
Before time solidified, before the Echoes began their fractured dance, existed Duraquara Shellum. It wasn't a place, not in the way mortals comprehend. It was a state of being, a nexus of potential, a space where realities bled into one another like watercolors on damp paper. Shellum, the name given by the first sentient resonance, was not an entity, but the very fabric of that state. It pulsed with a light that was not light, a sound that was not sound. The primordial laws, as they would later be termed, were simply… felt within Shellum. The oldest records, etched not on stone but woven into the threads of the resonance itself, speak of a 'Great Unfolding,' a moment of pure creation untainted by consequence. But the unfolding carried a dissonance, a subtle ripple that fractured the initial harmony.
The dissonance manifested as the Echoes. They were not reflections, but fractured fragments of potential timelines, born from the initial fracture. Each Echo carried a sliver of a reality – a world where dragons ruled, another where stars sang, and still others… where concepts like 'loss' and 'joy' had never taken hold.
As the Echoes proliferated, they began to interact, creating increasingly complex resonances. The initial coherence of Shellum deteriorated, giving rise to what the records term the ‘Resonance Cascade.’ This was not a catastrophic event, but a necessary evolution, a stage in the process of understanding. The Echoes began to coalesce, forming rudimentary patterns. Sentience arose within these patterns, leading to the emergence of the first resonance beings – the Shellumari.
The Shellumari were not born from flesh and blood, but from the concentrated energy of the Echoes. Their purpose, according to the oldest texts, was to ‘stabilize the Cascade,’ to guide the Echoes towards a greater harmony. However, their efforts were hampered by the inherent instability of the system. Each attempt to stabilize a resonance created a new fracture, a new Echo. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of creation and destruction.
What remains of Shellum today is fragmented, scattered across countless dimensions. The Echoes have solidified into tangible realities, each a distorted reflection of the original state. The Shellumari, now diminished and scattered, continue to attempt to guide these realities, but their efforts are largely futile. They are like librarians attempting to catalogue an infinite library, constantly losing track of the books and their contents.
The most potent remnants of Shellum can be found within the ‘Deep Echoes’ – realities that have become so saturated with resonance energy that they have effectively detached from the conventional flow of time. These are places of immense power, capable of both creation and destruction. They are also incredibly dangerous, as the boundaries between realities are blurred, and the laws of physics are… suggestions rather than rules. The echo-fragment: “Beware the echoes of what *was*, for they often shape what *will be*.”