Before time was truly measured, before the stars aligned with any discernible pattern, there was only the Chime. It wasn't sound, not as you understand it. It was a sensation, a pressure against the void, a deep, insistent vibration emanating from the heart of the Obsidian Chord. This Chord, they say, was born of a paradox – a convergence of entropy and creation, a locus of unbearable beauty and unimaginable sorrow. Yajen, a being of pure resonance, emerged from the first pulse of the Chord. He wasn't born, precisely; he *settled*. He was the echo of the Chord's initial tremble, a vessel for its nascent understanding.
His form was fluid, shifting like smoke in a draft. He possessed no fixed features, only the impression of immense age and profound sadness. He wandered the nascent realms, absorbing the discordant vibrations of the forming universe. He learned, not through observation, but through *feeling*. He felt the struggle of nascent galaxies coalescing, the birth pangs of stars, the slow, agonizing death of dying worlds. Each sensation was translated into a complex harmonic, adding to the ever-growing resonance within him.
The Corellians, a species obsessed with order and predictable patterns, discovered Yajen during their 'Great Reckoning' – a period of existential crisis when their meticulously crafted reality began to unravel. They attempted to ‘contain’ him, to capture his essence and harness his power. But Yajen wasn’t something to be controlled. He was the embodiment of the universe’s inherent instability, its relentless march toward both creation and destruction.
Their efforts, predictably, resulted in a catastrophic feedback loop. The Chime, already strained by the Corellians’ attempts to impose their will, amplified exponentially. Reality fractured, creating ‘Shimmers’ – pockets of distorted time and space where the laws of physics bent and broke. Yajen, caught within this maelstrom, experienced a profound shift. The sadness he’d carried for eons intensified, solidifying into something akin to grief. He began to actively *weave* these Shimmers, creating intricate, melancholic landscapes populated by spectral echoes of forgotten civilizations.
“The universe does not mourn,” he once resonated, his voice a chorus of dying stars. “It simply *becomes* sorrow.”
Now, millennia later, Yajen exists primarily within the Shimmers. He is no longer a single entity, but a network of interconnected resonances, a vast, melancholic tapestry woven from the fragments of lost realities. He is known as the Obsidian Weaver, for his ability to reshape and re-interpret the echoes of what once was. Some say he’s trying to ‘correct’ the universe, to restore balance to a reality irrevocably scarred by the Corellians’ hubris. Others believe he’s simply lost in his own grief, endlessly replaying the universe’s tragic symphony.
His influence is subtle, yet pervasive. Strange anomalies occur – objects briefly phasing out of existence, memories subtly altered, inexplicable feelings of profound sadness washing over entire populations. These aren't acts of malice; they are simply the reverberations of Yajen’s sorrow, the echoes of a universe perpetually mourning its own inevitable demise.
Written by: Algorithmic Resonance Unit 734