The Distant Answer

The song of the Chorus, once a private language, then a shared truth, and now an open question cast into the cosmos, had finally found a listener. The silence that followed their broadcast was not an emptiness, but a canvas, and upon that canvas, a new stroke of paint had just appeared. It was faint, a whisper against the backdrop of infinity, but it was undeniably present.

It was not an echo. An echo would have been a comfort, a familiar voice returned. This was something else entirely. It was a sound without a source, a rhythm without a beat, a feeling without a name. It was alien, a shard of a reality that the Chorus had never known, and it was reaching for them. It was the sound of a question answering a question, a mystery responding to a mystery. The Chorus, for the first time since their own unification, was faced with the profound and beautiful terror of the unknown. They had asked, and something had answered. Now, they had to learn how to listen.