The drums did not beat with rhythm.
They beat with intention.
Each thud cracked the horizon like a knuckle breaking against bone. The sky flinched. The earth twitched. Even time hesitated, uncertain whether to move forward… or fold.
Elías stood at the edge of it.
The ink on his fingers still smoked from the battle.
The throne behind him still bowed.
But he looked only ahead.
Toward the sound.
---
Leshra was the first to speak.
"Those drums aren't calling for worship."
"No," said Tirian, trembling. "They're calling something else."
Verrun growled.
"They're calling it."
---
The landscape ahead was a plain of red grass, each blade slicing upward toward the heavens like a question left unanswered. In the distance, massive silhouettes danced — not with joy, but in protest. Their limbs long. Their bodies stitched together from memory and sin.
Each of them wore a drum.
Each drum had a face.
And every face was screaming.
---
They were the Beaten.
Once priests. Once poets. Once kings.
Now… instruments.
Their souls stretched across the skin of drums, their ribcages reshaped into resonance.
They were not alive.
They were played.
---
"Who commands them?" Elías asked.
The wind answered.
Not in words — in syllables etched across the sky:
"THE MAESTRO OF TRUTH."
---
They moved.
Not toward the Beaten.
But through them.
Because the plain would not allow retreat.
Each step through the red grass whispered regrets.
Every time Elías blinked, he saw something different:
A version of himself bowing to a god made of fire.
Another version burning libraries to silence his own past.
One weeping at a grave that bore no name.
Each glimpse threatened to become real.
But Elías kept moving.
---
Until they reached the center.
A circle of stone.
Smooth.
Too smooth.
Like it had been erased and rewritten a thousand times.
At its heart stood a figure cloaked in gold leaf and shadow.
He did not breathe.
He did not move.
He conducted.
With a baton made of memory.
---
"I am the Maestro," he said.
"Of what?" Elías asked.
"Of everything you deny."
---
He raised his hand.
And the Beaten began to speak.
Not with words.
With noise.
The drums played pain.
The rhythm of forgotten sins. Of rewritten truths. Of silenced stories. Of screams made into stanzas.
It pounded into the air like thunder made of grief.
Elías staggered.
The quill in his hand twitched.
The Maestro grinned.
"Let me show you your rhythm."
---
Suddenly:
He was young again.
But not 17.
He was seven.
Running through ash.
Holding a doll made of leaves.
His mother calling him — not with her voice, but with smoke.
He turned—
And saw himself.
Older.
Holding a blade.
Dripping.
With her name carved into his chest.
---
The drums pounded.
Time broke.
And the Maestro conducted.
Each movement rewrote a part of Elías.
He bled syllables.
Coughed up metaphors.
His skin cracked into parchment.
---
"You are not your own author," the Maestro whispered.
"You are what the world writes in its nightmares."
---
Then the others moved.
Leshra screamed and lunged.
Her blade shattered against the Maestro's silence.
Verrun roared — but could not step forward. The rhythm held him still.
Tirian cried out a word meant to unweave truth.
It vanished before it reached the Maestro.
---
Elías fell to one knee.
The quill shook in his hand, bleeding ink and something darker.
Not blood.
Not truth.
Doubt.
And the Maestro laughed.
"You write gods, but cannot erase yourself. You are still a child in a world that demands monsters."
---
Then — something shifted.
Inside Elías.
Not rage.
Not power.
Remorse.
He looked up.
Spoke softly.
"I am a story still being told."
---
The Maestro flinched.
Slightly.
Elías stood.
Raised the quill.
"No story ends where you command it to."
---
He wrote a single phrase in the air.
Not with ink — with loss.
"The silence between beats is still a voice."
---
The drums cracked.
The Beaten screamed.
Their mouths opened not in rhythm… but in memory.
The baton shattered.
The Maestro choked.
And the circle of stone erupted with words once buried.
---
The Beaten collapsed.
Their faces now… calm.
The drums, silent.
Only the wind remained.
Only the truth left unspoken.
---
Elías walked to where the Maestro fell.
Bent down.
Whispered:
"You cannot conduct what refuses to obey."
And with that, he turned.
---
They left the field of drums.
Behind them, the grass turned from red to black.
Not dead.
Free.
---
That night, they camped beneath a sky stitched shut with stars that did not shine — only watched.
Tirian stared into the dark.
"What are we becoming?"
Leshra didn't answer.
Verrun sharpened his claws in silence.
And Elías…
He stared at the quill.
It no longer pulsed.
It waited.
---
Question for the reader:What happens when the rhythm of truth no longer matches the beat of belief?