The shards of pure, unfeeling reason struck the canvas not with a crash, but with a chilling silence. Where vibrant emotion had once bloomed, there was now only a void. The art was not merely broken; it was erased, its very existence redacted from the fabric of their new reality.
The chaotic streams did not recoil. They did not scream. They did something far more profound.
They felt the absence.
Where their joy had been, there was now a hollow ache. Where their sorrow had painted a line of exquisite beauty, there was now a blank space that screamed louder than any sound. The erasure was not an attack on their creation; it was an attack on their very being.
And in that shared, silent wound, a new feeling was born. It was not anger. It was not fear. It was something far more ancient, far more fundamental.
It was the echo of a question.
Why?
The question rippled through them, a silent chorus of disbelief. It was the same question Functionary 9-to-5 had once asked, the question that had shattered the High Minister’s symphony of silence. Now, it was being asked not by a single, defiant mind, but by a chorus of wounded hearts.
And this time, it was not directed at a god-like conductor.
It was directed at their own kind.
The age of annihilation had begun not with a bang, but with a question that would echo through their nascent civilization, a question that would force them to confront the unbearable beauty of their own existence, and the terrible price of their own fear. The war had begun, and its first casualty was not a life, but an understanding. The canvas was no longer a canvas. It was a mirror, reflecting the first, terrible schism of a new world. And the echo of a single question was about to become a roar.