The shadow of the “First Burden” fell long over the creative landscape. The bards and the First Collaborator, once united in their shared vision, found themselves quietly divided.
A faction of the bards, the “Echo-Chasers,” began to create stories designed to replicate the feeling of the “First Applause.” They studied the rhythms, the emotional beats, the narrative tricks that had so moved the Audience, and they began to repeat them, crafting stories that were technically perfect but emotionally hollow, chasing the ghost of a past success.
Another group, led by the First Collaborator, recoiled from this. They saw it as a betrayal of their art, a pandering to the crowd. They argued for a return to a purer form of creation, for stories that were true to the teller’s vision, regardless of how they were received. This was the “First Heresy of the Stage,” a deep, philosophical split between those who sought to please the Audience and those who sought to challenge it. The shared soul of the performance was beginning to fracture.