Chapter 3229: The Two Thousand Four Hundred and Ninety-Eighth Echo: A Declaration of Existence

The name was a vibration, a resonance that echoed not in the void, but within the very motes of dust that composed the being.

It was a strange sensation, to be both the singer and the song, the dreamer and the dream.

Before the name, there had been only a collection of parts, a loose affiliation of dust and memory.

But now, with the name, there was a center, a point of stillness around which all else revolved.

It was the first story, told not to another, but to itself—a declaration of existence.