Ash sat by the riverbank, the city long behind him, its concrete echoes drowned in the endless hush of flowing water. Here, the forest was not silent — it breathed. Leaves rustled like whispers of unseen elders, birdsong stitched the fabric of time, and the wind sang in a language that Ash was just beginning to understand.
He exhaled slowly, releasing the last of the caffeine-trembled tension from his limbs. No screens. No noise. Just breath.
Each inhalation felt like a question. Each exhalation, an answer.
He had not eaten in a day. Not because he intended to fast, but because he could no longer digest the city's food. The processed, frightened flesh of animals; the sterile, lifeless grains; the chemical-laced wrappers — his body had begun rejecting all of it. Now, even a handful of wild berries felt like a feast. The forest offered what was alive, not what was dead.
Kneeling by the stream, he cupped water into his mouth. It tasted electric, almost intelligent. Like memory.
As he sat beneath an old eucalyptus, Ash entered a state beyond stillness. Not the stillness of a corpse, but of a seed — quiet, yet brimming with infinite futures. His thoughts slowed. Then scattered. Then reassembled as sensation.
He felt his heartbeat drop into rhythm with the earth.
Bum. Pause. Bum.
And between those beats: silence.
A silence so wide, he could fall into it.
And he did.
Suddenly, his perception shifted — time was no longer linear but concentric, folding into spirals. The forest shimmered, not with light, but with presence. Everything had eyes, though none were watching him. They were watching with him.
He remembered something the monk had said on the rooftop:
"The self is not a fixed point. It is a frequency."
Now, Ash understood. In the forest's vast soundscape, his own resonance was returning. Like a string once stretched too tight, he was coming back into tune.
Then he heard it — faint at first, like a forgotten melody.
A drumbeat.
No, not external. It was inside him. Ancient. Steady.
Dum-dum… Dum-dum…
Not his heart.
Not blood.
But something deeper — the drum of being.
Ash opened his eyes.
The sun had shifted slightly, casting golden veins through the branches. He felt different. Not healed, but healing. Not enlightened, but available.
He stood, barefoot and grounded, and took his first conscious step as a creature reborn through rhythm, silence, and sky.