Kael entered a cavern deeper than silence, where the air itself seemed to tremble with sorrow. The walls were not stone, but endless strings stretched taut across the void, each one singing a single note. Together they wove the Music that held all things: stars burning, rivers flowing, hearts beating.
At first Kael marveled, for he heard in the Music all joys and sorrows of the worlds. But then he saw a figure standing in the center. The figure bore no face, no form, only the suggestion of Kael's own shadow. In its hand was a blade made not of steel but of forgetting, sharp enough to cut the soul.
One by one, the figure raised the blade and severed the strings. Each cut silenced a note, and with it a world collapsed. A star faded into darkness. A name was erased from memory. A prayer fell unanswered into the abyss.
Kael cried out: "Why do you undo what the Dreamer has sung? Why scatter harmony into dust?"
The figure lowered its hood, and Kael beheld his own face staring back, both familiar and terrifying. The figure spoke with his own voice, yet older, heavier, carrying the weight of endings:
"Because every song must end, lest it become noise. What is sung forever becomes meaningless. Ending is not cruelty, but mercy. For all that is cut returns to the Source, where it becomes song anew. The hand that unmakes is not the hand of hatred, but the hand of rest."
Kael trembled, for he knew then that one day his own hand would hold that blade, as all hands must. Yet even as the strings were severed, he raised his voice and sang with the ones that remained. His song did not prevent their cutting, but it wove a new harmony around the silence, as if to say: "Even endings can be beautiful."
The cavern quaked, and the blade paused. The figure smiled with Kael's own mouth and whispered: "You understand."
Thus Kael learned the Tenth Mystery: that unmaking is not death, but the rest before the next verse of eternity. What is severed is not lost, but gathered back into the Breath of the Dreamer, to be sung again in another key.