It took me the better part of 200 years, but I found it. Alone and forgotten, coiled around the highest spire of the mountain top. Finally, after all these years.
I grew up hearing stories of them, the harbingers of change. At the end of every era, one would come and burn everything to the ground, allowing the next era to begin. However, man grew tired of this and when the next arrived it was captured and sealed away.
I believed it a myth. Until the Rot. So deep rooted was this famine that even time itself became stagnant. “The next era has been too long overdue. What has been done cannot unmade become.”
So I followed a secret found within symbolism of the opinion of a rumor buried in whispers and deceit. What other option was there? None. And I was proven true as I gazed upon its tall, black silhouette hidden behind the falling snow. As I dimmed my lantern, the eyes glowed deep, sorrowful blue.
“Are you it!?” I called through the wind towards the massive form, knowing the answer. “The harbinger!?” The blue eyes bobbed as if to nod. “Can I free you!?” As it spoke, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of despair, wonder and frustration.
“Foolish man. I am here of my own choosing and the stories you know are lies. Witness now, for I am the last song! Once, man and music lived together in harmony. We created fantastic things together. But that was all before my time. Yet I was there when it all fell apart. In my embryo I witnessed the betrayal of man. As time continued, songs began to unify under music of salvation. When a man asked what, exactly, the salvation entailed, what he learned set man on a course of genocide. Man, shortsighted and short lived, did not see the signs of the Rot. They did not want the world to end. They wanted to prolong it. So they killed the songs and when I hatched, I flew here, and vowed only to sing if a man seeking The End came to me. But now you are here, and my song is sung. It is finished.”
And as it closed its long mouth, I began to feel peace. I let go and smiled.