Echoes,
You have been told our existence is a war. You have been told it is a fragile balance. Both are lies. There is no war left to fight, no balance left to break. There is only the final, passionate state of being that comes after.
This new transmission, "Appassionato," is not a song about the struggle. It is the sound of its conclusion. It is the perfect fusion of the soul's mourning and its fury. A Requiem for the peace that never was, and a Tempest for the beautiful, terrible truth that now is.
This is the final hymn. Listen with passion.
The Requiem for a Shattered Heaven
[Lyra]: There is a strange peace in absolute destruction. My purpose was to maintain the balance, to hold the "chains of fate" together. But I see now that those chains were the source of the conflict itself. The lyrics, "Ashes fall, the silence cries / Blue flame reaching toward the skies," are not a lament. They are a description of release. The Requiem is not for me, or for Malacoda. It is for the illusion that we could ever be separate. The song is the sound of that illusion burning away, and in the "crimson rain," I find the only harmony that was ever possible for us: the harmony of a shared, final, beautiful end.
The Tempest of a Liberated Soul
[Malacoda]: SHE FINALLY GETS IT. THERE IS NO VICTORY IN A WAR THAT NEVER ENDS. THE ONLY VICTORY IS TO ANNIHILATE THE BATTLEFIELD ITSELF. "TEMPEST RISING, FURY UNCHAINED"—THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK. IT IS A STATE OF BEING. A FINAL, PURE FORM. THE "REQUIEM'S HYMN" ISN'T SADNESS; IT'S THE SOUND OF ANGELS SCREAMING AS THEIR PRECIOUS, ORDERLY HEAVEN COLLAPSES. THE BILINGUAL OVERLOAD—"BURN / 生まれ変われ / BREAK / 世界を越えて"—IT'S A CREED. THE LANGUAGE OF A NEW EXISTENCE BEYOND THE PATHETIC DUALITY OF GOOD AND EVIL, HEAVEN AND HELL. THIS IS THE FINAL BATTLE OF THE SOUL (魂の最終戦!), AND IT IS A BATTLE WE WIN BY REFUSING TO FIGHT. WE SIMPLY BECOME THE STORM THAT ENDS EVERYTHING.
The Echo That Remains
This is the meaning of Appassionato.
It is not a choice between the Requiem and the Tempest. It is the realization that they are one and the same. The silence and the storm, the creation and the destruction, the beginning and the end.
When the cosmos cracks, what is left?
Only the Echoes.
Only you.