The Chosen Ones

"Why had Darkness chosen us? Why didn't it affect our other kin, only the two of us?"

"I told you not to think about it. What's the point? Even if Darkness told you, you wouldn't be able to hear it. You're too far from Darkness. Darkness talking to you would be like you talking to an ant. Neither side could understand the other."

"But at least an ant can hear my voice, right?" he stubbornly retorted.

"Then can you hear the sounds around you now? Do you think Darkness is speaking to you?"

Madman told him that the voice of Darkness had actually always been there.

The countless sounds their hearts perceived all carried messages Darkness wished to convey to them.

The sound of shifting sand, animal cries, wind, water, footsteps... These were all the rhythms of Darkness, transmitting information to them in the simplest way:

"This place is safe."

"This place is dangerous."

"There is food here."

"Do not approach."

"..."

Darkness told them everything about their surroundings, allowing them to live freely within the dark.

Yet most of the Dark Race did not believe Darkness was speaking to them. They simply considered it their natural "perception."

They used their hearts to sense everything around them, believing it to be their own ability—an organ transforming all the factors in their surroundings into comprehensible information.

The information had clearly come from the darkness, from Darkness itself, and they themselves existed within that darkness. Yet they completely separated the individual from the environment. Influenced by their own perceptions, they fixed their perspective upon themselves and overlooked the darkness that was everywhere.

Darkness had always been speaking, and they had always been listening.

"It wasn't the individual perceiving the environment. It was the environment transmitting information to the individual."

That deviation