Take a Deep Breath

In a world where memory constitutes the laws of physics, the basic elements of the universe are not matter and energy, but memory. The earth is breathing—not air, but fragments of forgotten memories condensed into crystals. What is inhaled is not oxygen, but the dissipated memories swallowed back into the silence of the abyss. This is the deep breathing cycle. Breathing out for two thousand years, all things flourished, and civilization spread like wildfire; breathing in for two hundred years, life withered, and everything in the past was forcibly dragged back underground. At this moment, it is at the end of the seventh inhalation. The world is being "sucked back".