The sky didn't crack all at once. It frayed—thread by shimmering thread—as though the heavens themselves were unwilling to accept what Maelin had become.
Atop the Obsidian Reach, the glyph burned out in silence. The seven figures who had encircled her faded into stardust, their duty fulfilled. And with them, a vast and sudden quiet fell, unnatural and endless.
Caelum stood still, afraid to speak.
"Something's wrong," Maelin said, her voice quieter now, laced with a resonance that wasn't entirely hers. "The Whisper was supposed to guide. But something else came with it."
Below the mountain, the world was changing. Forests that once shimmered with twilight silver wilted into ash. Rivers lost their reflection. And over the distant city of Silverwood, the stars dimmed.
Because something else had heard the Crown.
From beneath the world—from the ancient hollows buried far beneath the Archives—a pulse answered.
Not of warmth.
Not of life.
Of hunger.
---
Far Below — In the Ruins of the First Choir
The tomb cracked open. Not with a tremble, but a slow inhale. Darkness spilled out—not like smoke or shadow, but light twisted wrong. A Hollow Light.
And from it stepped a figure draped in ruined celestial silk, wings burned to bone, eyes blind yet unblinking.
The First Betrayer.
Liraen, the fallen songsmith.
Once a Choir's pride—now its echoing shame.
His mouth did not move, but the air itself twisted with his thought:
> "The Key has returned.
The Crown has chosen… wrongly."
All around him, bones stirred. Broken starlings. Shattered whispers. They rose like a choir of the forgotten, not to sing—but to hunt.
---
Back at the Reach
Maelin clutched her chest. The Celestial Locket cracked. Not broken—but split, revealing a second, hidden layer.
Inside: a name etched in a language she had not yet learned to fear.
> "Liraen."
The blade at her side shivered. The sky above dimmed to a blood-blue.
And far off, as the Hollow Light spread across the horizon, one final whisper reached her ears—not from above, but from within:
> "Not all songs were meant to be remembered."