Chapter Three – The Hollow Between the Notes
Part Six – The Song She Almost Sang
Selka Veyel sat alone behind the Lyceum.
Just past the barrier gate, beneath the thin-trunked lumabirch trees, there was a pool few students knew about. Not forbidden. Just… forgotten. A quiet place where the pulsefields didn't reach, and the Choir's whispers in the glyphlines felt farther away.
She dipped her hand into the still water.
The surface shimmered, not with light, but with memory—her own.
"Are you awake again, Zephryn?" she whispered.
A ripple.
Then stillness.
She exhaled. "You think running means you kept her safe. But she gave her memory to bring you back."
She paused.
And then, softer: "If you disappear again… I won't come looking. I'll burn this place instead."
The wind didn't answer, but the glyph carved faintly on her shoulder pulsed once.
Not Veilmark.
Not Lyceum standard.
Just a song.
One Solara left behind.
—
Back inside the Lyceum, Kaelen trained alone.
The training room was dark, silent—just the low hum of elemental glyph mirrors surrounding him. His Echo Flame veilmark spiraled around his wrist, forming loops and crescents as he mimicked cast motions from memory.
Instructor Vosk had dismissed class early.
Too many anomalies. Too much resonance tension.
Kaelen didn't mind. He preferred the silence.
Until a voice broke it.
"You really named a whole unit while he was gone?"
Kaelen turned. Yolti stood at the archway, arms folded.
"He was gone six years," Kaelen said flatly.
"That's not an answer."
He shrugged. "I didn't name it for him."
"Oh?"
"I named it for the part of him that echoed. The part we couldn't get rid of even if we tried."
Yolti walked closer. "You know he's going to break the Lyceum."
"Probably."
"Good."
They stood there a moment longer.
Then Kaelen added, "But not yet."
—
Across the region, inside a pulsechamber in the Doctrine Tower—
Three kings received their notices.
The first: King Vaelen Tiramis of Celestis Veil. He read the scroll with a flicker of dread. "The 25th Resonant Trial…" he muttered. "Held by the Doctrine. Signed by the Hollow Choir."
His advisor stepped forward. "Shall we respond?"
Vaelen's eyes didn't move. "No need. They've already chosen."
—
Second: Queen Anarell of the Veilfront Domain.
She read her scroll in silence, surrounded by hollow-crowned guards. She said nothing, only burned the letter after reading.
The ash formed a perfect spiral before vanishing.
—
Third: Lord Yurell of the Pulse-Barren Region.
He laughed when he read it.
"A trial? In the 25th year? Of course," he said. "The Choir always breaks things in twos and fives."
His pulse advisor raised an eyebrow. "Shall we send a candidate?"
Yurell's eyes gleamed. "Oh, we'll send more than that."
—
Meanwhile—inside the Hollow Choir's Veiled Archive:
A single resonance screen shimmered in the dark.
The Smiling Cantor hovered over it, face obscured, mask wide as always.
"We couldn't erase it all," he murmured. "Over ten thousand fabricated echoes. But even one true pulse… breaks the entire weave."
A hooded figure beside him replied, "Fragment Section Seven?"
"Replay it. Until it cracks."
Another voice: "Subject appears alone at the stronghold. But there's a pulse core hidden in proximity."
The Smiling Cantor nodded. "Solara sang her legacy into the breath of a creature. A creature no one dares scan."
"Bubbalor," the other whispered.
The Cantor's teeth widened. "The core… is alive."
—
Back at the Lyceum, Zephryn opened his eyes.
He didn't remember falling asleep. Not on the cot. Not after the glyph flare. Not after Vosk dismissed Echo Unit.
But he woke to a pulse—soft, like someone humming far away.
He sat up.
And felt it again.
hum… hum…
Not a voice.
Not a cast.
Just… resonance.
Something was calling from below the dorm.
And Zephryn didn't even move.
Because it wasn't him.
It was something else—beneath the floor, beneath the walls, beneath the world.
Listening.
And this time?
It knew Zephryn could hear it back.