Leaving the Chime-Wood was like stepping from a vibrant, living world into a dead one. The transition was stark and immediate. One moment, Kael was surrounded by the constant, chaotic music of the crystal forest, a million notes washing over him. The next, he stepped past the last translucent tree, and a profound, heavy silence fell like a shroud. The music faded behind him, swallowed by the oppressive quiet of the land ahead.
Before him rose the Obsidian Peaks. They were a menacing gash in the horizon, a mountain range made not of resonant, life-filled crystal, but of jagged, non-resonant obsidian that seemed to drink the very light and sound from the air. The sky-crystal above, which had seemed so bright and clear over the woods, appeared hazy and dim here, its light struggling to penetrate the perpetual gloom cast by the black mountains. This was a land of endings, a place where the world's song came to die.
The ground beneath his feet changed as well. The rich, veined crystal of the forest edge gave way to a scarred and broken landscape. The ground was a treacherous litter of shattered rock, sharp-edged scree, and the failed, half-finished mining operations of forgotten fortune seekers. He saw abandoned pits, crudely dug and now filled with stagnant water, and piles of worthless, chipped stone. This was a place where people had tried to violently tear a living from the world, a stark, brutal contrast to both the rigid, grown harmony of Lumina and the respectful listening of Silas. Kael could feel the oppressive weight of the place in his bones, a low, grinding hum of generations of greed and desperation.
He followed a rough, well-trodden path that wound its way toward the base of the peaks. It was a path worn not by casual travelers, but by the determined, heavy steps of people with nowhere else to go. The air grew colder, and the silence deepened until all he could hear was the crunch of his own boots on the loose rock and the faint, rhythmic thrum of the Dissonant scars on his leg.
The path led him into a deep ravine, a natural crack carved between two of the towering, lightless peaks. The walls of black obsidian rose high on either side, blotting out what little light remained. Tucked deep inside this chasm, shielded from the sky and any prying eyes, was the settlement Silas had spoken of. Barren.
It was the ugliest place Kael had ever seen. It was not a village grown from harmony, but a settlement cobbled together from the world's refuse. The structures were angular, desperate shacks made from scavenged crystal slabs of mismatched color and quality, patched with the stiff, leathery hides of slain Echoes and sheets of rusted, scavenged metal he couldn't identify. Smoke, thick and greasy, curled from crooked chimneys, carrying the foul stench of burning moss and something acrid. There was no central, harmonious hum. Instead, the air was filled with a low murmur of discordant, jarring sounds: the sharp, rhythmic clang of a hammer on stone, a distant, shouted argument that ended in a wet crunch, the off-key, drunken singing of someone drowning their sorrows. It was the sound of chaos, but not the beautiful, wild chaos of the Chime-Wood. This was the ugly, desperate, and grating chaos of humanity pushed to its very edge.
The "gate" to Barren was nothing more than a narrower part of the ravine, where the path was forced between two massive, fallen obsidian boulders. The gap was watched over by a single guard, a woman with a face that looked like a poorly drawn map of old knife fights. She leaned against one of the boulders, the picture of bored indifference, a massive, axe-like weapon resting against her shoulder. It was made from the serrated jawbone of some huge, unknown creature.
She watched Kael limp toward her, her eyes flat and unimpressed. She didn't ask for his name, his business, or where he was from. She simply held up a hand, blocking his path.
"Toll," she said, her voice a gravelly rasp. She gestured with her chin to a messy, ever-growing pile of junk near the entrance—chipped tools, cracked armor plates, chunks of worthless rock. "Something useful to trade, or something heavy to add to the wall."
Kael looked at his meager possessions. He had nothing of value he was willing to part with, certainly not his fang-knife. He thought for a moment, then an idea came to him. He was tired of hiding what he was. Here, in this place of broken things, perhaps his brokenness was a currency.
He spotted a large, cracked boulder of grey stone a few feet away, likely dragged here for the wall. He walked over to it, placing a hand on its rough surface. The guard watched him, a flicker of curiosity in her dead eyes. Kael closed his own eyes and hummed, a low, controlled pulse of dissonance. It wasn't a scream, just a sharp, precise vibration. With a clean crack, a large, flat slab of stone, the size of a shield, broke away from the main boulder and fell to the ground.
He grunted with the effort of lifting it and hauled it over to the guard, dropping it at her feet with a heavy thud. He offered the slab of raw, useful material as his toll.
The guard looked from the clean, perfect break on the boulder to the slab at her feet, then back to Kael's face. She raised a single, scarred eyebrow, a flicker of genuine interest crossing her features for the first time. She gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod.
"Go on in, then," she said, stepping aside. "Try not to die. It's bad for business."
Kael stepped past her, into the main thoroughfare of Barren. The stench was worse inside, a mix of unwashed bodies, stale drink, and despair. The ravine widened slightly into a crowded, dirty marketplace. It was filled with people whose faces told stories of hard lives and bad decisions. He saw grizzled miners with crystal dust ground permanently into their skin, shifty-eyed traders whose eyes darted everywhere at once, and individuals who were clearly hiding from a past they couldn't outrun, their faces cloaked in hoods and their hands never far from a hidden weapon.
He was jostled and ignored, just another piece of human refuse washed up on the shores of this desolate place. The stalls were slapped together, selling things he never could have imagined. He saw strange, pulsating Echo organs preserved in jars of glowing fluid; raw, uncut crystals of unknown properties that hummed with dangerous energy; and crude, brutally effective weapons designed for one purpose: to kill.
This was a world that ran on survival and cynicism, not hope and harmony. There was no Great Song here, only the quiet, desperate hum of people trying to make it to the next sunrise. Kael felt utterly and completely out of his depth. This place was more alien to him than the deepest wastes or the darkest cave.