The sky had not known silence in days.
Not the oppressive hush of Choir magic, nor the unnatural stillness of broken cities—but a true absence of quiet. The kind born when something long buried begins to stir.
Every Ashborn who heard Kairo's call added to that noise. Every battle. Every broken Cantor. Every voice awakened.
And now, with Lira at his side, the noise had become a storm.
They marched west beneath a sky that finally moved. The clouds swirled to music only some could hear, pushed by unseen currents of power carried in the voices of two Ashborn and their allies. The Song had weight now. Momentum.
Yui rode beside Kairo on the back of an old glider-beast they'd tamed at the edge of the Wyrmspine. It glided low over dunes of cracked obsidian, its wings stitched with scars from ancient battles.
"We're being watched," she said.
Kairo nodded. "They're tracking the Song."
"I don't think it's the Choir."
Aeska, riding beside them, tightened her grip on the beast's reins. "She's right. The Choir doesn't stay this far back. Whatever's behind us is following like it's waiting."
"Or listening," Lira added from her perch atop the ridge.
She extended her hand, letting the wind pass over her fingertips.
"There's something wrong in the air," she said. "Not like the Choir's silence. More like… echo without source."
Kairo's marks flared with heat.
A wave of unease swept through him.
He closed his eyes—and for a moment, he heard nothing.
Not even Lira's song.
Not even Yui's heartbeat.
Just absence.
The ambush came fast.
Not from the sky, or the ground, but from within the Song itself.
The landscape folded.
Notes twisted. Rhythms reversed.
A tear opened in the air, and from it stepped the Hollow Choir—Choirbound souls who had been exposed to the unfiltered Song and broken by it. They no longer served the Ardent Choir. They served something older.
They moved like echoes—distorted, flickering, incomplete.
Their mouths were open.
And their song was empty.
Kairo reeled as their presence pressed against his mind. It was like being smothered in a void—a place where no sound could survive, not even memory.
"They're stealing the music," Lira hissed.
Yui's light faltered.
Aeska drew steel. "What are they?"
"Not Choir," Kairo said, teeth clenched. "Not anymore."
He took a step forward and drove his spear into the earth.
The ground responded.
A pulse of true Song—pure, refined, and alive—rippled outward from the impact.
It struck the Hollow Choir like lightning.
They screamed—not in pain, but in recognition.
For a moment, the lead figure's voice found form:
"Ashborn… cannot… exist…"
Kairo stepped toward it, marks blazing, voice steady.
"We already do."
He raised his hands and sang—not a call, not a challenge.
A command.
The Song rose—Lira joining in, her storm-voice surging, Yui casting threads of light through the sound. Aeska moved like a blade between chords, slicing through echoes with every motion.
The Hollow Choir began to unravel.
Each note that passed through them stripped away their illusion, their silence, their power.
And when the last echo fell, the Song became clear once more.
The silence died.
Later, they stood beneath the newly opened sky.
The clouds had parted in a perfect ring above the battlefield.
Stars shone through—a rare sight in a world that hadn't seen them in years.
Yui pointed up. "Is that…?"
Kairo nodded.
"The sky without silence."
Lira stood beside him, eyes narrowed. "That wasn't the last of them. Whatever corrupted the Choir… it's still out there. Still twisting the Song."
"We'll face it," Kairo said. "All of it."
Yui took his hand.
Aeska sheathed her blades.
And far to the north, a third voice stirred in its sleep—another Ashborn…
...dreaming in flame.