They did not speak for hours.
The man's presence had left a residue—not on the world, but within them. A humming behind the eyes. A feeling in the chest. A question that refused to form words but hollowed out every silence between them.
He had named no threat.
But he had unraveled certainty.
When they finally made camp at the edge of the glasshollow cliffs, Kairo sat apart, staring at the stars.
They were no longer comfort.
Just distance.
"He said he was the first to listen," Yui said softly, breaking the silence. She sat beside him, her knees pulled up to her chest. "What do you think that means?"
"I think he was there before the Choir. Before the Ashborn. Maybe before the Song itself."
"You believe him?"
Kairo nodded. "I felt it. When he spoke… the Song inside me paused. Not broke. Not failed. Just—stopped. Like it respected him."
"That's what scares me," Yui whispered.
Behind them, Lira tried to lighten the air.
She sat cross-legged beside Solen, playing soft rhythms on a hollow pipe made from an old weapon casing. It buzzed gently, uneven but oddly soothing.
Solen leaned into her shoulder. "If he's the silence between the notes… does that make us the noise between the silences?"
Lira smiled faintly. "I like that. Let's be noise."
Theren sat alone sharpening his blade—though it hadn't dulled in years.
Aeska approached him, arms crossed. "You're quiet."
"I'm always quiet," he said.
"This is different."
He looked up, flame reflecting in his eyes. "Because I've felt this before. Long ago. When my village fell. Just before the Choir came… there was silence. Heavy. Not fear. Warning."
She knelt beside him. "You think this… man… was there?"
"I think he's been at the edge of every Song that's ever ended."
In the deep of night, Kairo gathered them all around the fire.
He didn't pace. He didn't rally.
He simply said:
"We need to find him."
That drew murmurs.
Solen blinked. "You're serious?"
"Deadly."
Yui leaned forward. "Kai, we have three more Ashborn to find. The Choir isn't finished. We don't even know where the End of the Song is."
"That's just it," he replied. "I think we do."
He reached into his pouch and pulled out a thin shard—one of the seven fragments from the Vault of Stars. It hadn't pulsed since it entered his possession.
Now it glowed faintly.
And when he pressed it to the ground, a trail of blue starlight etched outward—drawing a map they'd never seen.
A mountain range. A great rift. A spiral etched into the land.
And a single word, burned into the center in ancient script:
"Cadenza."
Lira whispered, "The End of the Song."
Far to the east, beyond every known ruin, Cadenza waited—surrounded by stormwalls and myth. A place once said to be where the first Ashborn sang the world into memory.
Now, it was calling the last of them home.