The Ebon Cathedral rose from the heart of Neo-Noctis like a corrupted hymn. Once a sanctuary of vaulted arches and stained glass, its spires now twisted into jagged blackened bone, and its windows wept rivers of ink that pooled into a moat of shadows. The air thrummed with a dirge—deep, resonant, and wrong.
Symbol Westwood stood at the cathedral's threshold, his guitar slung across his back, the Veilbreaker Lens glowing faintly through its cracked wood. Lila crouched beside him, her knife reflecting the sickly green light emanating from the structure. "This place feels alive," she muttered. "And pissed."
"It's not the building," Symbol said, his Resonance attribute prickling. "It's him."
Inside, the nave stretched into impossible darkness, its pews replaced by rows of spectral figures—assimilated souls, their mouths sewn shut with threads of musical notation. At the altar stood Victor Hale, bathed in a shaft of crimson light. His body was a grotesque collage: one half remained human, pale and gaunt, while the other half dissolved into staves, notes, and clefs that writhed like serpents. A conductor's baton, fused to his skeletal hand, pulsed with the Symphony's arrhythmic heartbeat.
"Welcome, composer," Victor rasped, his voice layered with the choir's muted screams. "I've prepared a magnum opus for your funeral."
The battle began with a single note.
Victor swung his baton, and the choir's silence shattered into a wall of sound—a dissonant crescendo that cracked the stone floor. Symbol countered with a Veilbreaker Chord, the Lens flaring as his guitar screamed a counter-melody. The clash of harmonics tore through the cathedral, reality itself warping:
Stained glass shards morphed into shrieking faces.
Pews splintered into barbed wire that lashed at Lila.
The air thickened with ash, each particle humming in tune with Victor's rage.
Lila dove into the chaos, slicing through the threads binding the souls. Each severed thread weakened Victor, his musical half fraying. "Keep him busy!" she shouted, dodging a tendril of liquid notation.
Symbol advanced, his Energy gauge bleeding to 10/25. "You're not a composer," he snarled. "You're a parasite."
Victor laughed, the sound echoing through the cathedral's collapsing ribs. "I am the Symphony's instrument. You? A tuning fork." He lunged, baton aimed at Symbol's throat.
The duel crescendoed.
Symbol channeled his Creative Synthesis, transforming Victor's attacks into jagged riffs he could deflect. The Veilbreaker Lens seared his palms, its power a double-edged sword. With every chord, cracks spiderwebbed through the relic.
Lila freed the final soul—a young girl whose whispers coalesced into a dagger of pure light. "Symbol, catch!"
He snatched the blade mid-air and drove it into Victor's chest. The conductor staggered, musical notes peeling from his body like rotting skin. "You… cannot… unmake what you've composed," Victor hissed, his human eye glaring with venom.
The cathedral imploded, Victor dissolving into a swarm of notation that retreated into the floor's fissures. Above, the vaulted ceiling cracked open, revealing the Symphony's core—a pulsating orb of black light, its surface etched with Neo-Noctis's skyline.
Status Update:
Level: 8
Experience Points: 30,000/35,000
Energy: 7/25
Resonance Upgrade: Soulfire Strings (weapons imbued with freed souls' energy).
Lila hauled Symbol to his feet as the cathedral crumbled. "He's not dead."
"No," Symbol said, staring at the orb. "But he's scared."
Outside, the city shuddered. The Energy Monitor clone atop Evie's lab flared crimson, its alert echoing across frequencies only the Adventure Guild could hear.
Aria Voss, guild investigator, received the signal in her airship. She adjusted her cybernetic eye, its lens zooming on Neo-Noctis's coordinates. "Cascade event confirmed," she muttered. "Time to collect the composer."
In the shadows, a streetlamp flickered—once, twice—and went dark.