In the sixth week, as they returned from the training tunnels, Maple and Kael were ambushed. Enchanted arrows came from the darkness—silent, nearly invisible. Kael drew his blades. Maple threw himself to the ground—but an arrow grazed his shoulder, like a flaming tongue.
Three hooded figures, their eyes without irises, descended from the rooftops.
—"Silencium," Kael said.
The fight was brutal.
Kael spun like armed wind, and Maple—for the first time—didn't fall immediately. He used his dagger to parry a blow, but the blade vibrated in his hand with absurd force. He rolled, bleeding, staggering, until he reached a small runic fragment in his pouch.
He didn't know if it would work. But he touched the symbol with blood and played a short, pure note on his lyre.
The rune glowed.
A sonic blast threw one of the attackers against the wall with a crash.
—"It works!" he shouted.
But he soon fell to his knees, nauseous. The rune burned his hand like embers.
Kael finished off the other two. The third fled to the rooftops, shouting something in a dead language.
Maple panted. His hands burned. His eyes trembled.
Kael knelt beside him.
—"You're starting to hear the stones, kid."
Maple looked at him, his face sweaty and cut.
—"Why are you doing all this? Why with me?"
Kael hesitated for a moment. For the first time.
—"Because years ago, someone saved me from myself. Someone who saw power where there was only chaos. I failed that person. And I won't fail you."
Maple stared at Kael.
There was something more there.
A past yet unsung. A story hidden beneath the scar.
That night, alone, Maple wrote his first new song in weeks. It wasn't about kings or monsters. It was about falling, silence, and voice.
A song about fighting one's own weakness.
And he knew: this was only the first verse.
Long before the song, long before the daggers, Maple lived on the edges of the world.
In the isolated village of Tir Wren, among the southern swamps of Valmyros and the howling hills, a red-haired boy with reddish-brown eyes was born, raised among enchanted reeds and poorly told tales.
His father, Brann, was a woodcutter who listened to the trees before felling them. They said he knew which ones wailed in pain, which whispered ancient legends, and which offered their bodies with serene resignation. He used to say:
"Everything that sings, lives. And everything that lives, suffers. That's why we sing."
His mother, Aela, was a street singer in her youth, a human who had learned to mimic the tones of the fairy spheres—ethereal bubbles of light that floated in the swamps during spring. She made Maple's cradle hum with her songs, notes that sounded like longing for something he'd never known.
"Why do you sing, Mama?"
"Because there's pain that words can't hold, and only music understands."
When Maple was eight, his mother vanished. No one saw her body. Only a melody was heard drifting over the swamps that night: sad, drawn-out… and inhuman.
His father fell silent forever.
At twelve, Maple fled the village, carrying the lyre his mother had crafted from the wood of the Mute Oak, a tree no one could hear—except her.
Since then, he wandered. He sang to survive. Not for glory. But because when the music echoed, he believed that, perhaps, someone in the world was listening with the same ears his mother once had.
"If I sing to the whole world, maybe she'll hear me. And then… maybe I'll find her."
He arrived in the coastal city of Port-Lyre at sixteen, nameless, family-less, homeless.
There he met Zyri.
Zyri of the Turquoise Flame
The bastard daughter of a northern elf and a human relic hunter, Zyri had eyes like liquid crystal light—a pulsing greenish-blue. Her hair was nearly white, tied in chaotic braids where small vials hung among the strands. She wore clothes reinforced with the scaly leather of magical lizards and belts laden with colorful potions, some clinking ominously.
Zyri sold elixirs but loved discovering new formulas. She was chaotic, impulsive, but loyal to the bone—the kind of person who'd blow up a warehouse to test a potion… and cry if a child got burned by the heat.
She and Maple met when he was singing in an alley, and she tossed him a coin—that exploded into colored smoke.
—"You went flat on the high note. That deserved punishment."
—"And you smell like lilies and gunpowder."
They became friends. Then partners. Then something more complicated. Never lovers. But never just friends.
"If you die, I swear I'll bring you back. And kill you again for leaving me."
"Deal."
Dregan was smaller than a dog but louder than a cannon.
A rust-red kobold with scales that glowed when excited, teeth too big for his mouth, and eyes perpetually wide. He wore a tailored leather coat with pockets he'd sewn himself, stuffed with fuses, magical powders, ignition stones, and stolen arcane medallions.
"Fire's my friend. It's just… it gets excited sometimes."
He joined the group after Maple stopped him from blowing up a candy stall at a festival.
Since then, he followed Maple and Zyri like an orphaned dragonling—and in a way, he was. But his knack for magical technology was rare. He made things that shouldn't work but did. Sometimes. Almost always. With side effects.
Kael was everything Maple wasn't.
Tall, quiet, with golden eyes like a ruined sun. He wore a runic cloak that repelled heat and light, dark leather under enchanted chainmail, and soundless boots. His hair was black as mana coal, and a scar ran from his jaw to his ear, as if someone had tried to silence his voice permanently.
But his eyes…
There was fire there. Fire and past.
"Kael doesn't breathe. He calculates the air," Zyri once said.
Maple had learned to fear him. But also to respect him.
On long nights after training, Kael sometimes spoke. Fragments. Crumbs of a past that refused to be told.
"I was a thief. Then a traitor. Now… I'm just consequence."
Maple knew there was someone behind that scar. A woman? A brother? A dead disciple? It was too early to know.
But something in Kael ached whenever Maple sang.
As if the music reminded him of something he wanted to forget… or reclaim.
Maple now studied a single rune.
"Lûn," the rune of echo.
It was a simple symbol: a spiral within a semicircle. It meant reverberation, return, memory.
Kael made him copy it a hundred times each night—on stone, in the air, on wood—until his hand bled. Only then was he allowed to try activating it with a chord.
When he finally did—a high note paired with the rune drawn in the air—the sound of his lyre echoed three times, each louder than the last.
The windows of the room shattered.
And Maple fainted.
When he woke, Kael was watching him.
—"You don't control. You feel. Runes aren't words. They're wills."
—"What if I mess up?"
—"Then the world answers. In its own way."
One night, Kael took him outside the city to an ancient ruin known only as The Strings of Nívalh.
It was an amphitheater carved into a mountain. The columns were shaped like harps. And there were broken statues of figures with open mouths—as if they'd died screaming songs.
Kael made him sing there.
And as Maple sang ancient verses, the stones responded. A hidden harmony, made of wind, dust, and forgotten magic, began to emerge.
Runes glowed beneath the floor. The same spiral of Lûn.
—"This place… is it alive?"
—"It's an echo. Of something that died. A battlefield of enchanting bards. The runes still listen. And if you sing right… they answer."
And then Maple heard it.
A female voice.
"Maple…"
It was his mother's voice.
Or perhaps an echo.
Or perhaps… something more.
Back in the city, Maple felt the world shift.
—Zyri began researching runes on her own, seeking elixirs to stabilize her friend's body after using magic.
—Dregan adapted explosives to carry engraved runes—weapons with sonic souls.
—And Kael, one day, received a letter.
He read it. Burned it. Fell silent.
And said:
—"They've found you. And now they want to use you. Or silence you."
—"Who?" Maple asked.
Kael stared at him, grave as stone:
—"The Veilbearers. Guardians of the Final Silence. Enemies of song."
"There are notes that open doors. And others that must not be heard."
))^
The night after Kael's revelation, Maple couldn't sleep.
Despite his body's exhaustion from training, his fingers still throbbing from failed attempts to inscribe his first true rune, his mind wandered through the alleys of Port-Lyre and the echoes he'd heard in the ruins of Nívalh. The name Veilbearers now spun in his mind like an unfinished verse. Every whisper of the wind, every note of his lyre… felt like a risk.
Kael had explained little. As always. But enough.
—"They emerged when the world was still learning to name things. When songs shaped reality. They fear sound. They veil the world in silence."
Maple understood: his music—his voice—could be a threat. Or a key.
Meanwhile, Zyri and Dregan prepared.
The Golden Gill tavern, once just a stage, had become an improvised fortress. Zyri turned the basement into a laboratory. The shelves were filled with vials and notes from her mother—a former scholar of magical linguistics—who had left records of degenerate runic languages, diluted forms of the true runes still used in modern weapons, communication towers, portals, and bombs.
—"What Maple's learning… our teachers said it was just myth," Zyri said, adjusting a mana filtration device. "But it makes sense now. A true rune sings. It's not just form. It lives."
—"But does it explode?" Dregan asked, wide-eyed, holding a grenade made from mana-honeycomb.
—"Depends on the sound."
Dregan had adapted three of his explosives to emit specific sounds: a high-pitched one (distortion), a low one (shock), and a harmonic one (illusory distraction). All based on Maple's growing sonic sensitivity.
Zyri began to suspect Maple's songs were altering the physical world without his knowledge. Cracks in objects, vibrating glass, mosquitoes fleeing at the sound of his notes. She saw his power growing—and with it, the danger.
On the fifth night after Kael's warning, the first Veilbearers arrived.
Three of them. Hooded, faceless, cloaked in mantles that absorbed light and sound. Even their footsteps were absent. But the air… grew heavy. As if all sound from the street had been swallowed. Birds stopped. Even the sea's waves seemed to hold their breath.
Maple felt their arrival. He didn't hear it. He felt it. The thinnest string of his lyre snapped on its own.
—"They're here," he said, his voice hoarser than usual.
Zyri ran to the tavern's roof, where she'd installed an alarm crystal. Dregan armed his sonic bombs and tossed one into the alley.
Nothing.
Silence.
Kael appeared from the rooftop like a falling raven, his curved blade already in hand. But the Veilbearers didn't wield ordinary weapons. They walked… and the world grew mute with them.
—"Stay away from his voice," Kael said, tense. "They don't fight like warriors. They silence."
Maple tried to sing.
One note.
Weak.
Uncertain.
But it didn't echo.
One of the figures pointed at him. A shadowy rune appeared in the air—an inverted spiral with a slanted stroke.
Kael reacted first, slashing the air between Maple and the symbol, shattering the magical form.
—"A soul-silencing rune," he said. "If you'd sung… you might never speak again."
Zyri threw a vial of liquid light. Dregan launched an illusory sonic bomb. One of the figures hesitated—and in that moment, Maple heard. A note. A chance.
He grabbed his lyre.
Sang.
Three notes. Just three. But with intent, fear, anger, and instinct.
And the entire alley vibrated.
The cobblestones cracked. The tavern's windows shattered. One of the Veilbearers stumbled—as if pushed by an invisible wave. Not by volume. But by meaning.
—"That… that was real," Zyri said, stunned.
Kael moved at last. And when he moved, the world bled.
With two strikes, he drove off the first and cleaved the second in half. The third vanished into a crack in reality, evaporating into dark mist.
Maple collapsed.
His throat ached. Bled. His body trembled.
Kael carried him back to the underground training room. Zyri prepared a mana-sage salve and whispers, while Dregan brought honey infused with clarion essence.
—"You burned yourself from the inside," Kael said. "Your voice touched something you don't yet understand."
Maple looked at the rune he'd begun carving into the wood of his lyre. The spiral was nearly complete.
—"I want to understand. I want to learn. I want my voice to be… a weapon."
Kael crossed his arms, his golden eyes more intense than ever.
—"Not a weapon, Maple. An invocation."
Zyri interrupted, her tone more serious than usual.
—"You need a bigger reason. What we're facing… it's not just magic. It's ideology. They want a world without sound. Without emotion. Without memory."
Maple nodded.
And in that moment of silence—not the Veilbearers' silence, but a silence of decision—something awoke in him.
A name. Not given. But felt.
It wasn't Maple.
It was something older.
Still whispered.