The air beyond the Engine did not breathe. It listened.
Serin walked across a plain of white dust that shimmered without sun. Each step gave a faint ring, thin as the edge of glass. The sound did not fade—it lingered, repeating softly behind him until the echoes formed a low chord that moved with his shadow.
He stopped. The tone stopped with him.
A stillness deeper than death stretched to every horizon.
He closed his eyes. Inside the silence pulsed the Rhythm—the gift, the wound, the proof of what he had taken. It trembled in his chest, faint but certain, like a second heart beating between the ribs of the first.
He remembered the Nameless Pulse: a light without source, a voice that had never been heard. It had not spoken to him with words but with weight, with the gravity of truth. And now, wherever he stepped, the world seemed to test that truth against itself.
Then, faintly, the plain sang back.
At first it was only a vibration underfoot, like the memory of thunder trapped below the crust of the earth. But it grew, stretching into thin strands of melody that rose from the dust. Shapes began to form—transparent, trembling, as though carved from mist and memory. Faces drifted from shadow to light, the lines of soldiers, priests, and servants long vanished.
They did not speak. They only hummed the hymns of Kael's empire, broken and slow. Each note bent with grief.
Serin stood unmoving as the first of them approached—a figure in half-shattered armor, eyes hollowed into light. Its mouth opened, and from it came a voice he knew.
"You left us, Commander."
The voice was his own, or close enough to wound.
The plain filled with more figures, thousands of them, each a memory drawn into form by the Rhythm's pulse. They were the Children of Dissonance, fragments of loyalty that the Faith Engine had cast out when the unity failed. Their song was the sound of obedience that refused to die.
Serin raised his hand. The Rhythm stirred. A faint halo of sound rippled from his palm.
"I did not leave," he said quietly. "You were freed."
But the word freed tasted wrong in his mouth. The echoes recoiled from it as if burned.
The lead spirit moved closer. "Then free us again."
The dust rose in spirals as the plain began to tremble, and the battle between silence and song began.
The first strike was not sound.
It was absence—a tearing stillness that swallowed the color from the world. The Lost Souls advanced, and where their feet touched, silence spread like frost. The hymns they sang fractured the air, each note a command of the old world: Obey. Kneel. Return.
Serin stood in their path, the dust swirling around his boots. The Rhythm inside him rose like a tide. His pulse slowed; his breath fell into perfect measure. When the first of the Dissonant reached for him, Serin lifted his hand and exhaled.
The world rang.
A tone cut through the plain—pure, absolute. The silence shattered. The souls stumbled as though struck by unseen blades. Their outlines flickered, their songs breaking into static shards of memory. Where Serin's note touched them, the mist of their forms condensed into glass and fell, ringing softly before dissolving.
The Rhythm was alive now. It coursed through him, expanding beyond muscle or flesh. Each motion carried resonance; each thought birthed sound. He became an instrument, and the plain became his chamber.
Yet the Dissonant were endless. Their numbers rose, thousands upon thousands, all shaped from the fragments of loyalty the Faith Engine had devoured. The sound of their hymns was unbearable—an ocean of half-remembered prayers and broken vows.
Serin took a step forward. His voice, steady and low, answered them:
"Loyalty is not silence."
He struck the ground with his palm. The note that emerged bent the air around it, warping space into a visible wave. The wave rippled outward, scattering the front ranks into light. The impact left him trembling, but he did not stop. Each blow drew from the Rhythm—each note brighter, harsher, harder to control.
The plain became a storm of sound.
Every echo layered upon itself until the horizon throbbed. The Dissonant howled in static harmony, their forms shredding and reforming. Their song warped into a chorus of desperation:
"We are the faithful. We remember."
Serin closed his eyes. He saw their faces—not monsters, but men and women who had once marched beside him under Kael's banners. He remembered their oaths, their quiet laughter before dawn, their deaths. Each spirit was a fragment of the same faith he had abandoned.
The Rhythm inside him trembled, uncertain.
He whispered, barely audible:
"Then remember me."
And the note he released after those words was not of destruction. It was mercy.
A wave of sound, deep and soft, spread outward. Where it passed, the Lost Souls halted. Their hymns faltered. One by one, they raised their heads toward him as if waking from a long dream. Their bodies flickered between form and void.
Then they began to dissolve—not in agony, but in peace. Their final whispers carried through the fading storm:
"Commander… we hear you."
The field fell still.
Only the echo of his heartbeat remained, steady, fading.
But victory tasted hollow. The Rhythm no longer echoed perfectly within him—it dragged. When he tried to speak, no sound came. His throat convulsed, his voice lost in the weight of what he had unleashed. He had poured too much of himself into the song, and now the Rhythm sang through him without permission.
Serin fell to one knee. The dust beneath him vibrated, forming a faint circle of light that pulsed in time with his silent breath.
From that light rose a deeper shadow—vast, immense, and slow. The plain trembled. A figure of shimmering glass and black iron unfolded from the ground: the Conductor of Silence, one of Kael's ancient creations, shaped to erase sound itself.
Its face was featureless save for a single vertical crack, through which dim light shone like the line of a closing eye.
When it spoke, it was not with voice, but with weight—meaning pressed directly against the mind.
"You carry the forbidden tone," it said.
"The empire ended so the world might sleep. Why wake it again?"
Serin rose slowly, throat still silent. His answer came not in words but in action—he struck his chest once, and the pulse of the Rhythm echoed outward, defying the void. The air quivered, and for an instant, the silence faltered.
The Conductor's crack widened.
"Then you are what Kael feared most—a man who will not forget."
It raised its hand, and silence thickened around him like glass. The world dimmed. The Rhythm fought within him, struggling to breathe.
Serin reached out, fingers trembling, and drew the air toward him. The sound that emerged was faint, broken—but real. It was his last fragment of voice.
"I will not let the world die unheard."
The Rhythm flared. The plain ignited in light and darkness—sound and absence colliding. The Conductor staggered, its form cracking like ice. Serin's body shook, his voice disintegrating into pure resonance. With a final gesture, he cast the note outward, and the silence shattered.
When the storm ended, nothing remained of the plain—only fragments of suspended glass, humming softly in slow rotation, each shard singing a fragment of his final tone.
Serin stood amid them, bleeding light from his eyes. When he tried to speak again, no voice came. Only a faint hum escaped—neither sound nor silence, but something between.
He looked toward the horizon, where the first faint shimmer of the old Empire glowed far away.
The Rhythm within him pulsed once, twice—then fell still.
He whispered, though he could no longer hear it:
"The song will remember."
And the glass plains answered with silence.