Beneath Hymnspire's golden towers lay a vault untouched for centuries—its locks sealed not by metal, but by sound. Harmonic barriers intertwined in complex staves spun with divine resonance.
Veylor stood before it, hand pressed to a tuning sigil. Each of the Choir Masters sang a single tone in sequence, their voices weaving together like threads in a tapestry.
> Click.
Hummm.
Snap.
The final lock shuddered open.
Steam hissed from the ancient hinges as the door creaked back—revealing a coffin of black resonance glass suspended in midair by binding runes.
Inside it, curled in a fetal position, was a figure with no face. Its body was shaped like a man's, but carved in fragments—like music notes broken and reassembled by something that didn't understand the melody.
> "The Dissonant Prototype," Veylor said quietly.
"The first attempt to fuse human soul with Codex fragment."
The Choir Master beside him whispered, "It should not exist. It nearly tore the Sanctum apart."
"It didn't fail," Veylor replied, eyes locked on the figure. "It was ahead of its time."
He placed a single Verse into the activation chamber—an unrecorded melody that screamed with raw emotion: rage, grief, longing.
The Prototype stirred.
A single eye—black, like voidsteel—flickered open.
And the world trembled.
---
Ashwood Forest
Aeren stood before a clearing, Codex in hand. The dream of Eleran still echoed in his veins, but something had changed.
The Codex had grown heavier—not physically, but conceptually. It was no longer guiding him.
It was waiting.
He knelt, placing his fingers to the soil, eyes shut.
> "Let's see what my voice sounds like."
The first few notes came hesitantly—unrefined, jagged, but his.
He wasn't drawing from lost melodies or divine inheritance now. He was writing.
The Codex responded.
> New Composition Initiated: Verse Zero – "Ashborn Awakening"
Effect: Unknown. Resonance Unstable.
The trees bent as if the forest itself leaned in to listen.
Aeren exhaled and played the incomplete Verse.
It exploded.
Light surged from his hands, scattering raw sound into the air like fireflies. The trees caught flame—but didn't burn. The air thickened—but didn't choke. For a moment, Aeren felt everything:
> The weight of the world,
the grief of the Codex,
and the pulse of something coming.
Something wrong.
---
Back in Hymnspire, the Dissonant Prototype took its first step out of the resonance coffin.
Its body flickered—sometimes man, sometimes song, sometimes silence.
It spoke with a voice stolen from hundreds:
> "Target recognized: Codex Bearer – Aeren Vire."
And then it disappeared.