The Hollow Vale was unlike any place Kai had ever seen or felt. The trees were tall, thin, and fossilized into pale monuments of silence. Their hollow cores whistled with the wind, creating haunting melodies that shifted and twisted with every step. It wasn't music. It was memory, caught between the living and the dead.
Ysera walked ahead of him, her hand trailing along the ancient bark. "These trees once breathed the Song of the World," she murmured. "Now, they echo its silence."
The Vale stretched endlessly, shrouded in a silver mist that dimmed the sun and played tricks on the eye. Their footsteps tapped out notes on the brittle earth. It was as if the forest was listening.
Kai frowned. "What are we looking for?"
Ysera stopped before answering, her eyes fixed on a twisted cluster of trees that formed a natural archway. "The last Echo-Singer died centuries ago, but the forest remembers them. We're going to wake one."
The path narrowed. Roots like bone coils snaked across the ground. They passed ruins collapsed towers, half-sunken bells, and what looked like shrines carved from petrified feathers. Kai's skin prickled.
The Hollow Vale was not haunted by ghosts. It was haunted by songs that had lost their singers.
As they walked deeper, the music changed. Less harmony and more dissonance.
They reached a clearing where the ground dipped into a bowl-shaped crater. At its center stood a single, towering structure of an enormous bell crafted from ivory-like bone, embedded with runes.
"The Bone Bell," Ysera whispered, reverence in her tone. "They say it once rang across dimensions. It summoned Orren, the Watcher of Dissonance."
"Orren?" Kai echoed.
She nodded. "The only Watcher who once had a voice. He sang the harmony of chaos."
The bell was cracked. Its mouth gaped like a wound. Runes etched along its rim glowed faintly as Kai approached.
"Will ringing it bring Orren back?"
"No," Ysera said. "It's broken. To summon Orren, you must pass his trial. You must face silence."
Suddenly, the runes pulsed, and a circle of stone rose from the earth around the bell. A second later, a figure stepped forward from the shadows.
It had no face. No form. Just an outline that swallowed sound, light, and magic. The Guardian of Silence.
Kai stepped into the circle. The world beyond the rim muted, as though someone had smothered reality.
He couldn't hear his heartbeat. His breath. Not even his thoughts.
The creature lunged.
Kai dodged instinctively. It moved in blurs, not steps. Every time it neared, the space around him collapsed into nothing. Magic refused to spark. Even his blade felt heavier, sluggish.
He was alone in void.
He remembered Ysera's words: You must face silence.
Not fight it. Face it.
Kai stopped running. Closed his eyes. Let the silence in.
And in that quiet, deeper than thought, he heard it: a lullaby. Not from this place. Not from now. A song his mother sang when he was young.
He began to hum.
No sound passed his lips. But the melody was inside him, radiating outward like a pulse.
The Guardian hesitated. Its body flickered.
Kai held the note in his mind and took a step forward.
With every note of the memory-song, cracks formed in the Guardian's body.
And then, with a final breath, Kai opened his mouth, not to sing, but to remember. The soundless song exploded in silence.
The Guardian shattered.
The bell roared not with sound, but with presence.
The ground beneath the bell trembled and split. From its center, a vast cathedral of bone and light emerged, spiraling downward into the earth. At its heart stood a statue or no, a being.
Orren.
The Watcher's form was draped in chains of bells. His face was hidden behind a veil of vibrating strands. His mouth was sewn shut with golden thread.
But his eyes,they sang.
Kai fell to one knee. Not in worship, but in awe.
"I am the Dissonant," Orren's voice echoed in their minds. "I do not sing. I resonate."
"Why did you bring us here?" Kai asked.
"You brought yourselves," Orren replied. "The world you walk in fractures. The Revenant does not seek rebirth. It seeks retuning. The Choir's return will unwrite the chords of creation."
Orren lifted a finger. A small shard broke off from one of his bell-chains and floated to Kai.
"This is the Resonant Shard," he said. "It will anchor your truth. In realms of false echoes, it will show you the undistorted line."
Kai took it. It vibrated against his skin, warm melded into his armour seamlessly as something awakened deep within him, the faint echo of a voice that wasn't his. Azrael.
Memories not his own shimmered like broken glass. A battlefield of stars. A mourning goddess cradling his broken body. A promise whispered beneath an obsidian sky.
The armor Kai wore stirred for the first time since it chose him. Symbols across its breastplate glowed, aligning with the Resonant Shard. From within the soul-steel, Azrael's will spoke, not in words, but in feeling. Encouragement. Power. Guidance.
Kai gasped as pieces of lost knowledge slipped into place,combat forms, ancient rites, and names that hadn't been spoken since the world sang its first note.
Orren watched with timeless eyes.
"Azrael stirs within you. You are his continuation but not his puppet. His memories will guide you, but your choices will define the harmony."
"Thank you," Kai said.
But Orren wasn't done.
"You carry more than memory," the Watcher said. "You carry future echoes. Beware the girl who sings with no voice. She is not what she seems."
Kai froze.
Orren's cathedral began to recede.
Ysera grabbed his arm. "We have to go."
As they fled, the Vale behind them cracked and crumbled. Trees collapsed, bells shattered, and the earth swallowed the cathedral once more.
But the echoes remained.
Outside the Vale, the wind picked up. Clouds swirled. And for a moment, Kai thought he heard voices in the breeze, echoes of other versions of himself. Ones who had failed. Ones who had fled. Ones who had betrayed.
He clutched the Resonant Shard tighter. The armor responded, tightening protectively around him, as if shielding him from fate.
Beside him, Ysera sang quietly, a prayer, perhaps. Or a warning.
Kai turned to her. "That girl Orren mentioned… Who do you think he meant?"
Ysera looked away.
"I don't know," she said.
But she did.
Kai could feel it.
And behind them, unseen in the shattered vale, something stirred, something with no mouth but countless voices.
The Choir was beginning to hum.