"They don't ask questions to find the truth.They ask them until you forget what truth ever was."— Ex-Trialmask (defected, executed)
Layer 3: Subterranean Veinline, 6 clicks below Vandral
The stone cracked before they even arrived.
Sarai felt it in her molars — a low, dissonant pressure disturbing her thoughts like a bad memory surfacing too fast. The walls of the tunnel, previously slick with decay and age, were now twitching softly, as if something behind them were breathing.
Kael stirred beside her. Sweat rolled down his face despite the cold.
"They're... close," he muttered. "I feel… fire without heat."
Sarai gritted her teeth. No. Not fire. Songs.
Then they heard it — the faint noise coming closer:
A children's hymn. Sung off-key. Fragmented. Familiar.
"One for sorrow, two for skin…Three to peel the shame within…"
She turned. "Kael, whatever you do, don't listen to the rhyme."
Enter: The Third Choir
They didn't walk so much as drip into existence.
From a tunnel half-devoured by rusted metal and distorted Aith, the Choir came: five figures in mismatched masks. One held a mirror shard. Another, a stitched burlap bag. One wore a hollow porcelain face — blank as paper
They didn't attack.
They simply stood. And began to sing.
"Four for blood that never dries…Five for truth that always lies…"
Kael gasped — and dropped to his knees.
"Tolan?"
His voice cracked like glass. Sarai spun toward him. His eyes weren't looking at the Choir. They were looking somewhere else.
Some when else.
Memory Breach
Trialmask Protocol: Memory Anchor Injection→ Use the target's deepest emotional wound.→ Expand it. Break the difference between memory and now.
Fold the identity into obedience.
In Kael's vision:The slums of Vandral. Tolan's voice.Laughter. Then the scream. Then the fire.
His hands were covered in soot and blood.And his own voice:
"You left him. You chose to run. You watched him burn."
Kael clutched his temples. "No—he told me to run—he wanted me to—!"
"Six for flame that eats the past…"The choir stepped closer. Their voices were now coming from inside the tunnel walls.
"Seven dies and speaks the last…"
Sarai Breaks Protocol
Sarai did what no rebel should do in the face of a Choir.
She screamed back.
"You want memories? I'll show you mine."
She dropped her blade.
Then opened her palm — and cut it with Aith.
Her Myra flared. Red lines arise into the air, creating a memory from vapor.
The memory of her brother — chained, wide-eyed — as the Trialmask remade his soul during an Aith-binding gone wrong.The moment his eyes turned to glass.The moment he called her a traitor.
The tunnel cracked.
The Choir flinched.
Kael: Fracture Point
His vision flickered. His hands trembled.
The hymn wouldn't stop:
"Eight for hunger, nine for skin…"
His black flame ignited — but it wasn't the usual roar.
It moved differently now. Slower. Hungrier. It spiraled like a tornado. It didn't burn the air.
It burned words.
The hymn faltered.
One of the masked Choir gasped, clutching their throat — their voice gone. As if the fire had burned the sound out of their mind.
Kael stood.
Eyes glowing like coals. His voice low.
"Say that rhyme again."
"Kael," Sarai said, backing away, "you're not… you're not supposed to burn ideas yet—!"
But he did.
And as he stepped forward, black fire that gradually devours the stone, Kael Verrin began to walk the razor-edge between will and collapse.
One of the Choir broke rank.
Another simply fell — no wound. Just… empty. As if their entire concept had been burned away.
Sarai stared at him.
And for a single, terrifying second… she wasn't sure whose side he was still on.