Gordon stood in the threshold, a faint, wistful smile on his face, drawn by the beautiful sound. Then, with a violence that made everyone jump, the piano's fallboard slammed shut like a bear trap, missing Uta's fingers by a hair's breadth. A sharp, pained gasp escaped her as she snapped her hands back, her voice cracking on a aborted cry.
Chaos erupted.
A gust of wind, cold and smelling of salt and rot, ripped through the room with no discernible source. It tore through the piles of sheet music and notebooks, sending them whirling into the air in a frantic, papery blizzard. Vesta squealed, clutching Mikasi as the pages slapped against her face. The lights overhead flickered madly, casting strobing, jerking shadows that danced a frantic jig. A heavy velvet chair levitated a foot off the ground before crashing back to the marble floor with a splintering thud.
"What the hell?" Atlas roared over the din, his body already coiled into a fighter's stance, his sapphire eyes scanning the room for a target that wasn't there.
Through the maelstrom, Jelly's gaze fixated on something peculiar. A slender, silver conductor's baton was spinning in the air as if held by an invisible hand. His massive, starry eyes crossed slightly as he tracked it. With a happy, oblivious "Bloop!" he lunged, his gelatinous mouth opening wide. He swallowed the baton whole. It gyrated inside his translucent blue form, and he giggled, his whole body jiggling. "Tickle-tummy!" he chirped.
As suddenly as it began, it stopped. The wind died. The papers fluttered to the ground. The lights steadied. The silence that rushed back in was heavier and more menacing than before.
Marya's golden eyes, sharp and calculating, scanned the room. Her gaze, cold as steel, landed on Gordon, still frozen in the doorway. "What was that?" Her voice was low, devoid of panic, demanding an answer.
Uta, rubbing her wrists, opened her mouth to speak. "Well, it's—"
"It is the island's curse," Gordon interrupted, his voice a somber, rolling baritone as he stepped fully into the room. He moved with a weary gravity, as if bearing the weight of the words.
Vesta gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks. "Oh no, a curse!" She turned to Uta, placing a concerned hand on her shoulder. "Is that why you can't leave?"
Gordon continued before Uta could form a reply, his story flowing like a rehearsed elegy. "There is a powerful entity that prevents us from playing any music that is not in resonance with the island's own sorrowful melody."
Vesta cocked her head, her rainbow hair swaying. "But then how do you play music across the transponder snails for the whole world to hear?"
Marya answered for her, her eyes never leaving Gordon's face. "I assume the harmony of those specific transmissions is in sync with the island." Her tone was flat, dissecting his story.
Uta offered a small, tight smile in confirmation.
Marya pressed on, addressing Uta directly. "Is the curse the reason you're trapped here?"
Uta slid her palms across the smooth, cool surface of the closed piano flip board, her eyes fixed on a scattered sheet of music on the floor. She gave Gordon a sheepish, almost guilty look. He replied with a somber, paternal expression, nodding gravely.
"It's… part of the reason," Uta whispered, the admission seeming to cost her greatly.
Atlas interjected, a fierce grin spreading across his features. "So all we have to do is break the curse! Simple."
BURP! Jelly hiccupped, the silver baton rattling out of his mouth and clattering to the floor. This was followed by a soft, reverberating toot from his other end, which emerged as a perfect, clear middle C. Uta, despite the tension, let out a wet giggle. Vesta stared, her face a comical mask of confusion.
"Trying to compose a new symphony, Jelly ball?" Atlas teased, his earlier alarm replaced by predatory amusement.
Marya cut her eyes back to Gordon, her patience wearing thin. "Do you know how to break this curse?"
Gordon moved to a plush chair, its fabric worn thin, and sat as if it were the throne of a broken kingdom. He began to speak, his voice weaving a tapestry of tragedy. Gordon's posture slumped, the weight of memory bowing his broad shoulders. He leaned forward in the worn chair, his large hands clasped, and when he spoke, his voice was a low, resonant cello note, filling the silent room with a tale of sorrow.
"Long ago," he began, his eyes seeing not the present company, but a ghostly recollection, "this island was not a tomb, but a temple to sound. And its high priest was a man of the sea and the score: Captain Nikolaos Korsakov. He was a Marine, yes, but not a mere brute. He heard the world as a grand composition—the creak of a ship's hull was a bass line, the wind in the rigging a soaring violin. He believed in order, in structure, that every note had its place in a divine harmony."
He paused, the silence feeling deeper than before. "But there is a harmony… and there is a dissonance. And on one night, the sky did not simply darken; it shattered. It was not a storm of wind and rain, but a storm of sound itself. A… a presence. A force of pure acoustic chaos. It had no form you could strike, no heart you could pierce. It was a screaming chord that never resolved, a rhythm that tore at the mind."
Gordon's knuckles were white. "Captain Korsakov, he understood. He knew this was an enemy that could not be fought with cannon or blade, but only with a song of perfect, unassailable order. He and his men… they tried. By the gods, they tried. They stood their ground, playing the most disciplined, complex marches ever written, a wall of sound against the bedlam." He shook his head, a slow, mournful gesture. "But the chaos was too great. It was like trying to hold back the ocean with a sheet of music. Their harmony was ripped to shreds. Their very souls were… unraveled by the noise."
He looked around at his listeners, his gaze lingering on the dusty piano. "They were not simply killed. They were absorbed. Trapped. And the Captain's final, desperate command to his men—'Hold the line! Maintain the tempo!'—became their eternal prison. His unyielding desire for order became the very chains that bind them here. Now, any music that does not resonate with their silent, eternal dirge… any song that speaks too much of the joyful, chaotic world of the living… is seen as a threat. A flaw in their perfect, dead composition. And they… correct it."
He finally looked at Uta, his expression a mixture of profound grief and a forced, fragile hope. "As for how we survived… the chaos is a fickle thing. It passed over us, a wave that drowns a city but leaves a single shell untouched on the shore. A twist of fate I cannot explain, a mystery that has haunted my every waking moment since." He left the gaping holes in his story yawning wide, artfully painting their survival as a tragic accident, carefully omitting the red-haired pirate and the little girl whose voice was the true catalyst for the nightmare.
Atlas, who had been stroking his chin in contemplation, grunted. "That's a nice story and all, but do you know how to break the curse?"
Gordon's eyes gleamed with a fervent light. "Captain Nikolaos 'Rhythm' Korsakov was composing a magnum opus, a counter-song of perfect harmony and structure designed to pacify such chaos. The score must be found and completed. When this counter-song is played, the curse will be lifted."
Marya's lips thinned into a skeptical line. "And you know this will work?"
"I have searched for the answer all these long years," Gordon said, his voice trembling with what sounded like genuine emotion. "So that Uta's great music can finally be heard around the world, free from this prison. I am sure of it."
"We have to help!" Vesta cried, jumping to her feet, all earlier fear replaced by starry-eyed determination.
Marya, however, remained unmoved. "Where," she asked, her voice dangerously calm, "would this score be?"
Gordon stood, a man animated by a newfound hope. "I will show you." He moved towards the door, and after a moment's hesitation, the others followed—Marya with simmering suspicion, Atlas with battle-ready curiosity, Vesta with idealistic fervor, and Uta with a complex mix of hope and fear. Jelly brought up the rear, bouncing along and leaving a trail of soft, random musical notes in his wake, an absurdist procession into the heart of the mystery.
---
The silence of Elegia was a physical presence, a heavy, smothering blanket that made every footfall on the cracked white stone of the promenade sound like a sacrilege. They had moved away from the central castle, its shadow no longer directly upon them, but the island's oppressive stillness had followed, deeper and more profound than any mere absence of sound.
"How much further?" Eliane whined, her voice small in the vast, open space of a ruined plaza. Her small hands fiddled with the strap of the satchel where she kept her cooking knives, a comforting anchor to a world that made sense. "It's just more broken buildings and… quiet."
Galit's emerald eyes were in constant motion, his long neck held in a loose S-curve as he scanned their surroundings. He was searching for anything—a footprint, a disturbance in the dust, a pattern in the collapse of the masonry—anything that could be a clue. "There is nothing," he murmured, frustration creeping into his usually confident tone. "No signs of recent passage, no logical paths. It's as if the city just… gave up all at once."
Jannali, who had been walking with a hand pressed to her forehead as if staving off a persistent ache, suddenly stopped. Her body went rigid. Her head tilted, her large brown eyes losing focus, looking at something none of them could see.
"What is it?" Galit asked, his voice sharp, his hand instinctively moving toward the braided sinew bracers that housed his whips.
Jannali didn't look at him. Slowly, she turned her head, pointing a trembling finger towards a collapsed archway that led into a grand, roofless hall. "Music," she breathed, her accent softening the word with wonder. "It's… a symphony. A whole bloody orchestra, playing its heart out. Can't you hear it? The strings, the brass… it's beautiful."
Eliane, her eyes wide, shook her head. "I don't hear anything."
Jannali blinked rapidly, the vision solidifying for her alone. "No way," she gasped, a slow smile spreading across her face. "It's the island. The island as it was before… all this." She gestured at the crumbling ruins around them. "It's incredible. The lights, the people in their finery, the music swelling right here where we're standing…" Her head swiveled, taking in the ghostly grandeur. Then, her smile vanished, replaced by sheer terror. Her head snapped up as if tracking a missile.
She stumbled backward with a choked cry, and Galit was there in an instant, his lean frame catching her. He could feel her trembling violently against him.
"Jannali, what is it?" Eliane cried, rushing to her side and clutching her arm.
Jannali shook her head, her knuckles white where she gripped Galit's sleeve. She was whispering, her voice thick with dread. "A demon king… a thing of screaming chords and shattered rhythm. Tot Musica." Her eyes were wide, reflecting a cataclysm only she could witness. She watched, paralyzed, as flashes of explosive light and waves of concussive Haki—the spiritual energy of willpower so potent it became a physical force—ripped through the spectral memory, wiping the demonic entity from existence. The glorious music was torn to shreds, replaced by a final, deafening silence that left only the ruins they saw now. The vision faded, leaving her pale and panting.
As Jannali pushed herself to her feet, the air directly in front of them grew cold. The dust motes dancing in the thin sunlight seemed to freeze, then coalesce. A figure shimmered into existence, translucent and bathed in a faint, cold light.
It was a tall man, lean and wiry, standing with a ramrod-straight posture that spoke of a life of discipline. He wore the impeccably tailored, spotless white and blue full-dress uniform of a Marine Captain, the buttons and epaulets gleaming with a spectral sheen. His dark hair was short and neat beneath his cap, and his sharp, gray eyes held an unnerving, timeless intensity. A thin, silver conducting baton was clipped to his breast pocket. This was the ghost of Captain Nikolaos 'Rhythm' Korsakov, and his very presence sucked the warmth from the air.
Eliane let out a squeal, ducking behind Jannali and Galit. "It's a ghost! A proper ghost!"
The specter made no aggressive move. Instead, he lifted a gloved hand, stark white and slightly shimmering, and gestured for them to follow with a slow, deliberate motion toward the dark entrance of a nearby structure that might have once been a grand concert hall or a library of scores.
"It appears he wants us to go with him," Galit announced, his analytical mind warring with a primal unease. His fingers itched for his whips, but this was an enemy that offered no clear pressure points to strike.
Jannali, her breath finally steadying, nodded. "Yeah, mate. The message is coming in loud and clear."
"Do you think we should?" Galit asked, his eyes never leaving the ghost.
Eliane whined from behind them, "Maybe we should go back to the others? This feels like sticking your hand in a dark hole to see what bites it."
Captain Korsakov stood perfectly still, waiting. His ghostly form seemed to anchor the very silence around them, making the idea of turning back feel like a monumental effort.
Jannali's expression hardened, a resolute spark igniting in her eyes. She adjusted the headscarf that concealed her third eye, a gesture of grounding herself. "Nah," she said, her voice firm. "He's part of the song, and right now, he's the only one offering to play us a new verse. Let's see what the good Captain has to show us."
*****
Kuro moved through the choked thoroughfares of Echo-City like a blade through water, his grip on Ember's arm an unbreakable tether. The chaotic market, with its glitching lights and overlapping shouts, was a blur of peripheral danger. Ember, dragged in his wake, was a dazed puppet, her earlier manic energy gone, replaced by a confused lethargy. Then, a potent, spicy aroma cut through the air—a vendor selling skewers of sizzling, deep-red fungus that smelled like cosmic curry and volcanic ash.
Ember inhaled sharply, the scent a key turning in a locked part of her mind. She blinked, her head shaking as if to clear water from her ears. The disorientation broke her rhythm, and her foot caught on a loose cable. She stumbled, falling hard and wrenching herself from Kuro's grip.
He stopped instantly, spinning on his heel, his body coiled to snatch her back up. But he froze. The look in her eyes had changed. The terrifying, unfocused glee was gone, replaced by a swimming confusion and dawning fear. She looked up at him, her mismatched eyes wide with genuine bewilderment.
"What…?" she gasped, her voice small and lost. "Where…?" Her head swiveled, taking in the bustling, hostile market as if for the first time. "What happened?"
Kuro's jaw flexed. He could hear the distant, organized shouts of guards and the heavy, synchronized tread of armored boots growing closer. "It appears," he said, his voice clipped and cold, "that you had an episode."
"An episode? What are you talking about, an—?"
He didn't let her finish. Sighing in sharp exasperation, he hauled her to her feet. "We don't have time for this right now. We need to get to the ship." Ember, finally seeing the squads of white-armored CUA guards charging through the parting crowd, herded by the angry blare of klaxons, gave a frantic nod, allowing Kuro to guide her into a desperate sprint.
On the docking bay, the atmosphere aboard the ship was thick with the Nutter brothers' brand of anxious energy.
"—and if the harmonic resonance of the cargo isn't synced with the engine's hum, we might as well be flying a screaming kettle!" Peter argued, tapping a furious rhythm on a control panel.
"It's called character, Pete! A little auditory personality!" Tony shot back.
Their bickering cut off as Emily and Souta rushed up the ramp, their faces etched with urgency.
"About time!" Tony yelled, throwing his hands up. "Where are the other two? We have a schedule! A beautiful, beautiful schedule!"
Souta let out a weary sigh, but Emily stepped forward, her voice strained. "We must make haste."
Aurélie's head snapped up from her notebook, her silver hair catching the bay lights. "Elaborate," she commanded, her voice a shard of ice.
"This moon is not stable," Souta interjected, his tone leaving no room for debate.
"Nonsense!" Peter and Tony snapped in unison. "We've been running this route for—"
Their protest was drowned out by the sound of commotion. Kuro and Ember burst into the bay at a full sprint, a dozen CUA guards close behind, their rifles raised.
Bianca and Charlie peered out from the cargo hold. "Like, I think that means it is like time to go!" Bianca yelled, darting for the pilot's seat.
Tony and Peter erupted into a symphony of curses, scrambling over each other to finish securing the last of the hover-crates.
"Everyone, like, strap in!" Bianca's voice echoed through the ship's intercom, oddly calm amidst the chaos.
Aurélie moved like a calm storm. She strode to the end of the docking ramp, Anathema already in her hand. As Kuro and Ember rushed past her, she didn't flinch. With a single, fluid, and lethally elegant swing, she sent a visible arc of hardened Haki rippling through the air. It wasn't a cut, but a colossal, invisible hammer. The wave of force hit the leading guards, throwing the entire squad several feet backwards in a clatter of white armor and stunned shouts.
Peter and Tony, who had been frantically wrestling with a strap, stood slack-jawed. "Damn, lady!" Tony breathed.
Aurélie sheathed her blade with a soft click and stepped calmly onto the ship. Charlie, who had been waiting by the control, immediately pressed the button, and the ramp began to hiss shut.
He adjusted his pith helmet, looking at the disheveled Kuro and the trembling Ember. "Ahem. I trust the procurement of 'supplies' was… eventful?"
Kuro slid his cracked glasses up the bridge of his nose with a perfectly controlled finger. "We had an unexpected incident."
"We don't have time for all this!" Peter and Tony shrieked in harmony, diving for their seats. "Everyone strap in so we can get out of here!"
Bianca's voice came over the coms again, laced with a focused energy. "We are, like, clear for departure. Engines are hot."
"Then go already!" the brothers yelled in unison, their voices a perfect blend of terror and fury.
With a deep, rising thrum that vibrated through the very bones of the ship, the ship lifted from the deck, turning its nose toward the artificial sky of the cavern and the deadly vacuum beyond, leaving the unstable moon and its furious guardians behind.
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