Zen's voice broke through the crackling of the fire, low and haunted.
"There was a boy they couldn't break."
Solas sat still now, his usual smirk tempered by curiosity. The flickering firelight painted shifting shadows on Zen's face, deepening the lines and memories etched into his expression.
Zen stared into the flames, as though trying to find the boy again in their dancing patterns.
"They called the place the Oratorium. It was buried beneath the Syndicate city of Vireth. No sunlight. Just stone and steel, and Threadlight scraped from broken minds."
Back then, Zen wore a mask.
A real one, it was iron-lined, emotionless, a face that wasn't his. He was an enforcer then, a product of the Syndicate's Ascendant program. His job was to oversee the control chambers, where children were taught to manipulate Threads through trauma, not harmony.
The boy was different.
His cell was smaller than the rest, carved with old prayer symbols long since banned. He wouldn't scream. Wouldn't react. Just stared at the stone as though it were lying to him.
Zen had watched him for weeks.
"Why don't you break?" he had asked once, through the bars.
The boy, Koshiro, hadn't even blinked.
"Because I'm already broken," he replied. "I just decided not to be useful that way."
Solas raised an eyebrow. "Now that sounds like him."
Zen continued.
"They tried everything, starvation, sensory deprivation. They tried to pit him against others, see who would snap. He never did. He talked to the walls. He sang when they weren't watching."
"Wait," Solas interrupted, "he sang?"
Zen nodded. "Not loudly. Just under his breath. Lullabies, mostly."
Solas stiffened.
Zen noticed,"Something wrong?"
"No," Solas said, but too quickly. "Go on."
Zen resumed.
"There was one night… a girl, younger than him, tried to fight the guards. She was screaming about the Thread they'd stolen from her. Koshiro tried to shield her."
Zen's jaw tensed. "They made him watch."
The girl's name was Lina. She had Thread harmonics so potent they burned the room when she cried. But the Fold wanted them bottled, contained and turned into fuel.
When Lina refused, they severed her from her Thread using a pain-loop extractor, a cruel device designed to lock someone in a single moment of agony, for hours.
Koshiro didn't fight. Not then.
He sat by her side, whispering lullabies through the bars until her voice was gone. Then he screamed for the first time. Not in fear, but in promise.
That night, something in the walls cracked. Thread harmonics tore from the cell and disarmed every lock in the chamber. Lights burst. Guards bled from the eyes.
Zen had been one of the first to reach the corridor—and the only one to walk away.
He found Koshiro sitting beside the girl's body, rod clutched in his hand, threads coiling around his fingers like strands of her last breath.
"I'm going to break the Fold," Koshiro had whispered "Even if I have to sing the world into pieces."
Zen should've killed him, that was protocol.
But he didn't.
He took off his mask, And said, "I'll help you."
Back by the fire, the silence stretched long. Even the wind held its breath.
Solas didn't speak for a while. When he did, his voice was quieter.
"So that's it. You saw the monster they made, and chose to follow the boy inside instead."
Zen nodded once.
"He doesn't just want revenge. He wants to make sure no other child ever ends up singing lullabies in a cage."
Solas let the words linger, then tilted his head, smirk returning like armor.
"Well," he said, rising to his feet, "that answers both my questions, nicely done that was very... cinematic."
Zen stood. "Then I get to ask one."
Solas paused mid-step.
"Why are you helping us?"
The smirk deepened into something unreadable.
"You don't get a question," Solas replied. "But if you did?"
He looked toward the sleeping Koshiro.
"Maybe I believe in songs too, even the broken ones."
He vanished into the dark, just as the fire cracked and collapsed.
Zen smiles.
Above them, the stars blinked like watching eyes.