The moment Crystal stepped through the vine-wrapped arch into the Verdant Abyss, the air changed.
Thick, warm, and silent.
Not the peaceful quiet of a temple.
Not the aching hush of a lost home.
This silence watched her.
Listened.
And it did not welcome sound.
🎼🎼🎼
Beneath her boots, moss shivered like a skin remembering footsteps.
Massive trees..twisting skyward like pipe organs... choked the light. Their leaves vibrated with echoes of long-dead harmonies, each one too brittle to sing.
As she moved deeper, Crystal felt her melody stifle in her throat.
The Chime Root was said to lie at the heart of this place.
A world-tree whose branches once sang the dawn chorus.
But now, it was dying.
Or worse... feeding something else.
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"No birds. No rustling. Nothing." Crystal whispered aloud.
Even her own voice came out muffled, like singing through a veil of oil.
She touched her flute... still cracked from the Subharmonic Throne... and held it close to her chest.
She could feel the memory of a song in the roots beneath her. A half-forgotten rhythm buried deep, asking to be remembered.
"I don't need to sing yet," she thought.
"First, I need to listen."
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Hours passed. She trekked over old bridges made of petrified vines, past skeletal beasts long turned to stone by the silence. She felt the pull growing stronger... an emotional resonance, like grief.
Finally, she saw it.
The Chime Root.
A massive, knotted tree rising from a crater of shattered instruments. Its branches coiled upward like strings pulled taut… but none vibrated.
Its voice was gone.
And at its base… something moved.
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A figure knelt in the roots.
Not quite human.
More vine than flesh. Wrapped in moss. Eyes hollow.
It turned.
A mouth opened... not to speak... but to absorb the sound of her gasp.
"Another singer…" it said, with a voice borrowed from memory.
"Another feast."
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The Verdant Chorruptor.
A creature formed from silence's hunger.
Born of the Abyss, it devoured songs.
Every bard, every choir, every whisper… it consumed and buried here beneath the Chime Root.
Now it wanted hers.
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"You'll forget your voice," it rasped, slithering forward.
"Forget yourself. Become soil for silence."
Crystal stepped back.
But her fear dissolved.
Not because she was ready.
But because the Chime Root hummed.
It recognized her melody.
It wanted to sing.
"Then let's remember it together."
She raised her flute.
And played.
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Not a song of power.
A lullaby.
One she barely remembered.
Her mother's.
The notes trembled... weak at first.. but the Chime Root responded. Its branches shimmered faintly. The silence recoiled.
The Chorruptor shrieked, retreating into the moss.
But Crystal followed, her music growing louder.
She wasn't just reclaiming the Chime Root.
She was planting hope in the soil where songs had died.
🎼🎼🎼
The roots surged. Instruments long buried stirred. Bells rang faintly in the distance.
The Verdant Abyss… awakened.
And the first Forgotten Key was found.
🎼🎼🎼
Next Chapter: "A Marionette's Stage" (Liora's Solo Path Begins)
Within the haunted Curtainfall Row, Liora returns to the Grand Gilded Opera.. where puppets still perform cursed tragedies. To find the Golden Bowstring, she must finish the symphony that once broke her… and face the composer who never truly left.