Kael crossed the threshold, leaving the vibrant, judgmental hum of Lumina behind. Inside his home, the air was different. The silence here wasn't the hollow emptiness of the outside world; it was a soft, shared quiet, a sanctuary. The light that filtered through the crystalline walls was muted, gentle on the eyes. He moved to a small washing basin in the corner—one his mother had sung into shape, its lip slightly uneven—and methodically washed his hands, scrubbing away the dust and grime of the quarry path. It was a ritual. He was washing away the outside world, cleansing himself of the frustration and shame before he entered her room.
He dried his hands on a piece of soft cloth and pushed open the door to the back chamber. The room was dim, the crystal of the walls intentionally grown thick and opaque to soften the world's constant, brilliant light. In the center of the room, on a pallet of woven reeds, lay his younger sister, Elara.
She was ten, but the illness made her seem smaller, more fragile. Her skin, which should have glowed with the soft inner light of a healthy life-crystal, was muted, like quartz clouded by deep internal fractures. And then there were the cracks. Thin, terrifying, spiderweb-like fissures were visible just beneath the surface of her skin, tracing faint, dark lines across her arms and cheeks. They weren't cuts on the surface; they seemed to lie deep within the crystalline structure of her being, a map of her slow disintegration.
A soft smile touched her lips when she saw him. It was a genuine smile, but it looked like it took a monumental effort. "Kael," she whispered, her voice a little thin, a little reedy.
He knelt beside her pallet, his own face softening into a smile he reserved only for her. "I'm here, Elara. How are you feeling?"
"The same," she said, a practiced response that revealed nothing. She held out her hand, and he took it, his larger, calloused fingers wrapping gently around hers. He was always so careful not to squeeze, terrified that even the slightest pressure might cause a new fissure to appear. Her skin was cool to the touch.
"Tell me what it sounds like today," she asked, her eyes fluttering closed. It was her favorite question, and his most painful one.
Kael swallowed the lump in his throat. He, the Dissonant, was her ears to the world. He had to invent the music he could never hear. "The Lumina Cluster is bright today," he began, his voice low and steady. "So the air is singing a high, clear chord. And the wind-chime trees... they're playing a counter-melody, like tiny silver bells. Elder Lyra purified the basin, and her song was so strong it made the water shimmer for a whole minute after." He described the sounds with the poetic language of a lifelong musician, a bitter irony that was lost on her. He painted a picture of a world alive with a symphony he could only imagine.
She sighed, a peaceful sound. "It sounds beautiful."
He was about to tell her another story, another lie woven from love, when her face suddenly tensed. She was seized by a coughing fit. It wasn't the wet, ragged cough of a normal sickness. It was a dry, rattling sound, sharp and percussive, like a handful of pebbles being shaken inside a hollow gourd. Kael's hand instinctively went to her back, rubbing gentle circles, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The fit passed as quickly as it came, leaving her breathless and pale. She curled her hand into a fist against her chest. "I'm okay," she rasped.
"Let me see," Kael said, his voice tight.
Reluctantly, she uncurled her fingers. There, in the center of her small palm, lay a tiny, glistening object no bigger than a grain of rice. It wasn't a stone. It was opalescent, catching the dim light with a faint, pearly sheen that he recognized with a jolt of ice-water dread. It was the luster of a life-crystal.
It was a piece of her.
The air left Kael's lungs. He stared, mesmerized and horrified. The healers' gentle songs, the poultices of resonant moss, the carefully harmonized tonics—all of it was useless. The Crystalblight wasn't being slowed. It was accelerating. She was literally falling apart from the inside out. The world narrowed to that single, terrifying point of light in her palm. The quiet sanctuary of the room was shattered, replaced by the screaming silence in his own head.
Something inside him snapped.
He stood up so abruptly the motion startled her. "I'm going to the healers," he said, his voice a low growl he didn't recognize. "They have to do something more."
He didn't wait for her reply. He stormed out of the room, out of the house, his carefully constructed calm completely demolished. The light of the village seemed harsh and mocking now. The harmonious hum in the air felt like a suffocating shroud. His desperation had finally boiled over into a white-hot rage.
He was halfway across the main commons when a voice cut through his fury. "Well, well. If it isn't Lumina's own broken instrument."
Kael stopped, turning slowly. Lian stood there, a smug, self-satisfied smirk on his face. He was Kael's age, and he was everything Kael was not: a gifted Resonator, praised by the elders, followed by a coterie of admirers. He was casually tossing a small, smooth river stone in the air. With each toss, he'd hum a sharp, clear note, and the stone would flare with a brief, brilliant inner light before he caught it again. It was an effortless display of the power Kael so desperately lacked.
"Not now, Lian," Kael bit out.
Lian caught the stone and held it, letting it pulse with a steady, rhythmic light in his palm. "What's the matter? Still trying to make rocks listen to you, Dissonant?" His cronies snickered behind him. "I heard you made the Communal Basin whine this morning. You should be more careful. You might crack it."
Kael's hands clenched into fists at his sides. The image of the shard in Elara's palm burned behind his eyes.
Lian took a step closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, venomous tone. "You know, it's a shame. Maybe if you could hum a single correct note, you could actually help your sister instead of just watching her fall apart."
The words struck Kael like a physical blow, finding every insecurity, every fear, every ounce of his guilt and twisting the knife. The world went red at the edges. A raw, animal sound of fury escaped his throat. He didn't think. He acted. He lunged forward and shoved Lian, hard.
Lian, caught off guard by the sudden violence, stumbled backward, dropping his glowing stone. It hit the crystalline ground and went dark. For a moment, everyone was silent, stunned.
Then, before anyone could react, Kael turned and ran. Not toward the healers' enclave. Their gentle songs were a lie. Not back home to his sister. His presence was a lie. He ran away from the village, away from the harmony and the pity and the failure, his heart a frantic, hammering drum of pure, unadulterated rage.