The world returned in pieces. First came the ringing in his ears, a high, piercing tone that was the ghost of the shriek he had unleashed. Then, the smell—acrid and sharp, the scent of stone pulverized into fine, choking dust that coated his tongue. Finally, the pain, a bright, insistent signal from his forearm that cut through the fog of adrenaline.
Kael was on his knees in the Crystal Boneyard, surrounded by the evidence of his sin. The crater where the boulder had stood was a gaping wound in the earth, a testament to the sheer, annihilating violence he had unleashed. It wasn't creation. It wasn't shaping. It was erasure.
He stared at the gash on his arm. The shard of grey crystal was embedded deep, and a steady trickle of blood, shockingly dark against his pale skin, ran down his wrist and dripped onto the dusty ground. The sight of it made his stomach churn. This power was not clean. It was not distant or ethereal like the Resonators' songs. It was brutal. It had teeth and claws, and it had bitten him.
The ringing in his ears finally subsided, and in its place, a new sound flooded his senses: fear. It was a frantic, internal roar. The explosion had been loud, a deafening crack that must have echoed for miles. He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, crab-walking into the shadow of another junk pile, a failed, lopsided archway that had been abandoned years ago. His heart hammered against his ribs, a wild, panicked rhythm that was the complete opposite of the world's harmonious hum.
He peered around the edge of the archway, his eyes scanning the ridgeline that separated the Boneyard from the orderly expanse of Lumina. He expected to see them. The Wardens. The Chorus Masters' enforcers, their forms silhouetted against the setting sun, drawn by the calamitous noise. He imagined their approach, their steps silent, their faces grim masks of judgment. He pictured the Shattering Sentence, the resonance chamber, the collective song that would unmake him. The fear was a cold, coiling serpent in his gut. This power didn't make him strong; it made him a heretic. It made him a target.
Every sound was amplified, twisted by his paranoia. The distant, gentle chime of a wind-crystal tree became the signal of an approaching Warden. The rustle of the breeze across the scree was the whisper of his name, a condemnation on the wind. He held his breath, listening, waiting for the inevitable.
Minutes stretched into an eternity. Nothing. No one came. Perhaps the Boneyard was far enough away. Perhaps the sound had been swallowed by the surrounding crystal formations. Or perhaps, in a village so suffused with harmonious sound, a single, violent noise was dismissed as an anomaly, a distant rockslide in the Grey Wastes.
The realization that he might have gotten away with it did little to calm him. It only shifted the nature of his fear from immediate capture to long-term survival. He couldn't go back like this. The bloody, torn tunic, the obvious wound—they were a confession. He needed a story. A fall, a sharp rock, something mundane and believable.
With trembling hands, he tore a strip from the hem of his tunic. The fabric was coarse against his skin. He looked at the ugly shard embedded in his flesh. It had to come out. He shoved a fold of the cloth into his mouth, biting down hard to brace himself. Gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, he gripped the protruding end of the crystal sliver with his other hand. It was slick with blood.
He pulled.
The pain was a flash of white-hot fire, lancing up his arm. A choked grunt escaped past the cloth in his mouth. The shard came free with a sickening, wet sound. He threw it away from him, watching it skitter across the grey dust. The wound, now unobstructed, began to bleed more freely. He quickly pressed the clean part of his tunic-strip against the gash, applying pressure. The cloth quickly turned dark and wet.
He huddled there in the growing twilight, a boy hiding in a graveyard of failed magic, clutching a self-inflicted wound from a power he didn't understand. The giddy, terrible hope he had felt moments after the explosion was gone, replaced by a cold, pragmatic terror. He couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't ask for help.
To reveal this power would be to sign his own death warrant. The Elders, the Wardens, even Lyra—they wouldn't see a potential cure for Elara. They would see a monster. They would see chaos incarnate, a living embodiment of the Dissonance they spent their entire lives trying to soothe and contain. They would take him from Elara, and their "cure" for him would be to silence his song forever. This secret was a heavy stone, and he would have to carry it alone.
He waited until the great Lumina Cluster high on the geode's ceiling had dimmed, its light softening as the world cycled towards its rest period. The sky-crystal began to shift from brilliant white to a deep, restful indigo, casting long, distorted shadows that turned the Boneyard into a landscape of lurking beasts. It was time.
He rose to his feet, his arm throbbing with a dull, insistent ache. He carefully re-wrapped the makeshift bandage, making it as tight as he could. He pulled his sleeve down over it, wincing as the fabric brushed against the raw wound. He took a deep breath, schooling his features, forcing the terror from his face and burying it deep inside. He practiced the mask of weary normalcy he had worn his entire life.
He took the long way back, sticking to the little-used paths that wound around the quarries. When he finally re-entered the outer edge of Lumina, the gentle, harmonious hum of the village washed over him. But it was different now. It was no longer a beautiful symphony he was excluded from. It felt alien. It felt fragile. He now knew a sound that could shatter this perfect, placid world to dust. It was the sound of the enemy, the sound of a system that would crush him without a second thought if it ever discovered the truth of the noise that lived inside him. The Great Song was no longer a source of comfort for his people; it was the gilded cage they all lived in. And he, somehow, now held the key.