Opening Verse
Rhythm is a river, and rivers split.
Some flow to oceans. Some to graves.
But where the river breaks—there, a silence waits.
The world reassembled itself like a breath drawn too sharply.
Rin stumbled forward, bare feet pressing into wet earth. A mist clung to his skin, and for a moment, everything shimmered with the residue of the Drift—a rhythmless realm he alone had dared to dive into fully. He turned.
Kael stood beside him, eyes wide with awe and confusion, shoulders rising with the weight of return.
The veil behind them pulsed once—a brief, final heartbeat of silence—then folded into the air like paper into flame.
They were home.
But the world was not as they left it.
Rin blinked. Trees hung broken like snapped batons. Sky and soil carried the scent of scorched brass. A flock of black-caped crows took flight from a field where music once bloomed. The Kingdom of Syr'khan, in rhythm and realm, had shifted.
Kael took a breath, then another.
"Something's off," he said. "Wrong... off-beat."
It was more than silence. The land itself had changed tempo. Where there had once been harmony in nature, now there was a hollow echo—like a song stripped of its strings.
Time had slipped while they were away.
And that realization settled on Rin not with panic, but with grief.
They moved without speaking, drifting through ruins half-consumed by moss and frost. Statues of old kings lay face-down in shallow mud, their crowns chipped, their fingers broken. The banner of Syr'khan no longer waved—it had been torn into silence.
Then came the sound.
Not a rhythm. Not a melody.
A cough.
Guttural. Ragged. Human.
They ran.
She was buried beneath broken timbers and fractured stone, her body half-covered in ash, her face blistered with windburn. A single shoulder plate remained—crimson with the seal of the North Barracks.
Kael knelt immediately. "Velza?"
She stirred, eyes fluttering open with the slow uncertainty of someone unsure whether they lived.
"…You're alive," she rasped.
"Barely," Rin replied. "You look worse."
She managed a crooked smile. Then it faded. "They said you vanished in the Drift. That the Rhythm took you. That it ate you."
Kael looked to the sky. "How long were we gone?"
Velza closed her eyes. "Three moons. Maybe more. After you disappeared… everything fell apart."
She struggled to rise, and Rin supported her weight.
"They came with fire," she whispered. "The Crown Champions. After the southern front fell, the Kingdom turned in on itself. The Drift-breakers… the unbranded like me… they called us off-key. Called us threats to the Unified Pulse."
Her voice cracked. "We weren't soldiers anymore. We were heretics."
Rin felt it then—not guilt, but weight. The silence of the Drift had demanded something from him. And now, the world wanted payment in kind.
"Sera and Brann," Velza continued, "they survived the first purge. They gathered whoever they could from the barracks. Said they'd make for Nyreth's Spine—old fortress ruins. Said it was off-rhythm, maybe hidden."
"And you?" Kael asked.
Velza grimaced. "I was caught in the collapse of the Eastern Gate. Brann pulled me free. Sera gave me her last ration and told me to run."
A wind moved through the broken trees.
"They're not just fighting to live," she whispered. "They're being hunted."
Rin's gaze sharpened. "By who?"
Velza's eyes lost focus, as if remembering something her mind wished it hadn't witnessed. "He doesn't carry steel. He sings."
Kael stilled.
"He walks with no blade, no battalion. Only a song. But wherever that song touches—walls collapse. Bone snaps. Flame forgets how to burn. A Champion of the Crown. A Cantor of Unmaking."
Rin clenched his fists.
Velza gripped his cloak. "You left the world for a silence beyond. But while you slept, it began to sing again—a song not meant for life."
Closing Verse
When the blade leaves the sheath, it does not ask permission.
And when the song leaves the throat, it does not beg forgiveness.
Some rhythms return, Others awaken.