Zyri pulled out a map.
—"If we're to continue, you need more than training. You need knowledge. There's a place. A forgotten tower in the deserts of Arellon. It was the last bastion of the Veil Singers, an order that vanished when songs began to be feared."
Kael studied the map. Took a deep breath.
—"Atrazahn. Where the first song was written in stone."
Maple looked at the lyre in his hands.
—"Then let's go to where it all began."
And for the first time, he felt that his true name—the one the ancient echoes held—was not just a mystery.
It was a song awaiting its final verse.
"In the deserts of Aerothen, it's not thirst that kills. It's the sound that deceives."
They set out at dawn.
From Port-Lyre, they followed the Singing Bones Road—an ancient, abandoned trade route covered in sand and legends. It was said that on certain nights, travelers could hear murmurs from the rocks, remnants of voices never buried.
Maple walked with heavy but steady steps. Each night at camp, he trained with Kael: exercises in silence, forced meditation, blind combat. And in the early hours, he practiced songs that burned his throat, trying to tune his voice to resonate with the lyre and the earth.
—"You're still not singing with your body," Kael said. "You're just… performing. Music with soul can shatter mountains. But only if you let it shatter you first."
Zyri cataloged everything. She collected grains of enchanted sand, gathered fungi that danced to sound, and studied an old journal they'd found in Port-Lyre, written by a Knight of the Shattered Veil—a traitor to the silent sect. Its pages spoke of Atrazahn, the Primal Song, and a rune called Na'vaël—the rune of living memory.
Dregan, meanwhile, grew even more hyperactive. He adapted his explosive backpack to react to musical tones. He created a small "runic sensor" that blinked with harmony—and exploded with dissonance. No one dared sleep on the wrong side of the campfire.
After twelve days of travel, they reached the edge of Arellon—the Desert of Voices.
Arellon wasn't made only of sand. It was made of memories crystallized by time, of petrified music, of living mirages.
The dunes seemed to float, forming waves that vibrated when the wind blew. Ruined towers appeared on the horizon, then vanished like smoke.
Kael spoke little. But even he seemed… tense.
—"No one sings here without being invited."
On the first night, they heard something. A sound from underground. As if thousands of dead choirs still echoed beneath the sand. Zyri theorized that the desert had absorbed songs and turned them into ghostly echoes—natural sorcery accumulated over centuries.
Maple, curious, played a single note.
The sound vanished.
Literally.
Swallowed by the air.
Dregan's eyes widened.
—"Your music… it got eaten!"
Kael raised his sword.
—"They're listening."
They were attacked that night.
Not by men. But by shapes of sand and sound.
Shadows of human-like creatures—with sewn-shut mouths but enormous ears. Their steps made no sound, but their eyes vibrated, as if absorbing frequencies. They came like specters of silence—perhaps born from the magics that died there.
Maple tried to sing. But no sound came out.
Kael took the front line, facing three at once, while Dregan used sonic bombs that only slowed the enemies. Zyri conjured potions of reverberating light, but everything felt… muffled.
Then Maple remembered Kael's words: "You need to break yourself first."
He knelt. Closed his eyes.
And in silence… he sang within himself. A song that recalled his mother, his home village, the lyre made from the Mute Oak.
The sound didn't come from his throat.
It came from the sand.
The dune vibrated. The music rose from the ground. A sacred echo.
The enemies froze.
And for a moment… they listened.
One of them, the largest, fell to its knees and screamed. But there was no sound. Only an expression of relief.
Maple felt it.
He felt he had freed a song the desert had long hidden.
And a word burned in his mind.
Na'vaël.
Atop the dune, at dawn, they saw the tower.
It wasn't tall. But it was ancient. Made of opaque glass and greenish metal. Its walls bore spiral shapes, like horns and carved instruments. And there was no door—only an opening at the base, surrounded by runic marks that glowed with the sound of the wind.
Zyri wept. Simply wept.
—"This… this is real. This architecture exists only in the texts of the Order of Echoes. It's as if the tower was… shaped by a song."
Kael placed a hand on Maple's shoulder.
—"You'll go in first. Only you. If the tower still sings, it will recognize your note."
Maple breathed.
For the first time in weeks, without fear.
And he walked.
With each step, the sand vibrated like the strings of an invisible instrument. The tower's entrance resonated like an ancient drum.
And as he crossed the threshold, a song began to play—soft, ancestral.
It was his mother's voice.
But it was also his own, in a tone he had never reached.
And the tower answered:
"Maple is not your name. But it is where your music began."
"Not every note is heard with the ears. Some resonate directly in the blood."
The entrance to the Tower of Atrazahn was a threshold between eras. As Maple crossed it, he felt the world shift its rhythm.
There was no dust. No time.
The internal structure spiraled like the inside of a wind instrument. The steps vibrated gently underfoot, and the walls were etched with symbols that the eyes recognized but the mind refused to decipher. Runes—not modern ones, like those copied in academies, but living ones, pulsing, flowing across the stones like liquid ink frozen in motion.
As Maple walked, the tower "heard" his steps.
Each footfall produced distinct echoes, as if the architecture itself were testing him.
In the upper chamber, an octagonal room housed instruments of impossible shapes: harps without strings, bells without clappers, flutes made of liquid glass. At the center stood a pedestal with a sealed tome, locked by three intertwined runes: Lûn, Na'vaël, and a third, unknown, flickering as if awakening.
Zyri, who had finally caught up with Kael and Dregan, stopped at the door.
—"This tower… it's alive. It's not enchanted. It's built to resonate with the soul of whoever enters."
Kael remained silent. But Maple sensed he knew this place better than he let on.
When Maple approached the pedestal, a sound echoed—not through his ears, but through his spine. As if a note had been played within his very bones.
A runic circle appeared beneath his feet, and the tower's voice resounded in his mind:
The song still lives. Sing, bearer. Sing your true name.
Maple hesitated. He didn't know his true name. But he remembered the rune Na'vaël, the pain of the desert, the image of his mother, the note that freed the shadow.
He sang.
It was a broken sound. But honest. Pure.
And with it, the seal broke.
The book opened, its pages turning on their own until they stopped at a complex diagram: a blend of runic melody, physical gesture, and internal energy flow.
Zyri held her breath.
—"It's… a harmonic force matrix. But not just magical. This connects sound and body."
Kael finally spoke.
—"This is what the Veils fear. An ancient art where the warrior sings and the blade dances. Where sound and movement are one."
On the pedestal, new inscriptions appeared. Three paths. Three archetypes etched in the tower's runes:
Vocalis — The Voice that Shapes
For those who channel sound to alter the world around them. Bards, runic singers, summoners. Their songs can heal, destroy, or call forth echoes of the world.
Cordeum — The Body that Responds
For those whose bodies vibrate with the sounds of the world. Martial artists who use internal rhythms and runic breathing. Their strikes carry magical cadence. Their stances hum with power.
Ferrans — The Forge that Resonates
Runic smiths and sound engineers. They wield artifacts, enchanted instruments, and devices that channel sound as technology. Creators and destroyers.
Maple felt all three paths pulsing within him. But Vocalis pulled him strongest. Still, he understood: true harmony came when the three paths intertwined.
Zyri turned to Dregan, her eyes wide.
—"You're a Ferrans, Dregan. You always were. You just didn't know the name."
Kael touched the edge of the Cordeum inscription, and for a moment, the runes on his sword glowed with silent music.
Maple understood.
Kael had been trained as a Cordeum.
And perhaps… abandoned by that same system.
As they explored the tower, they found other records: fragments of the Veil Singers, an ancient order that protected the true names of peoples and the song that united the realms.
They were betrayed by a schism: the Silencers, precursors to the current Veilbearers. Men who believed sound caused imbalance. That where there is music, there is chaos. That the world should return to primordial silence.
The records also spoke of an artifact:
The Resonant Heart.
A fragment of the first sound. A gem embedded in the center of a living harp, capable of reawakening the world—or silencing it forever.
Zyri pointed to a rune on the walls.
—"This rune… it's linked to the gem we found in Port-Lyre. The mana focus… it was part of this Heart."
Kael narrowed his eyes. It was said the Heart had been shattered into five fragments, scattered across the Pillars of Aerothen—five places where sound was born with the ancient races.
Maple then knew: his journey wasn't just to master his voice.
It was to gather the fragments of the original song.
The next morning, the tower gave Maple a gift: a new string for his lyre. Made of living crystal, it changed color with the tone of the music. It was as if the tower were saying: You're not finished… but you've begun well.
Kael charted a new course.
—"To the North. To the Drowned Temple of Yuna'reth. Where the ancient tritons sang to the stars. If a fragment is there… it will be the hardest to reach."
Maple gazed at the horizon.
Once just a boy with a lyre and a pack, he was now more.
Not yet a hero.
But an echo of what the ancients had lost.
And his voice… was far from silent.
"Some sounds are born to be heard. Others… to be feared."
It took eight days to cross the Shattered Valley to reach the submerged coast of the lost kingdom of Yuna'reth—an ancient triton empire that, according to the fragmented songs of the tower, had developed a celestial chant, not directed at the physical world but at the cosmos. A music said to be capable of altering the course of the stars.
Now, Yuna'reth slept beneath miles of enchanted sea. Its only entrance was a staircase carved from petrified coral, revealed only during the Breathless Nights—when the entire sea turned into a mirror.
The group waited in a village of nomadic fishermen, the Tzaquari, humans with bluish skin and silver eyes, living on enchanted rafts made from leviathan hides. Their homes were mobile, and their stories were sung with shell harps.
Zyri was restless.
She observed the Tzaquari's chants, the magical vibrations that shaped nets, purified water, even hypnotized fish. No runes. No formulas.
—"They don't use structure," she said, her tone a mix of envy and fascination. "They just feel."
Maple responded calmly.
—"Maybe that is the structure."
On the third night, Zyri wandered away from the camp. She sat before the silent sea and opened her grimoire of alchemical formulas. She drew a rune. Then another. None glowed.
Then… she began to sing.
Softly. A lament. No precise pitch.
It wasn't music.
It was pure emotion.
And the runes… reacted.
A turquoise glow emerged from the paper. Not a classic rune. But a mutation.
Zyri's skin prickled.
She wasn't just a Ferrans. Not a Vocalis.
She was something the ancients hadn't cataloged. A fourth path. One that didn't rely on predefined structures but on intuitive improvisation: pure emotion fused with arcane logic.
Sensum — The Feeling that Transforms.
A rare, dangerous, unstable path. But genuine.
During the Breathless Night, the waters parted, as if obeying a silent song. A massive spiral of coral rose from the depths, opening a path to the submerged temple of Yuna'reth.
Maple gripped his lyre tightly. It felt different since Atrazahn—lighter, but also more alive. Zyri carried three glowing vials strapped to her chest and an improvised runic dagger. Dregan hauled a backpack full of pearl-bombs, and Kael walked ahead, his hand resting on his sword's hilt, as always.
The ruin's walls were covered in sonic carvings: symbols that seemed to whisper when touched. Some depicted beings with mouths open to the sky. Others… with mouths sewn shut.
—"Abyssal Lamenters," Kael murmured.
According to the tower's texts, they were the last tritons loyal to the Veil Singers. They protected one of the Resonant Heart's fragments, but through a dark ritual: they channeled the sound of pain and grief to preserve the cosmic melody.
They survived.
But they no longer lived as they once did.
In the submerged sanctuary, the group faced a living wall of water and sound, blocking the path to the crypt of the sacred harp.
Zyri tried to decipher it. Maple played. Nothing broke the barrier.
Until they heard a voice—from the wall itself:
"To pass, you must lament what has not yet been lost."
The group exchanged glances.
Maple went first. He played a gentle melody, thinking of his mother, the forgotten village, the notes that still haunted his dreams.
The wall trembled.
Zyri wept silently, recalling her vanished alchemist mother, the cold nights studying formulas with no one to correct her mistakes.
Dregan… hesitated. But then he hummed a low, uneven tone. A childish sound. The only one he remembered from his clan, massacred by the Salt Regents when he was still a hatchling.
The wall gave way.
And then… they appeared.
They had no eyes. But their watery skin shimmered with shifting runes. They sang without sound, mouths eternally open. Among them came a larger figure, a harp fused to its chest. One of the fragments.
But it wasn't there to give. It was there to test.
—"Only one whose name no longer belongs to them… may touch the harp."
Maple stepped forward. He played his lyre.
And he heard an ancient chord echo in the guardian's harp. A recognition.
The Lamenter knelt.
And said, in a voice muffled by water and time:
"You are the Lost Echo. The Wayward Voice. The one the Heavens forgot to silence."
When he touched the temple's harp, a second string materialized on his lyre—made of water frozen in sound. It vibrated with the frequency of ancient laments. And now, Maple could hear… time. Echoes of things yet to come. Future possibilities.
But also… risks.
Zyri scribbled frantically. She was obsessed.
Kael only muttered:
—"Two fragments. Three remain. But the Veilbearers… they've felt it."
Dregan laughed nervously.
—"Well… if the next place is in a volcano… warn me first, yeah?"