The cave was a tomb of silence, broken only by the ragged breathing of the wounded and the incessant drip of water. Kaelen sat apart from the others, his back against the cold stone wall. The burning cold in his chest had subsided to a deep, persistent ache, a permanent chill in his bones that the cave's meager fire could not touch. It was a scar from the Blight, a physical reminder of the void that sought to consume all song.
Elara moved through the survivors, using torn strips of cloth to bind Roric's broken ribs and a gash on another woman's arm. She worked with a quiet efficiency, but her eyes kept flicking towards Kaelen, filled with a conflict he could easily read. Gratitude warred with a deep-seated fear. She was the only one who would meet his gaze.
Old Man Hemmet was the voice of the others' terror. He huddled by the fire, muttering to himself. "...called them here, I tell you. That power… it's a beacon. We're all dead because of him."
"Shut your mouth, Hemmet," Roric grunted, pain etching his face. "The boy stood between us and those… things. He saved your miserable hide."
"For how long?" Hemmet shot back, his voice rising. "He can't even stand! What happens when they come back with more? We should never have let him stay with us after the village. Corbin always said he was trouble. Too quiet. Saw things in the stone no one else could."
At the mention of his master's name, Kaelen flinched. The words were a twisted echo of his own fears. He looked down at his hands, the hands that had conducted the mountain's power. They looked the same. They felt alien.
He needed to do something. To mend, not break. To prove to them—and to himself—that his power could be used for more than just violent defense. He spotted a deep crack in the cave wall near the entrance, a fault line that threatened the structure's stability. A simple thing. A task for the First Note.
Pushing himself up, he ignored the wave of dizziness and walked unsteadily to the crack. He placed his palm against it, closing his eyes. He reached for the song of the stone, seeking the familiar hum.
But the song was wrong.
It was thin, strained. And beneath it, he felt it again—the seductive, cold whisper of the Blight. It was faint, a lingering residue from the knights' attack, like a poison slowly seeping into the groundwater. It whispered of the ease of letting go, of the peace of silence. He recoiled, snatching his hand back.
"What is it?" Elara asked, her voice tight with alarm.
"The land here… it's sick," Kaelen murmured, his own voice sounding distant. "Their magic… it doesn't just destroy. It infects." He looked at her, his eyes haunted. "It's like a rot in the world's soul."
This news sent a fresh wave of panic through the cave. "Infected? The very ground?" a woman whimpered, clutching her child closer.
"We need to leave," Hemmet declared, standing up. "Now! Before this whole mountain comes down on our heads!"
"And go where?" Roric argued, struggling to sit up. "South is crawling with them. The pass is blocked. We have no food, no supplies. We're safer here, with…" He trailed off, not finishing the sentence. With him.
The group was fracturing before his eyes, and he was the fissure.
Suddenly, Elara spoke up, her voice clear and sharp. "My father kept a journal. He was the blacksmith, he knew about ores and stones. After… after the Blight came to our farm, I found it. He wrote about the old stories. He said the first Stone-Singers weren't just mages. They were architects. They didn't just hear the song, they composed with it. They built the Sun-Crown not as a weapon, but as a… a focus. A way to harmonize the entire Weave." She looked directly at Kaelen. "He wrote that its shattering wasn't just an accident. It was a betrayal. That one of the master Singers, consumed by jealousy, sabotaged the final ritual. He didn't name him, but he said the betrayer had a twin, a brother who was lost to the ensuing chaos."
Kaelen stared at her, the words sinking in. A twin. The story was different from the Warden's. The Warden had spoken of Iscarius's pride and ambition, a solitary fall. This spoke of a more intimate, personal venom. A sibling rivalry that had broken the world. He felt a strange, cold premonition, a sense that the history he'd been told was incomplete, a story told from only one perspective. The truth, as always, was likely far more complicated and far more painful.
Before he could process it, a new sound reached them. Not the sizzle of the Blight, but the crunch of careful footsteps on gravel outside. A lot of them.
Everyone froze. Hemmet's face went white. Roric reached for a piece of shattered rock, a pathetic weapon.
Kaelen pushed himself upright, his heart hammering. He was drained, wounded. He couldn't fight another battle. He couldn't weave another grand song. He prepared himself for the end.
But the figure that stepped into the cave entrance was not clad in black armor.
It was a woman. Her clothes were travel-stained and practical, her face hardened by wind and sun, and her hair was a wild, fiery red. But it was her eyes that arrested Kaelen. They were the exact same shade of storm-grey as Master Corbin's.
Her gaze swept over the terrified survivors, over Roric's defiance, over Hemmet's cowering, and finally landed on Kaelen. A strange, unreadable emotion flickered in her eyes—a mix of profound grief, burning curiosity, and something darker, something that looked unsettlingly like triumph.
She took a step forward, her voice low and steady, yet carrying through the tense silence of the cave.
"Kaelen," she said, as if greeting an old friend. "My brother told me I might find you here."