"The dead do not rest. They remember."
Fragment recovered from the ruins of District Seven
The Tremor
The first tremor struck just before dawn.
A soundless quake no rumble, no warning just every candle in the Guildhall flickering out at once.
Seren woke in darkness, heartbeat matching the strange pulse that had replaced the city's silence. For a moment, she thought it was her own fear until she realized the rhythm wasn't coming from inside her.
It was beneath her.
When the torches reignited, the walls of her chamber were bleeding light thin lines of white radiance spreading like veins.
She rushed to the window.
Far below, the old quarter glowed.
Not with fire.
With music.
Light rippled through the streets in waves, each one accompanied by a faint hum that grew louder with every pulse. It wasn't any melody she recognized — too vast, too layered. It felt like every human voice she had ever known, whispering the same word:
Remember.
Commander Rheis
Rheis was already at the war table when she arrived, his expression carved from cold control.
Reports flooded in from the lower districts lights, resonance, structures collapsing. Civilians screaming about "angels" in the air, about shadows that sang.
"Containment teams have been dispatched," Rheis said. "We'll treat it as an aftershock from the Choir Incident."
Seren's gaze darted to the map. "That's not an aftershock. It's growing."
Rheis's jaw tightened. "Then we'll burn it out."
"Burn what, Commander?" she snapped. "You don't even know what this is."
He looked up, and for the first time, she saw fear in his eyes the quiet kind that hides behind duty.
"The Choir was supposed to be silent," he said. "If it's singing again, then someone survived."
The Voice Below
Deep beneath the ruins, Thomas opened his eyes.
Or something that remembered being Thomas.
He didn't breathe. Didn't need to. The air was alive around him dust particles suspended like tiny suns, each vibrating with a faint tone. They moved when he moved, bending toward his thoughts.
He tried to speak, but his voice came out as music a harmonic pulse that shattered the stones around him.
Fragments of memory flickered: the fire, the Guild's orders, Seren's voice shouting his name, Rheis's blade.
And then nothing.
Then this.
When he rose, the floor trembled.
Every note he thought became sound, and every sound shaped the world.
He looked toward the ceiling toward the world that had called him a failure and the music in his chest became darker, heavier. The stone walls cracked outward in a perfect circle, like the petals of a blooming flower.
And the Choir sang with him.
Seren
By midday, the Guild's outer walls were vibrating.
Seren stood on the parapet as the tremors deepened. Below her, the city's streets shimmered with the same radiant hum. Shapes moved within it human silhouettes made of light, drifting upward like souls.
Rheis joined her, armor gleaming in the strange illumination. "The containment wards are failing. If this spreads, the entire district"
He stopped as the first figure emerged from the radiance.
It was a child or the shape of one its face made of fractured memory and static. It sang a single, impossible note that made every piece of metal in the city resonate. Windows burst. Bells shattered. And the Guild's banners, those sacred emblems of purity, disintegrated into dust.
The sound that followed wasn't human.
It was remembrance made noise.
Seren whispered, "Thomas…"
And from somewhere deep in the city's bones, a voice answered.
"You said we'd build a better world, Seren.
So I did."
The Choir Rises
The light spread outward like a tidal wave.
Guild towers crumbled not from impact, but from harmony their stone foundations vibrating to the frequency of grief.
People didn't scream; they sang as the resonance touched them, their voices joining the Choir.
Rheis fell to his knees. "By the Twelve… what have we done?"
Seren could barely hear him over the sound. It wasn't chaos. It was organized, purposeful, beautiful in its destruction.
At the center of it all stood Thomas or what he had become eyes glowing with endless reflection, his skin translucent, veins of light pulsing beneath.
He looked at her.
And smiled gentle, sorrowful, forgiving.
"Heroes burned me.
So I lit the world instead."
The Choir reached its crescendo.