Elias, a pale-looking boy with unkempt hair, walked through the bustling streets of Glasslight Avenue, his broken glasses barely clinging to the bridge of his nose.
"How gross," he muttered, leaning against a lamppost that glittered faintly with drifting blue fireflies.
A carnival had swallowed the street whole. People dressed like clowns and absolute idiots shoved past one another, hoisting resonance speakers and roaring at the top of their lungs. The noise scraped at Elias's nerves. Worse was the smell. Thick. Human. Suffocating.
His stomach turned.
He clapped a hand over his nose and tried not to breathe too deeply while waiting for the group of psychos to move on.
"Do these bastards even bathe…" he mumbled.
A small voice cut straight through his thoughts.
"Hey, big guy!"
Elias glanced down.
A girl—maybe four years old—stood in front of him, staring up with huge puppy-like eyes and cheeks that practically begged to be squished.
"I need your shoulders to be my cushion so I don't miss the Giggler when he arrives," she declared proudly. "Don't worry, I'm rich, so I can pay you for your services!"
Elias's eyebrow twitched.
First, at the audacity. Second, at the fact that the kid had just announced herself as a walking bag of money to a complete stranger.
Either she was insanely stupid… or someone was watching from the shadows.
The second option felt far more likely.
Elias studied her for a moment, quietly weighing his choices.
Kidnapping her was tempting.
But yeah—probably not worth the risk.
"Where are your parents?" he asked, more out of habit than concern, eyes still tracking the carnival as it slowly crawled past.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about them," the girl said cheerfully. "I ran away from home, so they can't find me. That means you won't get in trouble!"
She pointed proudly at herself, like she'd just announced a world-changing achievement.
Elias stared at her, slack-jawed.
Did she seriously understand how dangerous that sounded? It was practically an invitation to get mugged—or worse.
Raising an eyebrow, Elias turned and started walking toward his house a few meters down the avenue.
"Little girl," he said flatly, "you need to be spanked."
Her face went red—cute fury, embarrassment, or maybe both. She immediately chased after him, smacking his knees with her tiny fists in a full-blown tantrum.
"Bully! How dare you say that to me!" she yelled. "I'll tell Daddy when I get home! He'll deal with—he will—hiccup—wahh!"
"WAHHH!"
Elias kept walking.
She clung to his shirt, her tears soaking into the fabric until it started to look like an overused tissue. People turned to stare at the ridiculous scene, some amused, some judgmental, but Elias ignored them all as he moved down the sidewalk, brows drawn together in thought.
In two weeks, he would turn sixteen.
That was the age one was supposed to awaken. If you didn't, you were labeled defective.
Yet no matter how hard he tried, no emotion had ever resonated deep enough inside him to produce a string. Nothing. No pull. No response.
It was wrong.
By his age, he should've already awakened and become a Chordbearer.
He'd tried to deny it for as long as he could—but at this point, the signs were impossible to ignore.
At this rate, he wasn't going to become a Chordbearer.
He was destined to remain mundane—another word for weak, pathetic, and cannon fodder in a dogshit world.
His fists clenched without him noticing as he fought to keep the boiling mess inside his chest under control. The blaring music and clashing sounds pouring from the plaza at the center of town didn't help. If anything, they made the dull ache in his head throb harder.
"By the gods," he muttered, teeth grinding, "what will it take to get some quiet? I wish you'd all die."
Quietly, of course. He wasn't suicidal.
"SNIFF… SNIFF…"
Elias stopped and looked down.
The girl was still there, thumb shoved into her mouth, tears clinging stubbornly to her cheeks as she sucked on it like that would fix everything.
He exhaled sharply, patience already burned to ash.
"Don't you have something better to do?" he snapped. "Like fawning over that Giggler bastard every kid your age seems obsessed with?"
She froze.
Slowly, she pulled her thumb from her mouth, her face twisting—lungs filling, eyes watering—gearing up for what promised to be a spectacular meltdown.
Elias raised a hand.
"Okay. Fine. You win," he said flatly. "Do whatever you want."
Defeated, he shoved his hands into his pockets and resumed walking toward his house. This time, the girl followed in silence, sulking a few steps behind him.
They made it the rest of the way without incident.
His home came into view—an ordinary building that leaned neither toward extravagance nor poverty. Just… there. Elias lifted his hand to knock—
"Launder! H-how did you find me?!"
He froze.
"Go away! Shoo!" the girl yelled, spinning around. "Go tell Daddy I'm not coming back until he admits he stole all my Giggler collections!"
Elias turned toward whoever she was shouting at.
He didn't need to see them.
He felt it first.
A ripple of grief rolled through the air, heavy and suffocating.
A Chordbearer.
The kind who didn't need to pinch his fingers to end Elias's life—only decide to, like swatting a fly.
It was a man with half his face hidden behind a black mask. The faint outline of a scar ran beneath it, proof enough of why the mask existed at all. He was dressed entirely in black, not a single inch of skin exposed, one hand gripping a black umbrella above his head.
A gloomy presence clung to him.
It felt like the shadows around him had grown darker just to make room.
Elias wiped his face, staring at his damp fingers in mild shock.
"I'm… crying?"
"Miss Aurelia," the black-clothed man said. His voice sounded strained, twisted, as if something painful was gnawing at his mind. "Go to sleep."
"You and Daddy will pay for this!" the little girl screamed.
Her eyes fluttered, then shut against her will.
Before she could collapse, Elias caught a glimpse of something illusory tearing through the air at impossible speed, lifting her mid-fall.
A phantom.
The Echoform of a massive bird.
That part didn't surprise him. Some Chordbearers—those who specialized in grief—could resurrect Echoforms of creatures they had slain. Hollow copies of the dead. Weaker than the real thing… but still terrifying.
"Boy," the man said, turning to him. "What's your name?"
He walked closer, his steps making no sound as they touched the ground. The ripple around him deepened, thickened, and Elias's chest burned as raw emotion flooded in—grief sharp enough to sting.
"Are you that bored, senior?" Elias said.
Tears streamed freely down his face as he smiled.
"That you'd play around with a little boy like me?"
The man stopped.
For a brief moment, he seemed genuinely caught off guard.
"Tch. Such a glib tongue," he scoffed.
He turned toward the phantom bird. It lowered its neck obediently, allowing him to climb onto its back, Aurelia already secured safely behind him.
"You and your family should leave this city," the man said as the bird began to rise. "Or you will perish in the orchestra of desire."
The Echoform climbed higher.
"Death," the man murmured, inhaling deeply as if savoring a scent. "How delicious."
His voice faded as the bird shot into the sky.
Elias staggered back, slamming into the wall, heart pounding violently in his chest.
"What the hell was that…?"
His breath hitched.
"Wait. He said to leave the city. He said—"
He raised his fists and pounded on the door with desperate force.
"Hey! Open up! Open the damn doors!"
They swung open immediately.
His sister stood there, one side of her face smeared with ice cream, staring at him with mild annoyance.
"Big brother?" she said in surprise. Her head tilted, confusion melting into excitement. "Where is it? Where's the resonance flute you promised to give me when you got home?"
"Not now, Lizzy!" Elias snapped. "Where's Mum? Dad? Are they home right now?!"
"Hmph." Lizzy folded her arms in a pout. "Mum and Dad are in the sitting room with a scientist from the Concordia Labs. They look like they're waiting for you."
"That's good," Elias muttered, dragging in a shaky breath. "That's very good."
He bolted past her, sprinting toward the sitting room.
Lizzy watched him go, tapping her chin with a finger.
"Why is he acting weird?" she mumbled. "Bleh… Big brother is a weirdo. My little brain shouldn't think too hard about such a simple matter."
Elias burst straight into the sitting room, urgency written all over his face.
"We need to leave Avenelle. Right now!" he blurted out. "A Mirrorth is going to open—there's going to be an Echoform invasion! Dad, Mum, we have to leave the city this minute!"
His father froze, the cup of coffee hovering just short of his lips. Slowly, he lowered it without taking a sip, shaking his head in something that felt a lot like disappointment.
Beside him, Elias's mother looked up, her initial confusion hardening into worry.
"Elias, honey," she said carefully, "what on earth happened to your glasses?"
Heat rushed to his face. The memory of being beaten like a dog all because he tried to steal a stupid flute clawed its way back into his mind.
"That doesn't matter," Elias said quickly, dragging in a breath, forcing himself not to ramble. "What matters is this—there was a very powerful Chordbearer. I met him by chance. He told me to leave the city, that Avenelle is going to perish soon. I know it sounds insane, but it's true. You have to believe me. Please—just this once."
He took a step forward.
"We pack our bags, leave the city for a few days. If nothing happens, we come back and treat it like a short vacation. That's all I'm asking."
"Elias, that's enough."
His father's voice cracked like a whip.
Elias flinched.
"You expect me to believe," his father continued, eyes hard, "that a Chordbearer—someone powerful enough to sense an Echoform invasion—just happened to approach you out of everyone in this city, and then, out of pure goodwill, decided to warn you?"
He scoffed.
"What are you supposed to be? The chosen one?"
"But—"
"No more about this, Elias," his father cut in, waving him off with a tired sigh. "This is Mr. Ferborn, a scientist from the Concordia Labs. He's considering taking you on as an apprentice after you pass his evaluation. Your past results at the Elementary Symphony School impressed him greatly."
Elias frowned and turned to the man lounging across from them.
Mr. Ferborn sat comfortably on the opposite cushion, his body draped with multiple pieces of flashy equipment strapped across his coat. His monocle gleamed faintly under the room lights. He was bald—plainly, unmistakably bald—his shiny head reflecting the light, with neatly groomed gray beard lining his jaw.
Elias looked back at his father.
His fists clenched… then unclenched.
His eyes burned red.
"You think I can't awaken."
His mother shook her head quickly, pain flickering across her face.
"Oh, Elias," she said softly, "the probability of a child awakening a resonance string and becoming a Chordbearer is one in a thousand. It's not that you can't awaken. Nature is just… unfair."
"Listen, kid," Mr. Ferborn chimed in, clearing his throat like he'd practiced this speech a hundred times. "Science syndicates like ours can reach power equal to—sometimes even greater than—ordinary Chordbearers, with the right dedication and research."
He tapped one of the devices strapped to his chest.
"With amplifiers, harmonizers, null engines, and more, we weaponize frequencies just like they do. Take our director, Mr. Kieran Solvane, for example. He replaced his string with an artificial prototype."
Ferborn smiled.
"Who needs to be a Chordbearer when you can simply create your own strings anyway!"
"But some kids my age have already become Chordbearers," Elias said, his voice tightening. "I saw it on the news. It shouldn't be impossible. I should be able to do it too. I should—"
"You seem to suffer from a disease," Mr. Ferborn cut in calmly, sitting up straighter, eyes narrowing as he fixed Elias with a cold stare, "one that makes you believe the world owes you something."
The room went still.
"We should address that before you get yourself killed doing something stupid."
Elias froze.
"Those children you saw on the news?" Ferborn continued, his tone unbothered, almost instructional. "They are people you can only look up to. With how weak and pathetic you are right now, they will always stand above you. They'll step on you, treat you like dirt by the roadside—and the gap between you will only widen as time goes on."
Elias's fists clenched… loosened… then clenched again.
His teeth ground together.
"Your generation is being called the Chord Generation," Ferborn went on. "The number of awakenings is five times higher than previous eras. And yet, even with all those extra chances…"
He shrugged.
"You still failed."
Silence swallowed the room.
"You are still pathetic."
Ferborn didn't pause. He didn't care how his words landed. He simply spoke, certain of his own correctness.
"You've heard of them in the news, haven't you?" Mr. Ferborn said casually. "The children blessed by the Song. The apex of your generation."
He rolled a small metallic sphere between his fingers. "Lirae Calden—the Voice of Heaven. Every time she sings, her allies are healed and her enemies reduced to ash.
Cael Avon Rehn, the Resonant Prince. Capable of manipulating multiple harmonic fields at once. A never-before-seen anomaly.
Sera Myllan—the Blade of Harmony. Able to reflect incoming attacks and return them with amplified force."
The ball clicked softly as it spun.
"And you?" Ferborn asked, eyes lifting to Elias. "What exactly can you do?"
A short laugh escaped him.
"Ah. I suppose I've said enough." He waved a hand dismissively. "But you understand my point, don't you, little one? You're not coming with me because you want to."
His gaze hardened.
"You're coming because nature has placed you in a position where you cannot refuse."
Ferborn leaned closer.
"Wake up to reality. This is your only choice."
Elias drew in a shaky breath.
His head hung low. His hands trembled at his sides.
"Elias…" his mother whispered, fear threading her voice.
"You'll come around," his father said with a sigh, turning his eyes away.
Mr. Ferborn suddenly stiffened.
"Something's wrong," he said, rising to his feet. His attention snapped to the screen strapped to his wrist. "The dissonance readings in this region are spiking."
The room fell into silence, heavy and suffocating, as if no one wanted to accept what had just been said.
Elias slowly lifted his head, his expression tangled with confusion, fear, and something darker.
His father was the first to break it.
"You don't mean…" His voice was careful as he turned from Elias to the scientist. "You don't mean a Mirrorth is really going to—"
"By the gods, Mr. Verdan!" Mr. Ferborn snapped. "I don't have water in my mouth. The dissonance is rising fast—almost reaching a crescendo. A Mirrorth is about to open in this region!"
Frustration and helplessness bled into his words.
Elias's mother looked up at him, the color draining from her face.
"That should be impossible," she whispered. "A Mirrorth only opens in places suffering from war or extreme human distress. Avenelle is far too peaceful—"
She never finished.
It wasn't the scientist who cut her off.
It was something far worse.
The whispers.
It began as a faint rumble beneath their feet. Then the room started to vibrate, the walls trembling as the voices bled in—countless, overlapping, chaotic. A sound so wrong it felt like it was clawing directly at the mind.
A mundane would go mad listening to it.
Elias watched in horror as blood trickled from both his parents' ears. He didn't need to check himself to know the same thing was happening to him.
Mr. Ferborn paced frantically, the slight tremor in his limbs betraying the calm he was trying to maintain.
From outside, Elias could hear it.
The screams.
Not one or two—the entire town.
Avenelle was already dying.
"EVERYONE HEAD TO THE UNDERGROUND BUNKERS! NOW!" his father roared.
Then the lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the room whole.