The shard they had recovered from The Weeping Flame pulsed with a slow, mournful rhythm.
It sat in a prism of null-light, caged within three containment runes and buried under a slab of forged obsidian in the deepest part of the capital vaults. Not even the High Mages were allowed near it without Callan's permission.
And still, it whispered.
Not words.
Just echoes.
As if trying to remember the name of someone long forgotten.
In the days following the battle, Callan barely slept. He spent hours walking the halls of the royal crypts, checking seals, speaking in hushed tones with the surviving members of the Shard Containment Order.
Solenne watched him from a distance, worried.
"He's slipping," Lysander said. "He's pushing too hard."
"He doesn't have a choice," Solenne replied.
"He thinks he doesn't have a choice," Lysander muttered. "But if he breaks, then what do we have left?"
Solenne didn't answer.
She had already seen what Callan became when he broke once.
And the empire was still recovering.
Callan stood before the Black Mirror—the last surviving relic of the Demon King's council chamber. It was forbidden to use it, but he wasn't here to summon.
He was here to watch.
Inside the obsidian glass, the past shimmered like heat mirages: images of battles long won, of betrayals buried in time, of promises broken under the weight of ambition.
One image lingered more than the rest.
A boy.
Callan as he was—scrawny, angry, unchosen.
Standing at the feet of the Demon General, just before the transformation.
The shard had whispered to him too, back then.
"Do you think I'm becoming him?" he asked aloud.
The mirror did not answer.
But in the reflection, his shadow smiled.
Elsewhere, deep in the southern jungle valleys, something ancient stirred.
Hidden beneath the root systems of the Verdant Maw, beneath the ruins of the Obsidian Choir's last cathedral, a new voice awoke.
It did not burn.
It did not scream.
It sang.
Low. Sweet. Irresistible.
A melody only those with shard-touched souls could hear.
And across the empire, hundreds heard it.
They dropped their tools. Left their homes. Walked into the wilds.
They called it The Calling.
At a refugee encampment north of the Jhen Ridge, a young girl collapsed mid-step. When she awoke, her eyes were the color of molten silver, and her mouth spoke with a voice not her own.
"They're gathering," she said. "The Choir is rising. The silenced gods have begun to hum again."
The healers thought it fever.
The truth was worse.
Callan received the reports two days later. He read them in silence, eyes scanning the details—the synchronized sleepwalking, the mass disappearances, the symbols carved into trees and stone in perfect geometries.
None of it matched any known shard behavior.
Solenne entered the chamber mid-report. "You should see this."
She led him to the top of the Citadel's highest spire.
From there, they looked down at the city.
And saw it.
On every rooftop, in chalk and ash and blood, people had drawn the same symbol overnight: a spiral intersected by a single vertical line.
"It's not a language," Solenne said. "It's music."
Callan's eyes widened. "It's a score."
That night, the capital dreamt the same dream.
A city with no sky.
A song with no words.
And a throne made of memory.