The sand swallowed the sun.
A crimson haze bled over the dunes of the Drowned Expanse, once a thriving empire now lost to time and dust. But beneath those shifting grains, something stirred. Ancient mechanisms groaned to life, not forged of metal or magic, but of memory. Buried deep, locked by harmonic seals, the vaults of the Deep Choir had begun to open.
They were not drawn by the Conductor's return.
They were compelled.
For when one Song is sung aloud, all harmonies—even the unwanted ones—must answer.
Callan stood in the map chamber with Lysander, Solenne, and the surviving Councilors. The map had changed. Not by their hands—but by the Song. New lines shimmered, unseen borders crackling with faint musical sigils, expanding and bending with every note sung across the realm.
"These are Choir lines," Lysander murmured. "They weren't here yesterday."
"They weren't meant to be seen," Solenne corrected. "This map doesn't just show land—it shows resonance. The way memory flows across the realm."
"And that—" she pointed at a dark spreading blotch on the western edge, pulsing in silence "—is wrong."
Callan stared at it, frowning.
"It's not silent," he said.
"It's waiting."
That night, in dreams, Callan walked the Drowned Expanse.
It was not the barren place it had become, but a city of silver and echo. Choir towers rose into the stormless sky, and a symphony of faceless beings moved in impossible synchrony.
He heard no words.
But he felt their question.
A single, unified thought:
Why do you sing a song you abandoned?
Then he saw it—their Conductor.
Or what was left of one.
A tall, gaunt figure of featureless obsidian, neither man nor shade. Its face was a smooth blank, like glass scrubbed clean of identity. And where its heart should be, there pulsed a shard of shadowlight—twisted, cracked, and hungry.
The Conductor raised its hand.
Callan screamed.
He awoke with blood on his pillow.
Not his own.
Lysander barged in seconds later, face pale.
"The Western Gate is gone."
Callan shot up. "Gone?"
"Not destroyed. Not breached. Just... not there anymore. The land is flat. The stones erased."
"Who saw it?"
"No one. It was there last night. Then this morning—emptiness."
Solenne appeared, eyes wide, hair damp with sweat. "I heard them," she said. "In the Song. They're beneath us. Listening."
"Who?"
"The ones without names."
By evening, five more sites vanished.
Each one previously tied to an ancient Choir relic—vaults, libraries, shrines.
The Deep Choir wasn't attacking.
They were consuming.
Reclaiming pieces of the Song.
Erasing everything not in harmony with their silence.
Callan stood at the edge of the capital, the stars overhead flickering like half-remembered notes. The skyborn surrounded him, humming softly, as if to shield him with vibration.
"I remember why we buried them," he said to Solenne.
"You knew them?"
"I was them," he answered bitterly. "Before I rose. Before I broke free. Before I chose identity."
He pointed to the blank-faced Conductor in the reflection of his blade.
"They are what I could have become if I surrendered everything to the Song."
"And now they want you back," Solenne said.
Callan nodded.
"And I'd rather shatter than return."
The capital prepared for war.
But how do you fight what cannot be seen?
How do you resist an enemy who fights not with soldiers, but with silence?
The Choir Without a Face did not march with banners.
They unmade.
They silenced.
And every time one of their faceless agents walked through a village, the people within ceased to speak, ceased to remember, ceased to be.
Callan gathered his core allies.
Lysander. Solenne. The skyborn captain known as Vale. And three of the remaining Choir-bound children—those born with the Song in their veins but not yet claimed.
"We can't wait for them to reach us," Callan said. "We must go to them."
Lysander raised a brow. "Into the Expanse?"
"Deeper," Callan confirmed. "To the Cradle of the First Song."
Solenne paled. "You mean the Throat?"
Callan nodded grimly.
"Yes. The place where music first became weapon."
In the silent heart of the Expanse, something shifted.
The Faceless Conductor turned toward the east.
Not because it heard Callan's voice.
But because it remembered his defiance.
And it began to hum.
A single, soulless note.
Low. Endless. Empty.
And every mirror in the kingdom began to crack.