They stepped into a world undone.
Beyond the gates, the air ceased to vibrate. Even the hum of the Deep Choir fell away, replaced by a dreadful, unrelenting stillness. The space stretched before them like a dream's afterimage: halls of impossible height, walls carved from dark crystal, lit by veins of flickering memory.
No torches. No lamps.
Just fragments of forgotten songs trapped in glowing amber along the walls.
"This place isn't alive," Solenne whispered.
Callan's eyes narrowed. "No. It's remembering being alive."
They moved cautiously, their boots making no sound. Even breathing felt wrong here—as though the air did not wish to be disturbed.
Callan paused before one of the memory-veins.
Inside the crystal shimmered a vision—his vision.
The moment he'd first taken command in the War of Black Suns. The blood. The roar of troops. The broken heavens overhead.
But in this memory, he had no face.
He stared at the flickering image, then turned away.
"They're not just collecting memories," he said. "They're rewriting them."
Further in, they found the Choir.
Rows upon rows of faceless beings, seated in pews carved of bone and songstone. Each one motionless. Waiting. Unblinking. A single line of silver string ran through their chests, connecting them like pearls on a thread.
In the center stood the Maestro.
It was taller than the others. Still faceless—but wearing a cloak of voices. Ghostly murmurs swirled around it, fragments of songs from every corner of the world.
When Callan stepped forward, the Maestro raised a hand.
And the Choir sang.
It wasn't music.
It was erasure.
Lysander dropped to one knee, clutching his ears, blood dripping from his nose.
Vale's wings shuddered, and Solenne gasped, as if her name had been ripped from her chest.
Callan gritted his teeth.
"Ashendrix."
The blade answered, pulsing with golden defiance. He stepped forward, cutting through the resonance, and the Choir flinched.
The Maestro tilted its head.
"You were harmony once," it said through stolen voices. "A note that fit the chord."
"I chose dissonance," Callan spat.
"Dissonance is pain."
"But it's real."
The Choir rose.
Dozens of faceless giants moved as one. Not in rage. Not in fear.
But as dancers who'd long rehearsed the end of the world.
They attacked—not with weapons—but with un-music.
Each wave of sound distorted the space around them. Walls bent. Time folded. Memories unraveled. Solenne nearly screamed as her own face faded from her thoughts.
But then Vale sang.
A piercing note of skyborn origin, old and high and pure.
The Choir paused.
Just long enough.
Callan lunged for the Maestro.
Ashendrix clashed against the cloak of voices, scattering memories like fireflies.
The Maestro struck back—not physically, but through the void between moments. Callan stumbled, gasping as decades of his life tried to leave him.
But he remembered himself.
With a roar, he drove Ashendrix through the Maestro's chest.
Silence.
The Choir froze.
Then, slowly, they knelt.
Not in surrender.
In recognition.
Callan stood over the fading Maestro as the cloak of voices dissolved.
"You killed the Conductor," Solenne said, approaching carefully.
"No," Callan muttered, voice shaking. "I reclaimed him. That Maestro... was once me."
The Choir faded.
Not into dust.
Into echoes.
Their forms unraveled, floating upward like smoke into the walls, the crystal veins, the sky.
And the Song shifted.
Now it remembered something new.
Callan.
The one who chose to forget.
The gates behind them slammed shut.
The Throat began to collapse.
Callan turned to the others.
"No more falling back. No more running."
"What do we do now?" Lysander asked.
Callan looked toward the chasm's exit, where light began to pierce the hollow gloom.
"We rise," he said. "And we bring a new Song."