Kael didn't move. Not at first.
The Blind One sat motionless, head tilted slightly as if listening to something only he could hear. Kael's whisper still clung to the air like frost, and the silence that followed was deep enough to drown in.
Nyxis broke it first.
"I don't like him."
Kael signed slowly: [What do you mean, 'voice of the Last Sol'?]
The Blind One's sewn eyelids twitched. "There's a sun beneath the sun. Buried. Forgotten. Burning still. We called it the Last Sol. Before it was betrayed."
Kael took a step closer.
"Your voice," the Blind One continued, "isn't yours. It's a shard of what once spoke creation into being. Now it kills because it is unfinished. Uncontained."
"He's wrong," Nyxis said. "Mostly."
Kael signed again: [You knew about her?]
"I knew something was waiting. A whisper sharpened into a blade. You found it. Or it found you."
The dagger hummed. Kael felt it in his bones—restless, coiled.
"There are three locks," the Blind One whispered. "Three voices sealed the Last Sol. One betrayed it. One died with it. One forgot it."
Kael's fingers twitched. [Which one am I?]
The Blind One smiled. "You're the key."
Then the library screamed.
It was a sound Kael couldn't hear so much as feel—like glass grinding inside his skull. The walls cracked. Dust bled from the ceiling. Somewhere above, metal rang like a bell being torn apart.
"Run," Nyxis hissed. "They found you."
Kael didn't ask who. He ran.
The halls twisted, breathing. Lights blinked to life and shattered. Every step echoed louder than the last. Behind him, the Blind One's voice roared:
"They come wearing names that were never theirs!"
Kael didn't look back.
They met him in the atrium—a trio of shapes cloaked in robes of glass and iron. Their faces were smooth masks. Their hands carried staves shaped like tuning forks.
Resonant Judges.
They didn't speak.
They sang.
The sound wasn't music. It was law—a binding force that clawed at Kael's thoughts, trying to cage him in place.
Nyxis pulsed violently. "Break it. Break them."
Kael raised her.
The first note left his lips.
"Stop."
The sound warped as it hit the Judges. One staggered. Its mask cracked. Another dropped its staff and screamed—soundless, choking on silence.
Nyxis carved a crescent through the air. Black light followed. The last Judge collapsed, armor folding inward like a crushed star.
The silence afterward wasn't peace. It was aftermath.
Kael stood in the wreckage, breathing hard.
"You're learning," Nyxis said, amused.
He didn't answer. Instead, he knelt and picked up one of the cracked masks. Behind it was no face. Just a hollow filled with threads of light.
He signed slowly: [What are they?]
Nyxis didn't answer.
Because something else did.
From the far wall, a voice slithered out:
"You've unsealed the first lock, Kael Ardent."
It wasn't a person.
It was the room.
The shadows twisted. Walls rippled. A figure formed—shifting, stitched together from reflections and broken promises.
"We are the Choir of Names," it said. "And now, you must choose whose name you'll erase."