The Sanctuary of Silence did not easily yield its last fragment. The area we had reached after negotiating the first silence traps was a vast, flat expanse, devoid of any features except for the oppressive density of anti-harmony. The silence traps, the bubbles of rhythmic emptiness that bubbled up from the ground, were so numerous and close together here that the air itself seemed to tremble with their latent potential. One false step, one rhythm too strong, and we would trigger a dozen at once, risking awakening something worse.
Silence weighed upon us, a suffocating blanket that didn't allow the slightest sound, the slightest 'natural' rhythmic vibration. My own internal resonance felt stifled, as if I were trying to scream underwater. Feeling the faint thread of the fragment through this barrier of stillness was almost impossible. Lune had her hands over her ears, her face twisted with tension, struggling not to perceive the 'nothingness' painfully. Sciel worked furiously on her device, calibrating it to detect the absence of rhythm rather than its presence, searching for 'blind spots' in the field of anti-harmony.
"It's like walking through a minefield..." Maelle whispered, her voice barely audible even to us. "Every step... every breath..."
The strategy of trying to counter the ambient disharmony with my own rhythm, as I had done with the scattered traps, was unsustainable on this scale. The field was too dense, the resistance too strong. We needed another way through without unleashing the 'Silent Chorus' of guardians that Sciel had detected, dormant in the void.
Sciel, after a moment of intense concentration, pointed at his device. "The ambient anti-harmony... has a pattern... a very, very slow pulsation. It's the Sanctuary's 'control frequency.' If we could... synchronize our movement... with the intervals of that slow pulsation... where the anti-harmony is minimally weakest... we could pass through it with less risk of triggering the dense traps."
It was Sciel's idea, based on analysis, but it required almost superhuman rhythmic precision in an environment designed to suppress rhythm. And it required us all to move as a single rhythmic unit, a single coordinated "pulse" amidst stillness.
"We'll have to... move together," Gustave whispered, understanding the implication. "One step at a time. Synchronized. You..." he looked from me to Sciel, "set the tempo. Lune... try to sense if our movement disrupts the pattern of silence around us. Maelle... use your scanner to detect anything visual on the ground. I'll... take over if anything manifests."
The task of marking the invisible 'beat' of anti-harmony fell to Sciel and me. Sciel would use his device to detect the smallest peaks and valleys in the anti-harmony wave, giving us a subtle tick. I, with my rhythmic perception, would try to sense that wave directly and translate it into an internal signal, preparing for the precise moment to move.
We began. Sciel gave a low, barely audible tick on his device. I felt the subtle 'drop' in the ambient rhythmic oppression. "Now," I whispered. We stepped together, slow, deliberate, trying to make our movement as smooth and anti-rhythmic as possible within that brief interval.
The first time, it worked. No trap was triggered. The silence held. We took another coordinated step. And another. It was exhausting. The strain of maintaining synchronization, of moving as a single organism in an environment that fought against our very nature, drained us mentally and physically.
Despite our precision, it was impossible to be perfect. Sometimes, a trap would spring nearby, a bubble of concentrated silence that battered us with its rhythmic emptiness, sending us reeling. Other times, I felt my own internal rhythm struggle with the oppression, threatening to spiral out of control and betray us.
As we advanced across the flat expanse, the fragment's signal on Sciel's device grew stronger. We were getting closer. But the risk also increased. The density of the traps was at its highest.
Then it happened. One of us (I couldn't say who, exhaustion was affecting us all) stumbled slightly, a movement too abrupt, a rhythm too pronounced in the wrong interval. Several silence traps activated simultaneously around us, their combined effect brutal, a concentrated blow of anti-harmony that left us breathless.
The silence on the plain was broken. Not by noise, but by an answer .
The ambient disharmony seemed to condense. From nothingness, or perhaps from stillness itself, the shapes emerged. They didn't manifest as before, with dissonance or sound. They were simply there . Humanoid silhouettes, made of the same silent darkness as the fortress walls, their edges so sharp they seemed to cut through the air, yet they made no sound. The Guardians of Silence.
They were larger, and their rhythmic presence was... negative. Where the Rhythmic Shadows hummed with dissonance, these absorbed the rhythm around them. Their attack wasn't a strike, but a 'suck.' They moved with a speed that seemed to defy physics, and their limbs, as they 'struck,' created a sense of concentrated rhythmic emptiness, as if trying to tear you away from your own internal resonance.
We couldn't shout to coordinate. We couldn't rely on the sound of their movements. We had to fight in silence.
Gustave stepped in, his sword ready. Maelle tried to use one of her tools, but in this field of dense anti-harmony, it barely worked. Lune fired an arrow. There was none of the usual whizzing noise. The arrow flew in absolute silence and struck one of the guardians. It didn't knock him down, but the guardian's form flickered, its 'silence' feeling momentarily unstable.
"Light! Or... pure rhythm!" I whispered, my rhythmic mind struggling to find a way to interact with these creatures of stillness. "Break their silence with rhythm or concentrated light!"
Lune seemed to understand. Her next arrows, though silent in flight, glowed with a faint light upon impact. Each light arrow that struck a Guardian destabilized them for a moment.
I tried using my own ability. I focused the resonance of the fragments within me and released a concentrated rhythmic pulse—not sonic, but vibratory—directly toward one of the guardians. It was like hitting an invisible wall. The guardian took a step back, his form thrashing, but the anti-harmony around him quickly absorbed my pulse. It was exhausting and barely effective.
Sciel, however, found a key. "The control frequency... of the anti-harmony..." he managed to whisper, his device blinking. "If we can overload it... with a rhythm contrary to its slow pulse... perhaps... we can temporarily disable them..."
It was a rhythmic puzzle in the midst of silent combat. I needed to sense the "control frequency" Sciel was detecting, that slow pulse of the anti-harmony field, and then, with my own skill, generate and project an opposing frequency that would vibrate against it.
As Gustave defended, blocking the guardians' silent attacks, and Maelle and Lune attempted to distract or destabilize others with light and vibrations, I concentrated intensely, filtering the oppressive void, searching for the slow, pulsing beneath. I felt the rhythm of anti-harmony, slow and deep. And then, with all the rhythmic force I could muster, I projected a rhythm that was its exact opposite, fast and vibrant, directing it toward the source of the ambient anti-harmony.
The plain reacted. Not with noise, but with a turbulence of vacuum. The anti-harmony field flickered wildly. The Guardians of Silence, who relied on that anti-harmony, abruptly stopped. Their sharp forms blurred, trembling, unable to maintain their coherence. The vacuum attack one directed toward Gustave dissipated into thin air.
We had created a rupture. A 'dis-quietude' in their reign of silence.
Gustave seized the moment. His sword whistled (or at least, I felt it should have) as it cut through the unsteady form of a Guardian. Maelle used her tool to emit a blast of intense, silent light that seemed to wound another. Lune fired a bright arrow that caused a third Guardian to dissipate like dark smoke.
The effect lasted only a few seconds; my counterpulse was difficult to maintain. But it was enough. The remaining guardians, seeing their comrades' defeat or feeling that their surroundings no longer supported them, retreated, dissolving back into the dense stillness of the plain.
We were panting, the exertion had left us on the verge of collapse. Silence returned, but it felt different now, marked by our rhythmic intrusion and the momentary interruption of its pattern.
The plain stretched out before us, seemingly clear, though we knew the stillness itself was our defense. Sciel, exhausted but with a look of triumph, raised his device. "The signal... is extremely strong... Right... there." He pointed to a spot in the center of the plain.
We had overcome the barrier of dense traps and faced the Guardians of Silence. We had learned to fight stillness itself. And now, at the center of this silent realm, the last fragment waited.
We made our way across the plain, each step burdened by the awareness of where we were and what we had accomplished. The silence was profound, but it no longer seemed impenetrable. We had found a way to disturb it, a way to fight the stillness.
And there it was. Floating a few meters above the ground, in the center of the plain of anti-harmony, shining with a pure golden light that seemed almost shocking in the stillness. The last fragment of the Primordial Monolith. The lost echo that would complete the symphony.
We were exhausted, wounded by the strain of anti-harmony, but we had arrived. The Sanctuary of Silence had revealed its secret. And now, all that remained was to claim the last echo before returning to the convergence chamber for the final test. The Final Gathering was about to begin.
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