The First Note
The Tenth String did not hum like the others.
When Amira plucked it, the air didn't ripple—it bled.
A crimson tear opened in the sky above the Woundtree, and through it spilled echoes of things never meant to be heard: unborn lullabies, curses whispered into broken altars, names of gods erased from history.
The Unstrung One reeled, its body of silence unraveling into noise.
Kelu and Morya staggered back, blood trickling from their ears.
Only Amira stood firm, harp in hand, her eyes filled not with rage—but resolve.
"This isn't a song of power," she said softly. "It's a lament."
The Cost of the String
The Tenth String demanded a price.
Not blood.
Not life.
Memory.
As Amira played, her past began to fade—her mother's laugh, the scent of cinnamon bread in the lighthouse kitchen, Elias' final words on the cliffs.
One by one, they slipped from her mind like petals caught in a storm.
And yet, she kept playing.
Because for the first time, the Unstrung One screamed.
Not in anger—but in recognition.
It remembered being her.
Fracture and Thread
Morya, through sheer will, channeled her shardlight into a protective ring around the others. Kelu dropped his sword and reached toward Amira, but she was already halfway between worlds—her body still, her soul burning through planes.
She played not to destroy.
She played to rewrite.
The Unstrung One was not born evil.
It was made by silence.
Made by forgetting.
Made by a world too afraid to mourn.
And so Amira sang it a song that bled not from pain—but remembrance.
The Moon Listens
Far above, the eclipsed moon—long thought cursed—began to weep light.
Its surface cracked open, and from its heart spilled the Weaver's Tear: the last note of the First Music, hidden away since the fall of the Architects.
The Tear drifted down like a silver flame, landing upon Amira's harp.
The Tenth String turned gold.
The other strings vibrated in unison.
And the Unstrung One, kneeling now, spoke a final word:
"I am not your enemy."
Then it collapsed, vanishing into threads of light that wrapped around Amira's hand.
And the Tenth String fell silent.
Kelu caught her as she stumbled forward, exhausted, eyes glassy.
Morya whispered, "You rewrote a god."
Amira, voice hoarse, smiled faintly.
"No," she said. "I remembered one."
But in the silence that followed, something stirred deep beneath the earth.
A voice not from this world.
One that had been watching since Book One.
"So... the Songbearer finally bleeds."
And far in the East, the Black Spire lit up with flame.