Chapter Two — Breath Engine
"Breath is memory. Memory is the first rebellion."— Inscription found beneath the Pillars of Mourning
The shard sang louder now.
Not a sound the ears could register—but a resonance, vibrating through Kaelen's blood, as if his bones were hollow tubes and his marrow hummed a song too ancient to understand.
He had wrapped the obsidian shard in scraps of old cloth and hidden it beneath the floorboards of the forge dormitory. But tonight, it called him. It ached.
He slipped past the sleeping bodies of other forge-rats, careful not to wake Meryn or Dorr—twins from the rust-guilds who would sell a secret faster than they'd sell their own teeth. Outside, the winds of Arak-Nor cut across his skin like whispers from a dying god.
The shard pulsed. Not with heat—no, it was colder than the night. But it moved. It throbbed like a heart.
Kaelen made his way through the sand-blasted alleys, past the burned prayer-halls of the old Choir, and toward the Gutter Wound—a trench that split the outskirts of the Spire district, where forbidden remnants of pre-Dominion ruins were left to rot and sink beneath the dunes.
There, half-buried beneath iron sand and bonegrass, lay the remains of something ancient.
A Breath Engine.
Breath Engines: The Mythical Machines
The empire called them myths.
Machines that once powered cities not with fuel, but with breath—the collective will of the Choir, harmonized through song and soul. Each Engine contained a Resonance Core, a crystal heart attuned to the consciousness of its choir.
They were not tools. They were living systems—tuned to the frequencies of the planet and the intentions of their makers.
The Dominion tried to replicate them.
They failed.
They could mimic the shape, even embed their own engineered memory-nodes, but without the Choir's understanding of harmonic consciousness, the Engines remained cold. Useless.
And dangerous.
So they buried them. And forbade others from digging.
Kaelen reached the edge of the trench.
A cold wind rose, and the shard in his hand pulsed in response.
Below him, jutting from the sand like the ribcage of a giant beast, was the metallic skeleton of the Engine—rusted, cracked, and half-swallowed by centuries of sediment. Its center still glowed faintly, a dull heartbeat in the dark.
"Place me," the shard whispered—not in sound, but in pressure."Awaken what remembers you."
Kaelen hesitated. His breath caught.
He shouldn't be here. He knew the punishments. Chantbreakers did not kill—they erased. They didn't break bones. They severed sound from a soul, leaving the victim alive but hollow—forever mute, forgotten even by their own memories.
Still, he climbed down.
The moment his foot touched the Engine's skin, a deep hum rippled through the trench.
The shard in his hand vibrated violently, then… merged. It sank into a groove etched into the Engine's surface as if drawn by magnetic purpose.
Kaelen stepped back.
The Breath Engine sighed.
Not metaphorically. Not imaginatively. It breathed—a long, mechanical exhale that sent dust spiraling upward in a slow-motion cyclone. The glowing heart at its center began to spin, shedding layers of corrosion like old skin.
Kaelen fell to his knees.
And the Voice returned.
"You are not a Seer," it said."You are a Vessel.""You do not remember. But you have been remembered."
Elsewhere: The Oracles' Dome, High Spire
In the crystal-etched sanctum of the Oracles of the Unheard, Matriarch Elare Virellan stood before a basin of suspended ashsalt, listening to its oscillations.
The Oracle's voice quivered.
"It sings, Matriarch.""What sings?""The Gutter Wound. An Engine breathes again.""Impossible.""Unless… he found the shard."
Elare clenched her jaw. Her hand moved to her throat—a reflex. She could still remember the song of her mother before she was silenced.
"Send the Chantbreakers.""At once?""No." She narrowed her eyes."Send one. Let the boy believe he can run."
Back at the Engine
Kaelen stood frozen.
The Engine now pulsed like a sleeping heart. Glyphs etched into its skin shimmered in harmonic rhythm. And his skin—his veins—began to glow faintly, echoing the same cadence.
The Engine was reading him.
Or maybe… remembering him.
Then came the vision.
In the blink of an eye, the world folded inside out, and Kaelen stood beneath an impossible sky. No stars. No moons. Only black sand stretching into infinity.
Before him, a Choir-Seer knelt in prayer. Her eyes were sealed by threads of golden silk. Her mouth was stitched shut. And yet, she sang.
He heard it.
A song without sound. A memory made of breath.
When she turned to him, her face was his.
The Voice of the Choir
"You have been born many times, Kaelen Vorr.""Each time you forget.""Each time we remember.""You are the key that breaks silence.""And silence is the last empire."
Kaelen snapped awake.
The trench was quiet again. The Engine still hummed, but softer now—like a sleeping animal.
But something had changed.
Inside him.
In his breath.
Every inhale now carried a rhythm. Every exhale, a shape. His body moved like it remembered a dance he'd never learned. His thoughts whispered in verses.
He was no longer alone in his mind.
He had been claimed.
Closing: The First Breath
He left the trench before dawn, shardless, Engine-scarred, skin humming with faint glyphs. As he walked, the dunes whispered not in wind—but in harmony.
Somewhere, deep in the hollows of Arak-Nor, the Breath Engines were waking up.
And with them, the Choir.