Chapter Ten — Silent Requiem
Arakan was burning, but not with fire.
A heavy silence had descended—a silence so thick it pressed against the ears, suffocated breath, and strangled every stray whisper before it could be born. The warships above radiated a force field of quietude, invisible but absolute. Waves of sound were folded back on themselves, trapped midair like caged birds desperate to sing. Even the city's wind was hesitant, as if it feared to carry a word too far and risk awakening the wrath that hovered just above the rooftops.
Streets once filled with laughter and cries of life now lay empty, save for the ghosts of memories trapped in broken windows and shattered dreams. Shadows clung tightly to alleyways, reluctant to stretch into the faint morning light. The city was no longer alive — it was a tomb.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the Terrace of Ancients, the skeletal remains of statues watching over the city below. His chest throbbed with the pulse of the Ash Crown nestled inside, a slow, deep heartbeat echoing within his ribs. The new organs — neither flesh nor machine — hummed with a resonance that set his nerves alight.
Beside him, Lira's eyes shimmered with unshed tears, though she said nothing. She reached out, her fingers brushing his arm in silent solidarity.
"We must sing," she whispered, voice barely audible, trembling as if carrying the weight of the whole city's fear. "Before the silence devours us all."
Kaelen swallowed hard, the taste of ash in his mouth. His breath felt heavy, as if the air itself resisted entry.
"But some songs come at a terrible cost," he said, voice rough and raw.
Lira's gaze hardened, fierce despite her weariness.
"Better to burn in song than drown in silence."
Beneath the city, in the obsidian chamber carved from bone and ancient echoes, the true Choir gathered.
Not the pale saints dressed in Dominion finery, but those who had remembered the old rebellion, the true singers of the lost breath. Their numbers were few — survivors of countless purges, refugees of forgotten wars — but their spirits burned brighter than any flame.
Selene, their leader, stood tall among them, her silver hair cascading like a river of stars. Her voice, though quiet, carried a commanding power.
"We stand at the precipice of oblivion," she said, eyes scanning the dim faces lit by flickering candlelight. "The Dominion's silence is a black tide, set to swallow all life's breath unless we rise."
Kaelen listened, every word carving its meaning deep into his soul. The Ash Crown pulsed stronger, as if responding.
Selene stepped forward, extending her hand toward him.
"Will you join us, Vessel? Or will you become their echo—forgotten, silent, erased?"
Kaelen hesitated, feeling the weight of generations pressing down on him. To join meant accepting a path of pain and sacrifice. To refuse was to surrender all that remained.
Finally, he took her hand, the connection sparking warmth that spread like wildfire through his body.
"I will sing with you," he said. "Even if it costs me everything."
Outside, the city trembled under the invisible siege.
The Dominion's warships released waves of oppressive silence, suffocating the very soundscape of Arakan. Yet from the shadows, a defiant chorus began to rise.
Kaelen lifted his voice, low and trembling at first, a single note weaving through the heavy air. It cracked like a fragile crystal, then grew stronger, bending light and shadow with its power.
Lira joined him, her voice ragged and raw, threading protective hymns through the air. The Choir beneath answered, their chorus a living force — a hymn of resistance against the Dominion's suffocating grasp.
The silence recoiled.
But then, from the deepest shadows, a figure emerged.
One of the Veil assassins.
Scarred, resolute, and veiled by fractured glass that shimmered with deadly promise.
"You cannot win," the assassin hissed, voice like a frozen blade. "The silence is eternal."
Kaelen smiled, a grim twist that carried both defiance and sorrow.
"Not if the song is louder."
What followed was not a battle of weapons, but of wills.
Veil assassins moved like shadows, striking into the spaces between words, dissolving sound before it could form. They were ghosts, assassins of breath, trained to extinguish the spark before it ignited.
Kaelen's lungs flared with the Ash Crown's power, releasing waves of resonant sound that shattered glass and bent perception. His voice was both weapon and shield, a living hymn that tore through the Veil's silence like lightning through a storm.
Lira's protective hymns wound around them like armor, and the Choir's voices surged, a tide against the tide of quiet.
The temple shook with the clash — the intangible war of breath and silence, of spirit and void.
Hours passed, or maybe minutes — time lost meaning in the crescendo of song and shadow.
When the last Veil assassin fell, broken and silent, the city's night sky ruptured.
From the clouds, the Choir warships unleashed their fury — cathedral vessels alive with pulsing Breath, their surfaces humming with unholy resonance. Each ship was a monument to sound and fury, a beacon of resistance and devastation.
The Dominion's verdict was clear.
Kaelen looked upward, heart pounding with both dread and hope.
The war was no longer about territory or power.
It was a war for the very soul of the world.
As dawn broke, the ruins of the night still echoed with Kaelen's voice, now raw and ragged, but unbroken.
The Silent Requiem had been sung.
And for the first time in generations, the world had listened.