The Piper's melody swelled like a tide determined to claim the shore, washing against the silver radiance Cipher had forced into the square. Yet, for the first time since the song began, the tide did not advance unchecked. It receded in ripples, like water disrupted by stones.
The stones were voices—small, shaking, human.
"I'm my own voice.""I'm my own voice.""We are not his notes."
The children whispered, gasped, clung to each other as Cipher had taught them. Not loud. Not strong. But present. Each word cracked through the Piper's symphony like splinters in glass.
Cipher steadied his scythe against the cobblestones. His arm burned from the weight of holding back both rats and sound, yet his jaw was set. The air hummed with the strain of two powers vying for dominance: the story that demanded obedience, and the rebellion of fragile, mortal voices daring to resist.
The Piper's cloak rippled in the night wind as he stood across the square, flute poised. The hood no longer hid his face completely. His features gleamed pale in the fractured moonlight—sharp cheekbones, lips curled in disdain, eyes burning with a fever-bright hunger. Not wholly human. Not wholly other. A shape half-made of shadow, half-stitched from song.
"Teacher…" His voice carried like silk laced with blades. "You trespass against inevitability. Do you not see? Their resistance delights me. It deepens the story, strengthens the ending. All paths converge on loss. Even yours."
Cipher's grip on the scythe did not waver. "Maybe loss is inevitable. But how they lose—that matters. I'll not see them march to your song with empty eyes."
The Piper raised the flute again, smirking. "And if the ending requires it? If the tale demands their silence?"
"Then let it demand me first."
He thrust his scythe forward. The runes blazed, flaring so brightly that shadows peeled back from the walls of the square. Rats shrieked in chorus, retreating only to lunge again, their bodies like rivers of writhing tar.
The Piper played.
This was no simple melody. It was a storm. Notes struck like knives, vibrating the very marrow of the children's bones. Some staggered, falling to their knees. Blood ran from one girl's nose as she clutched her ears, her whisper of defiance nearly extinguished.
Cipher sprinted, scythe flashing. The ground cracked where the blade bit, and waves of starlight tore through the rats. But even as he cut, he saw—always saw. The trembling boy at the edge of the circle. The girl bleeding from her nose. The little hands gripping each other as if the whole world would sweep them away.
Not again. Not one more.
The Automaton on his shoulder whirred frantically, its voice like the echo of a warning bell. "Cipher, your light is thinning! You cannot sustain this output indefinitely. He is forcing you into attrition—"
"I don't need forever," Cipher growled, his teeth bared as he drove the scythe upward in a great arc, striking against a visible wave of sound. Sparks erupted where steel met melody, light and tone screaming against one another until both broke apart into shards. "I just need a chance."
The Piper tilted his head, amused. He glided across the square, his movements neither run nor stride but something between—a step that ignored distance. His cloak trailed behind like a shadow trying to keep pace. "A chance? Against this? Teacher, you inspire their voices, yes… but children tire. Fear seeps back in. Soon, their whispers will falter. Then the ending takes them all."
Cipher's heart thundered. The boy from years ago flashed before his eyes. That helpless moment when a child believed him, trusted him, only for fate to punish that trust. His scythe trembled in his hands, not from weakness, but from the weight of memory.
No. Not this time.
He pivoted, backhanding the scythe into the cobbles. The runes flared, sending a cascade of silver sparks up like fireworks. The children gasped, their small eyes reflecting the light. Cipher lifted his voice—not as a teacher commanding, but as a man pleading.
"Listen to me! You are here! You breathe, you stand, you choose! His song is not you—it only wants to erase you. Fight not for me, not even for yourselves. Fight for each other!"
The words struck something raw. The trembling boy staggered to his feet, teeth clenched. "I… I'm here." His voice cracked, but it did not fade. Another child echoed him. Then another. A ripple of voices rising in uneven cadence, not in unison, not in harmony—each a dissonance, a resistance.
The Piper hissed, his flute faltering for half a beat.
Cipher seized the moment. He lunged, closing the distance in a blur, scythe carving arcs of light that seared through rats and shattered the Piper's lingering chords. He swung high, aiming not for the Piper's body but for the flute itself.
Metal met wood—or what should have been wood. The flute rang like steel, the note it carried snapping into a shriek. The Piper stumbled back, clutching the instrument as if it were bone from his own chest.
Cipher snarled. "You hide behind it. Without the flute, what are you?"
The Piper's eyes burned brighter, fury unraveling the smooth mask of amusement he wore. His voice rose with the sound. "I AM the flute. I am the song. You cannot cut me away from myself."
And he played again.
The ground buckled as the new melody hit, raw and jagged. The children screamed, nearly swept from their feet. Cipher staggered, scythe heavy in his hands. He could feel the song clawing not just at the children, but at him—dragging old guilt into the open, whispering that no matter how hard he fought, the ending had already been written.
The Automaton's voice was a strained buzz: "Cipher—your resonance is failing. If you fall, so do they."
He closed his eyes. His lungs burned. His mind screamed at him to yield, to rest, to accept the story's weight.
But beneath all that, he heard it.
A child's voice. Small, hoarse, but cutting through the music."I'm still here."
Then another. "We're still here."
Then many, fractured, uneven, imperfect."We're still here."
Cipher's chest shuddered, but he smiled through the pain. His eyes opened, starlight burning in them. "Yes. You are."
He roared, sweeping the scythe in a final arc. Light surged outward, not just from him, but from every spark of defiance the children had spoken. The silver glow swelled into a storm, rising like dawn against the night.
The Piper's song collided with it—and for the first time, it broke. Notes shattered into silence, scattering like fragments of glass.
The Piper staggered, cloak whipping violently as though in a storm. His flute dropped an octave, shrieking, struggling to mend itself. His eyes narrowed, no longer mocking but furious, hateful.
Cipher planted the butt of the scythe against the stones, his voice raw but unyielding. "Your story isn't the only one that can be told."
The Piper hissed, retreating a step. "This is not finished."
"No," Cipher agreed, lifting his scythe once more, silver fire cascading along the blade. "It's just beginning."
The children pressed closer together, their voices still whispering, still resisting. The Automaton clicked on his shoulder, almost reverent.
And the Piper, for the first time, faltered—not because he was defeated, but because he had been denied certainty.
The square held its breath as the last echo of the flute hung in the air, brittle, broken.
The battle wasn't over. But the ending the Piper promised had slipped from inevitability.
Cipher had cracked the story.
And now, the Piper would bleed for it.