The board shifted like tectonic plates, each tile groaning as if under the weight of some unseen hand. When the grinding ceased, Kaelen, Lyra, and the candle-bearer stood in a battlefield unlike any they had seen before.
Four towers loomed at the cardinal edges of the arena. They were impossibly tall, vanishing into the void's sky, each humming with a resonant, bone-deep vibration. Their glow was not fire, nor light, but something colder—an emptiness that drew heat, sound, and life into itself.
Kaelen shivered. "They're… wrong."
Lyra tilted her head, her voice hushed. "Not wrong. Hungry."
As if in answer, the first tower pulsed. Its surface rippled, and a wave of silence crashed across the board. It wasn't quiet—no, quiet would have been mercy. This silence devoured sound, devoured breath, devoured even thought. For a heartbeat, Kaelen felt himself erased.
The relic jolted in his hand, anchoring him back to existence. He stumbled, gasping, clutching his chest. The candle-bearer screamed—though the sound was swallowed, visible only on their lips—as the flame guttered, nearly snuffed out by the tower's void.
The eye above whispered, satisfied.
"Flame cannot survive in silence. Silence is checkmate."
Kaelen cursed under his breath. So that's the trap. The towers weren't meant to destroy them directly. They were designed to smother the flame.
Lyra's gaze flicked from tower to tower, her jaw tightening. "Four anchors. Four walls closing in. We take them out, or we suffocate."
Kaelen nodded grimly. "Then we don't wait. We strike first."
The flame flickered, struggling but alive. The bearer raised it weakly, and Kaelen touched the relic to its glow. The two forces intertwined, forming a single blaze that cut through the suffocating silence like a blade.
The first tower shuddered, as though sensing their defiance. Its surface began to crack, releasing tendrils of void-mist that slithered across the board, curling around their legs, clutching at their throats.
Lyra sliced one apart with her blade, though it bled not mist but memories—visions of her past, spilled like ink into the void. Her body froze, her face pale. "It's… showing me…"
Kaelen grabbed her, snapping her out of it. His own throat tightened as shadows of his own past clawed at his vision—his failures, his betrayals, the weight of his mistakes. The towers weren't just silencing sound. They were silencing self.
The eye's voice echoed again.
"Without identity, there is no will. Without will, there is no flame."
Kaelen's grip on the relic hardened. He looked at Lyra, then at the trembling candle-bearer. He could see the fear in their eyes, the doubt creeping in. And yet—the flame still flickered. Fragile, but unyielding.
He raised the relic high, fire surging with him. "Then we burn through silence."
The flame stretched, wrapping their small circle in light, pushing the void-tendrils back. For the first time, a crack split down the first tower's surface, and Kaelen swore he heard it—just faintly—scream.
Lyra's grin returned, savage despite the blood on her lip. "Guess silence isn't so quiet after all."
But three towers still stood, and their hum deepened, the silence thickening into a crushing weight that threatened to extinguish them before they could reach the next strike.