The moment the woman's eyes opened, the song ceased to be a background hum and became a physical force. It was a psychic tsunami, a wave of pure, undiluted emotion crashing down upon them, built from centuries of perfect, unending loneliness.
James staggered, his mind reeling from the impact. He was no longer in a crystal chamber; he was drowning in the Singer's memories.
Flashes of a pristine, moonlit city of silver spires. Laughter in languages long dead. A sky without the comforting glow of Luminar above it.
Then, terror. A new sound in the world—the chittering of the Quiet Ones, far more numerous and terrible than the one they had faced. Shadows that consumed sound and thought. A war fought not with magic, but against an enemy that devoured it.
A desperate, final plan. A sanctuary. A Great Ward to make the city and its people silent, to make them forgotten, to hide them from the things that hunt by perception. The Singer, a priestess or a queen, willingly stepping into the crystal heart of the spire, becoming the anchor of a global lullaby.
The sheer weight of her sacrifice, her endless vigil, was too much to bear. James felt his own consciousness, his own sense of self, starting to fray and dissolve into her immense sorrow. He was losing his grip, his own memories being overwritten by hers. In a blind panic, searching for an anchor in the storm, he reached out.
His hand found Nyx's.
The contact was like lightning. For Nyx, who had spent her life listening to the broken, dissonant songs of her environment, this was a revelation. Through their linked hands, she could suddenly hear James.
His fear for Sophia was a sharp, piercing melody, a violin string stretched to its breaking point. His guilt over their predicament was a low, discordant hum. His loneliness, so similar to the Singer's yet so different, was a steady, quiet ache. And beneath it all, his stubborn, defiant will to protect his sister was a powerful, rhythmic drumbeat that refused to be silenced.
It was the most complex, chaotic, and beautiful song she had ever heard. It was the song of a human heart.
Instinctively, she squeezed his hand, not just holding on for herself, but holding him together, her own strange, chaotic Pattern acting as a shield for his.
James felt her grip and his world snapped back into focus. He looked at Nyx, truly looked at her for the first time. The glowing eyes that had once seemed so alien now reflected the same storm he felt within himself. He saw not a creature of the dark, but another soul adrift in the same darkness, and in her gaze, he found an anchor. Their desperate alliance, born of convenience and survival, was reforged in that silent, shared moment into a bond of profound, unspoken understanding. I see you.
The psychic wave crested and then began to recede as the Singer's ancient consciousness finally focused, her attention drawn to the one thing in the chamber that was a part of her: Sophia.
"The curse…" James breathed, the truth hitting him as the last of the Singer's memories settled. "It's not a curse. It's a shield. A ward."
"The lullaby of stillness," Nyx's whispers chimed, her eyes wide with comprehension. "She tried to protect her people by making them silent. Sophia carries her blood. The ward thinks she is in danger, so it tries to 'protect' her the only way it knows how." By turning her to stone. By making her silent.
As if to confirm their words, the single, brilliant thread of violet light connecting the crystal to the outside world—Sophia's thread—intensified to a blinding glare.
Sophia's body arched in James's other arm, a pained, silent scream on her lips. The stone curse, no longer creeping, now flared violently up the side of her neck, heading towards her face. The Singer wasn't attacking her; she was calling to her, trying to draw her descendant into the timeless, silent safety of the crystal. It was an act of love that would utterly destroy her.
James and Nyx, their hands still locked together, looked from the waking goddess in the crystal to the dying girl in his arms. They now understood the source of the curse, but that knowledge only made their task more impossible. They couldn't just destroy the anchor; the Singer was a victim, not a villain.
They had to intervene. But how do you sever a connection between two souls without shattering them both?