The cathedral district had always been a theatre. Its white steps stretched so wide that processions could walk six abreast and still look small, and its towers reached higher than sense, their bells tuned to remind the city when to kneel. Tonight the steps were crowded with banners and careful torches. The Blood Eclipse dyed the marble a faint rust, but the banners bore pure gold thread, bright even in red light.
—Anchor V: Take a tone from the mouth of dawn.
—Hint: Choirs sing for coin; suns rise for spectacle.
Damien and Selene watched from the eaves of an old printer's shop across the square. The house with no address lay two districts behind them, its fig tree a secret they carried like a second pulse. Riven stayed at the door, as agreed; Mira had slipped into the crowd as if born to vanish there.
"Optics," Selene said softly. Her voice almost blended with the market hum. "Asher knows the guild will follow a story more than a sword. He'll give them a hymn that makes obedience taste like grace."
Damien let his eyes settle on the high dais. Asher Drake stood there in the sponsor's light, Bloodreign Spear planted beside him as if it had grown from stone. He looked unhurried, a man who had never raised his voice and so did not need to. Choir lines spread around him, boys and men in white surplices, each with a lamp at their feet. Their mouths were closed. Waiting.
"Coin buys song," Damien said.
"Not all songs," Selene answered.
The crowd hushed. A hand rose from Asher's side—the choir conductor, his baton silvered, face unreadable in eclipse shadow. He flicked once. The hymn began.
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Notes fell like clear beads into water, and the square took them into its bones. Each voice joined with precise discipline, making chords that slid under the ribs and asked the heart to slow, to rest, to consent. Merchants in the crowd leaned back on their heels as if remembering the comfort of letting others lead. Even the patrols eased, staves lowered, shoulders unknotted.
Damien felt the first pressure at the edge of his breath. The hymn wanted to write his pulse into its bars. His Bellmark Veil curved instinctively, softening the note, but the weight pressed harder.
—Warning: External tone attempting override. Stability marginal.
Selene pressed a finger against his sleeve, grounding him. "This is the mouth of dawn," she murmured. "They promise a new morning, but they steal the night to buy it."
He looked at the conductor. The man's baton did not command the notes; it followed them. Asher had paid not only for voices but for something deeper—the ghost of a bell bound into song. Each chord struck with the authority of stone.
Mira's whisper slid across his interface, her signal keyed to his shard: They've hidden amplifiers under the choir benches. Rune plates. Each one keeps the tone from breaking. Cut two, the rest stumble.
Damien's gaze tracked the lamps at the choir's feet. Red light of the eclipse turned the glass dark, but the runes glimmered beneath, stubborn as embers. "Two?"
Two is enough. But choose the right notes. Wrong ones, the hymn fractures—kills instead of binds.
Selene smiled faintly. "That might not be a loss."
"It would be his story, not mine," Damien said.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Breath in on four, out on six. The tone wanted him to hold on its line. He refused, and made his own, thin as thread but straight. The Bellmark Veil bent it, curving the hymn's weight around his shoulders instead of through his ribs.
When he opened his eyes, the square looked different. The lamps under the benches were not lamps—they were throats. Each sang in sympathy with the choir, but two were slightly out of time, late by a breath, early by another. Flaws.
"There," he said, marking them with a nod. One on the east wing, one near the dais.
Selene's hand slid to her cloak. "I'll take the dais."
"Mira can't cover both," Damien said.
"She won't have to." Selene's eyes caught his. "You said door first. Let the house open."
The Night Door glyph pulsed in his interface. He breathed once, and the shadow beneath the printer's eaves lengthened into a line. It drew itself upright, frame and latch, a slice of their fig-leaf courtyard waiting.
Damien stepped through.
He came out in the courtyard's cool air. Riven looked up from the ledger shelf. "Already?"
"East wing," Damien said.
Riven shut the folio, tucked it into his belt, and touched the cloth above the door. The shadow line stretched, shaped itself into another frame, and opened into choir benches three districts away. He stepped through without hesitation. The door closed behind him with a sigh that meant choice.
Back at the cathedral, the hymn swelled. Asher lifted his hands like a man who had invented harmony. The Bloodreign Spear threw its shadow long across the dais, dark enough to cover the crowd's bowed heads.
Damien moved along the west wall, breath steady, veil bending the notes. His eyes stayed on the second lamp, the flaw, the note that could unmake the hymn without shattering it.
—Anchor V directive: Take the tone.
He reached the edge of the dais steps. The lamp glowed faintly, rune lines writhing under glass. The choir's chord crested, pressing down. For a heartbeat the Veil faltered—breath nearly lost.
Then Selene's voice slid under the hymn, not loud, not defiant, just a counterline hummed through her teeth. It gave the note a shadow. The Veil caught it. Damien bent, pressed his palm to the glass, and whispered, "Break."
The rune plate cracked like ice.
The hymn wavered. Not broken. Just human. A gasp ran through the square.
From the east wing came the sound of glass shattering. Riven's work.
The hymn faltered a second time. Voices tried to hold but slipped. The ghost of the bell strained. The crowd straightened as if remembering their spines.
Asher's head turned, patient, calculating. His eyes found Damien across the dais. He did not speak, but his look was a sentence: You again.
The handwritten script cut across Damien's UI.
—Anchor V accepted.
—Tone seized.
—Skill unlocked: Eclipse Chord.
—Effect: Overlay a second line on hostile sound; doubles resistance, fractures enemy harmony.
The hymn collapsed into shouts. The choir stumbled to silence. The Blood Eclipse above the cathedral flared once, then dimmed to a slow pulse.
Selene stepped from shadow to his side, her cloak trailing red. "You held," she said.
"Asher will rewrite it," Damien said.
She looked at the Spear's long shadow. "Then we teach the city a different song."