The echoes of Aster's final rap song were still fading into the night when he stepped forward again, breathing heavily but eyes shining with fierce determination.
"Everyone…" he called out, voice amplified across the plaza, "I have a question."
The crowd, still wiping tears from his emotional finale, quieted instantly.
"Do you want to hear… more songs?"
The plaza shook.
"YES!!!"
"One more!"
"Keep singing!!!"
"Don't stop!"
"ASTERRRRR!!"
Aster smiled gently, though his hands trembled behind his back.
They didn't know.
They couldn't know.
He was already at his limit.
His limbs felt heavy.
His mana channels burned.
His heart thudded painfully from the double mana potion overdose.
But he forced himself to stand tall.
"Then tell me…" Aster continued, "would you like to listen to our songs anywhere—"
He raised his hand dramatically.
"—anytime?"
The crowd blinked.
Murmurs spread.
"What… does that mean?"
"Anywhere? Anytime?"
"Is he going to travel the country?"
"Does he plan to sing every day?"
"That's impossible even for him…"
Aster chuckled.
"Let me explain."
Astra looked at him from the side, eyes filled with concern—but she didn't stop him.
She knew her brother.
Once he decided something, nothing could hold him back.
Aster lifted a small, glowing stone.
A magic stone.
But not just any stone.
"This," he said clearly, "is a Sound Recorder Stone."
The plaza went silent.
His sisters leaned forward.
The nobles watching from viewing towers froze.
Aster continued, his voice filled with pride:
"I have found a way to store sound—music, voices, melodies—inside certain magic stones."
Gasps rippled through the entire crowd.
"Store… sound?"
"Inside a stone?!"
"That's impossible!"
"No magic can do that!"
"Is this a royal secret technique?"
"Did he… invent this…?"
Aster held the recorder stone high, letting the faint blue glow shimmer across the audience.
"Only the engineers who helped—and myself—know how to make them. No one else in the world can reproduce this process."
He wasn't lying.
Even the engineers only understood the basics.
The complex layering of resonance sigils?
Only Aster could do that.
Astra stepped beside him, smiling proudly.
"It means," she said softly, "you can now listen to our songs whenever you want."
Aster nodded.
"Starting today, you can buy each song individually… or our entire **album**."
The plaza trembled.
Album.
A word no one had ever heard before today.
A concept no one had imagined possible.
Aster spread his arms, showing the large wooden crates lined behind the stage—filled with hundreds of sound stones, each engraved with unique runes.
"And to make things simple," he continued, "we have contracted **Arc Merchants**—the company owned by my mother's dear friend."
People cheered wildly at that.
Aster kept going.
"From now on, every Arc Merchant shop in the capital—and soon in other major cities—will sell our recorded songs."
He tapped the recorder stone once.
A soft melody—Astra's voice from an earlier song—floated into the air.
The crowd gasped as if witnessing a miracle.
A stored song…
Playing by itself…
Without magic being cast…
The realization hit the people like lightning.
This was not just music.
This was invention.
Revolution.
A new form of art, economy, magic, and communication.
Aster Wynfall had just changed history.
And he was only eight.
***
The audience erupted like a volcano.
"That's incredible!!"
"I MUST buy one!"
"This will change everything!"
"We can listen to their songs at home!"
"Aster is a genius!"
"Astra's voice is healing!"
"This is the greatest day in Vornis history!"
Parents lifted children onto their shoulders.
Teenagers screamed the twins' names.
Elderly citizens wept openly.
Even the nobles who came to mock the twins…
stood speechless.
A few clapped.
A few began frantically calculating profits and losses in their heads.
***
Far away, in the palace—
After hearing the new,
The queen crushed her wine cup in her hand, blood dripping down her palm as rage filled her eyes.
"He… he dared… THE BRAT DARED TO—"
A servant quickly knelt with bandages.
But the king…
He stared out the window toward the faint glow of the plaza.
His expression was unreadable.
If one looked closely enough…
there was a hint of pride.
And a hint of fear.
"Aster," he whispered, "what are you becoming…?"
***
Back at the plaza, Aster bowed deeply.
"Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you… for changing our lives."
Astra bowed beside him.
"We promise to keep singing for all of you!"
The audience roared.
The Wynfall siblings waved.
Arlienne cried harder than she ever had.
Seraphine screamed her siblings' names like an obsessed fan.
And the people of Vornis would forever remember this night as—
**The Birth of Recorded Music.**
Aster didn't know it yet…
But his announcement would change the world.
Its culture.
Its economy.
Its magic research.
Its politics.
Its future.
For generations.
But that…
is a story for another time.