Lyu-china... lyu-chin-ushka...
Shep-chush-chiye... Pus-to-ty...
Go-ri... go-ri... ne-yas-no...
Go-ri... do-go-raye-sh...
The melody did not just float through the air; it bled into it.
It was a sweet, sorrowful tune. Hauntingly familiar, yet entirely unknown. It felt like a memory of a home that had been burned to the ground before one was even born.
It drifted down from the crest of the hundred-foot obsidian gates of the Whispering Hollows. The black stone of the gate seemed to vibrate with every pull of the string, humming a low, subsonic frequency that rattled the teeth of anyone nearby.
High above, a lone bard sat on the edge of the monolithic threshold.
The cool night wind caught his hair, whipping it across a face half-swallowed by shadow and half-painted in pale, sickly moonlight. He looked less like a man and more like a ghost haunting the entrance to a tomb.
His fingers danced across the strings of his lyre. The instrument itself was a pale, ivory color that looked uncomfortably like polished bone.
Far below, Aurelius approached the gates.
The wind howled through the gates, kicking up dust and the smell of old iron, but the world around the gate was trapped in a terrifying contradiction.
Arrows remained suspended in mid-air, their feathers twitching in the wind but their tips refusing to move. Heavy iron cannonballs hung like black stars in the sky, frozen mid-arc, defying every law of gravity.
Aurelius's dark mantle armor drank the moonlight. The only illumination came from the faint, burning gold flickering behind his dark visor—a predatory light that never wavered.
He did not break his stride. He did not look away from the figure perched above.
His gauntleted hands rested calmly on the hilt of his broadsword. The leather grip felt cold and familiar against his palms.
High on the wall, the bard's fingers pulled the final string.
Thrum.
The note hung in the air, vibrating until it felt like it would shatter the obsidian itself. Then, it snapped.
The world plunged into an absolute, suffocating silence. The music died, leaving a void that made the ears ache.
Only the natural wind remained, blowing freely through the dark gorge, whistling against the sharp edges of Aurelius's pauldrons.
The bard tilted his head, peering down.
He scanned the expanse behind the lone warrior. He looked for the banners of the Tamaskritian army, for the ranks of infantry, for the war-beasts. He found no one.
Just a single man, standing before a sea of suspended soldiers and paused destruction.
"Just a single person?"
The bard's voice carried effortlessly. It was laced with genuine, childlike fascination.
"Uncle Aelroth was afraid of a single man?"
He leaned forward, his torso hanging precariously over the hundred-foot drop. He studied the golden glow of Aurelius's visor with a clinical, detached curiosity.
"I do not want to kill you, warrior. Turn away and never return."
His tone was impossibly soft. It was the voice of a man who had forgotten how to scream.
Aurelius didn't move. He stood perfectly still at the base of the gates, a dark pillar against the obsidian backdrop.
"A brave one. I will give you that," the bard murmured.
He did not use the stairs. He simply leaned further until gravity took him. He dropped the hundred feet like a falling leaf, landing in a soft crouch that didn't even kick up the dust.
He stood directly in front of the entrance, his eyes locking onto the golden slits of the helmet.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Aurelius remained silent. The wind whipped his heavy cloak, the fabric snapping like a flag in a storm.
"It is very rude to give someone the silent treatment, you know," the bard chided.
His voice carried a smooth, romantic cadence. It was the kind of voice that belonged in a ballroom, not a battlefield littered with frozen corpses.
"Ah, my bad. I haven't introduced myself."
The bard chuckled softly, a sound that was dry and hollow.
He swept his right arm backward. Keeping his left hand wrapped securely around his lyre, he dipped into a flawless, royal bow.
"I am Melodius."
He straightened up, the movement fluid and unnaturally graceful. "Welcome to the Whispering Hollows."
The polite smile faded from his lips, replaced by a flat, empty stare.
"But unfortunately, I am afraid you have to turn back."
"This is as far as I will allow any Tamaskritians to pass."
"The gates of the Whispering Hollows will always be closed for traitors who broke our thousands-of-years-old alliance."
He spoke calmly, but the quiet hatred in his voice was like a sharpened needle. It was the kind of hatred that had been aged in the dark for a long, long time.
Aurelius observed him.
His first instinct was to draw the broadsword and slash the bard in half. A single, clean arc to end the song forever.
But he held himself back. The weight of the air, the way the light refracted off the suspended cannonballs—it was all wrong. He knew it wouldn't be that easy.
This man wasn't just a bard. He was a calamity in a silk coat. And the way he carried himself... the effortless arrogance... he was clearly of the royal bloodline.
Slowly, deliberately, Aurelius bowed his head. It was a gesture of respect between two people of high standing.
Then, reaching up, he unlatched his helmet. The seal hissed, releasing a cloud of warm vapor into the freezing night air.
He took the helmet off and held it by his waist.
Their gazes locked.
"I am Aurelius."
The bard froze.
The calm, mocking facade didn't just crack; it shattered. Recognition hit him like a physical blow to the chest.
Aurelius saw the shift in his eyes. He felt a moment of confusion. He didn't recognize this man, so why did the man look like he had seen a ghost?
Aurelius was famous, yes. His name was whispered with fear even in the distant halls of Athervale. But this felt deeper. This felt personal.
"Yes, I am indeed Aurelius," he replied, his voice regaining its glacial, military composure.
"And who might you be, Melodius? I do not recognize you."
Melodius didn't answer at first. Then, he started to laugh. It started as a titter and grew into a loud, hysterical bark.
"Well, it's no surprise. Sometimes even I don't recognize myself."
The laughter died as quickly as it began. A hint of something—admiration, perhaps, or a lingering scrap of respect—surfaced in his voice.
The gravity of the situation began to press down on them. Two boys, once part of a grand alliance, now standing at the edge of other's end.
"But I am sorry, Aurelius," Melodius said, his voice dropping to a somber whisper.
"I cannot let you, or any other Tamaskritian soldiers, to pass through me."
"Turn back. I shall spare you for what you did for me in our childhood. When you visited Athervale in the years of our alliance—"
"Negative."
Aurelius cut him off before the sentiment could take root.
The heavy, metallic shing of his broadsword echoed through the place as he drew it. The blade caught the moonlight, gleaming with a cold, murderous intent.
"I won't go back until and unless I complete my objective. My father, Emperor Nihil, sent us for a reason."
Melodius stared at the steel for a few seconds.
Then, he shook his head, looking almost disappointed.
"Aurelius... Aurelius... My man.... you didn't really change at all."
"Still the same arrogantly comforting and focused child. Even after a decade."
Melodius sighed, adjusting his grip on the bone-white lyre.
"My aspect is useless against you. I can't really damage you, even a little."
"You bypassed my aspect by default since the day we met.
Melodic, isn't it? Aurelius... Melodius. Seems like an end rhyme to me."
He looked up, and for the first time, his eyes went completely dark. The pupils seemed to swallow the irises.
"Alas, one of us will end tonight. and it's going to be you, my friend."
Aurelius lowered the tip of his broadsword until it grazed the stone.
"I won't raise my sword against you," he said calmly.
"Why? How are you supposed to fight?" Melodius asked. The unnerving smile was back, wider than before.
"I don't fight against those who are defenseless against me."
"You said your aspects cannot protect you from me... Didn't you?"
Melodius blinked. Then he clapped his hands together once, the sound sharp as a gunshot.
"Oh my, oh my. That is quite generous of you, Crown Prince of Tamaskrit."
He placed one hand behind his back and offered another sweeping, theatrical bow.
"You are indeed absolutely right, Aurelius."
"I did say that my aspect won't affect you. And I did say that I, personally, cannot harm you."
He rose from the bow. His smirk was jagged now, something sharp and broken.
The moonlight reflected off his eyes, showing two tiny, golden images of Aurelius trapped in the dark.
"But they can."
A sudden, visceral pang of cold spiked through Aurelius's chest. It wasn't the wind. It was a premonition.
He turned back.
The world behind him was no longer still. The magic holding the suspension was being violently re-purposed.
The "paused" elven warriors, the massive war rhinos, the twisted hollow spawns—they weren't falling. They were being pulled.
They dragged through the air toward a single center point, flying through the dark like iron filings to a magnet.
Flesh ripped. Armor shrieked as it was crushed.
Aurelius watched in grim silence as a small, glowing soul was being knit together by the invisible threads of Melodius's music.
It was a butcher's masterpiece.
Elven limbs fused into massive, corded trunks of muscle. Rhino horns were driven through steel plating to form jagged, external ribs. The cannonballs didn't hit the ground; they were absorbed into the mass, becoming dense, metallic knuckles and armored joints.
A grotesque, titanic humanoid rose from the earth. It was thirty feet of merged rot, living elven flesh, and battlefield scrap.
"Aurelius," Melodius whispered.
He tilted his head, his smile reaching his ears. It was the look of a man who had spent too long talking to nothingness.
"Say hello to our little friend."
The Titan ripped its jaws open—a maw made of broken swords and rhino teeth—and unleashed a screech that felt like a thousand dying men screaming at once.
Several moments earlier.
The air in the depths of the Whispering Hollows was thick, tasting of stagnant water and old sap.
A single man descended toward a forbidden dungeon, his footsteps heavy with a familiarity that was its own kind of tragedy.
This place was a secret kept from the world. Most of the Royal Family didn't even know the roots of the Tree went this deep.
A lone torch flickered in King Aelroth's hand.
The orange light danced off the inner barks of the massive tree, making the wood look like it was pulsing with a slow, ancient heartbeat.
There were no guards here. They weren't necessary. The aura of the place was enough to keep the curious away.
Aelroth walked past several rusted cages.
He didn't look at the skeletons chained to the walls, their jaws hanging open in a permanent silent scream.
He didn't look at the human prisoners who had long ago lost the ability to speak. They were hunched in the corners, driven to the ultimate madness of hunger, mindlessly chewing on their own fingers and forearms.
The sickening crunches of bone snapping and life draining hummed through the corridor like a background prayer.
Aelroth's face was a mask of cold stone. He had heard these sounds many times before.
He walked past the misery until he reached the final, reinforced cell.
He unlocked the heavy iron door and stepped inside.
The chamber was a nightmare of elven filth and dried, blackened blood. It smelled of decay and a strange, floral perfume.
In the corner, a lonely figure was hunched against the fibrous bark of the wall.
The torchlight cut through the gloom, revealing the prisoner.
He was holding a lyre. It was a beautiful, horrific thing crafted out of bleached elven bones and cured skin. The strings were woven from human hair and silver wire.
Aelroth stopped at a safe distance.
He felt no shock. He felt no pity.
He looked at the monster he had created, at the prince he had broken and buried in the dark to save a kingdom that was already rotting.
King Aelroth murmured, his voice echoing in the small, bloody room.
"My Nephew..."
"Prince Melodius."