The world was quiet.
Not silent—not anymore—but quiet in a way it hadn't been for generations. Birds returned to the skies. Trees sang with the wind. Cities once muted by magic began to hum again with soft, living sound. For the first time in living memory, the Song was not controlled, silenced, or fractured.
It was free.
And that freedom, like all powerful things, had consequences.
Kairo stood on the balcony of a rebuilt spire in what remained of Virelai, overlooking the plains that once shook beneath the Choir's heel. Now they pulsed with slow, natural rhythm—a heartbeat rediscovered.
It had been three weeks since Cadenza.
Three weeks since the Final Chorus shattered.
Three weeks since the Ashborn rewrote the world.
But the Song had not stopped.
If anything, it had deepened.
He could still feel it—beneath the surface, inside his skin, pulsing between the stars.
And… something was answering.
Yui joined him, a mug of steamflower tea in her hands. "You felt it again last night?"
Kairo nodded. "It's not the Choir. It's not even the Song."
"Then what is it?"
He looked to the north. To where the stars moved just a little too quickly in the sky now. "Something else woke up when we rewrote the Song."
She didn't flinch. "Friend or enemy?"
Kairo exhaled. "Echo."
In the weeks that followed the battle at Cadenza, strange phenomena had begun.
Whole cities reappearing from beneath ruins. People regaining memories they never lived. Rivers changing direction to match songs sung centuries ago. A skybeast—long thought extinct—appearing with melodies carved into its wings.
It was as though the world, no longer bound by suppression or manipulation, was trying to remember everything at once.
But some things remembered too much.
Deep underground, in a ruin untouched by even the Choir, a vault door opened for the first time in a thousand years.
Inside, something stirred.
It looked like a child.
It spoke like a song.
But its eyes were empty.
And it whispered the name of the first Ashborn who ever died.
"Elarin."
Back in Virelai, Kairo convened with the others.
Solen sat cross-legged, plucking at a stringless instrument that still produced notes.
Lira paced, unable to stop the tiny sparks that now trailed her hands even in sleep.
Ryn meditated above the floor, her harp hovering with her.
Kei whispered directions into the wind—never wrong.
Theren had taken to watching the stars, sword across his back.
And Aeska—ever the soldier—now guarded them with the loyalty of a lifelong chord.
Kairo spoke:
"The Song remembered us."
"But we may not be the only ones it remembered."