There was no ground. Not in the way Aouli remembered it.
Where they emerged from the threshold of the Inklands, there was only air, and beneath it, a sheen of translucent stone suspended like the surface of a frozen lake. And yet it moved—gently rising and falling as though breathing. A hollow tremor met his boots with every step.
The wind came next.
It was not the howling kind.
It was articulate.
It slid between the towers and walkways, weaving through suspended bridges made of amber-glass. It moved like a question being asked in a language of resonance. The breeze did not howl; it whistled. A high-pitched clarity that passed through his skull and nestled behind his ears, like tuning forks vibrating too deep to escape.
Kaero staggered slightly, grabbing Aouli's shoulder to stabilize himself.
"Okay," he muttered. "Did we just land inside a wind chime?"
Aouli didn't answer.
The view beyond them stole all thought. The continent floated, anchored by nothing visible, ringed by towers of gleaming prismatic glass—each one rising hundreds of meters, catching light from no sun, yet glowing like captured dusk. They leaned gently inward, as though bowing to an unseen center.
The chimes began.
Not from any structure. From the air itself.
A low, rising tone thrummed under their feet, matched a second later by a distant, brighter trill from one of the towers. Then another. And another. Notes overlapping. Harmonizing.
Kaero tensed. "They're responding to us."
Aouli nodded. "Listening."
"Not creepy at all."
They took a few steps forward. The glass beneath them shifted color with their weight—not from mood or heat, but sound. Every step caused a muted resonance, which the surface translated into hue. Aouli's steps made deep violet. Kaero's, sharp flashes of pale blue.
Before them, an archway formed—not built, but sung into being. It coalesced from overlapping tones, shaping into curved plates of aurora-glass.
On the other side stood a child.
Or at least, something child-shaped.
Small, with limbs wrapped in folds of translucent fabric that shimmered with moving sound waves—like water caught mid-ripple. Where a face should be, there was only a veil of vibrating mesh, and beneath it, flashes of blinking patterns—quick pulses that conveyed tone more than expression.
The child approached them without speaking.
It reached a hand toward Aouli.
He froze.
The hand made contact—palm against palm.
And then the child recoiled violently, emitting a dissonant chime that shook the nearby towers for a full second before fading.
A voice—musical, layered, like three people speaking at once—emerged from nowhere and everywhere:
"Outsider carries ancient tone. Interference imminent."
Kaero braced himself. "That sounds friendly."
A field of gentle air surrounded them—a dome of muted vibration. From above, floating orbs descended, pulsing with colored sound like echoing sonar.
The child—Aver—recovered quickly, tapping its own chest three times.
Then the same voice returned.
"Welcome to Resonatia. We hear you. We do not yet know you."
Aouli stepped forward.
"I am Aouli. I carry seeds."
The chimes around them flared, overlapping in a discordant tremble. Then, slowly, they steadied—settling into a single pure note: a B-flat, sustained and soft.
"You carry unfinished tone. The City listens. The Echoes prepare."
A path of violet and silver glass extended outward before them, curving through the air toward the nearest tower, which hummed gently with a melody that seemed to mimic Aouli's heartbeat.
Kaero exhaled, low and uneasy.
"Well," he muttered, "at least we didn't fall to our deaths."
Aouli started walking.
Kaero followed.
Above them, the entire city began to tune itself—adjusting to their presence.
And in the wind, beneath the overtone of harmony, Aouli heard something else.
Faint.
Almost buried.
A whisper. A breath.
Not a voice.
A tone.
Gaia's.
Not spoken in words, but in longing.
A sorrow-shaped note, vibrating just beneath the city's surface. A thousand fragments of a dream, played in reverse.
He closed his eyes briefly, letting it wash through him.
The City of Chimes didn't just remember sound.
It remembered absence.
And for the first time since he left Gaia's bones behind, Aouli felt not the weight of legacy...
But the shape of it.
Waiting to be heard.