The sky over Resonatia darkened as they followed the path to the city's farthest edge—a boundary between structured harmony and the unknown. There were no more pathways made of chimes or tones. The buildings thinned until they were little more than broken teeth—half-formed towers leaning into silence.
Aouli and Kaero walked in quiet, not out of reverence but because the air itself discouraged speech. Every syllable spoken here felt swallowed, like sound couldn't anchor itself in the air. The city's pulse had grown faint. Fewer harmonics. No guides.
The only sound now was the wind.
But it wasn't true wind.
It was voice.
Reversed.
Words played backward. Screams that hadn't happened yet. Apologies that never would.
Kaero adjusted the strap of his satchel, his tone dry but steady. "Tell me again why we're doing this."
Aouli paused and retrieved the rupture-seed from his bag.
The shard pulsed faintly. No light, just emptiness blinking in and out of his hand.
"Because it's calling us."
"And this 'Shrike'—we don't kill it?"
"No. We understand it."
Kaero snorted. "That's going to go well."
They pressed forward.
The architecture fell away, replaced by a field of cracked resonance—glass flowers that didn't grow, only broke with each step. Underfoot, the shards emitted tiny bleats, like dying memories trapped in crystal.
Then, without warning, the wind stilled.
A silence fell so dense it made Aouli's ears ring.
Ahead, a figure hovered.
Not stood.
Hovered.
It was humanoid, but only barely—limbs stretched too long, torso thin as a reed. Wings of razor-sharp metal folded against its back, not feathered but fractal, shifting in and out of visible shape. Its face was a blank oval of mirror-glass.
No eyes.
No mouth.
Just reflection.
Kaero froze. "That it?"
Aouli nodded. "The Shrike."
The air trembled.
Then the Shrike sang.
Its voice was not song.
It was reversal.
A piercing, reverse-chime that rewound sound into itself. It did not emit melody. It unmade resonance. The sound passed through them, and Aouli gasped as he felt memory shiver inside his chest.
He saw Gaia.
Then the Inklands.
Then… nothing.
Not absence.
Erasure.
The Shrike's wings unfolded slowly.
And then—without moving—its voice entered their minds.
Not words.
Not language.
Images.
A child standing over a grave of unmarked songs.
A mother crying into a well, each tear echoing back as a lie.
A choir silenced mid-note, their voices hung midair, never touching ground.
And then: a seed.
Fractured.
Screaming.
Aouli dropped to one knee, clutching his head.
Kaero pulled a blade—but it shattered in his hand the moment he raised it.
"No!" Aouli gasped. "It doesn't attack—it reflects!"
Kaero, teeth gritted, fell beside him. "Then what do we do?"
Aouli reached into his satchel.
And pulled out the tome.
The blank page shimmered as the Shrike's presence drew near.
A line etched itself:
This one sings in pain. Not to destroy. To be remembered.
Aouli understood.
He stepped forward.
And whispered—not aloud, but through resonance:
"I hear you."
The Shrike paused.
Its wings retracted.
And in the silence that followed, Aouli felt it:
Not a monster.
Not a threat.
A kept scream.
A prisoned echo.
He stepped closer.
Kaero hissed, "You're going to get shredded."
"No," Aouli said. "I'm going to tune it."
He held the rupture-seed aloft.
And placed it on the ground.
Then he knelt.
And sang.
A single note.
A human one.
Cracked. Soft.
Real.
The Shrike shimmered.
Then responded—not in attack, but in harmony.
A counter-tone.
One Aouli recognized.
It was the same note Gaia used to soothe earthquakes.
The Shrike was not born of chaos.
It was born of Gaia's pain—a final expression she couldn't shape before death.
This was Gaia's last scream.
And it had lived too long without being heard.
Aouli pressed his palm to the rupture-seed.
"I release you," he whispered.
The Shrike folded once, then collapsed in a shimmer of reverse-tones.
Not destroyed.
Integrated.
Into silence.
Into peace.
The rupture-seed dissolved.
The chimes in the distance—Resonatia's edge—sang again for the first time in years.
A simple melody.
Forgiveness.
Kaero helped Aouli to his feet.
"What did you do?"
Aouli's voice cracked. "I didn't fix it. I just let it be heard."
Kaero gave a crooked smile.
"That might be worse."