Kael stared at the crystalline syringe, its needle-fine point seeming to glitter with a predatory light in the gloom of the alley. The distorted voice of Vex hung in the air, a demand masquerading as a transaction. Give me a piece of your soul, and I will give you a map.
Every instinct honed by weeks of survival screamed at him to refuse. To give away a part of himself, a physical sample of his unique, broken resonance, to a faceless, untrustworthy entity like Vex was an act of profound foolishness. Vex could use it for anything. To create a weapon specifically tuned to his frequency. To devise a way to track him across the wastes. To replicate his abilities, to sell his secret to the highest bidder—perhaps even to the Chorus Masters themselves. The potential for catastrophic betrayal was immense.
But the alternative was to walk away. To turn his back on the only real lead he had found since leaving Lumina. To return to the aimless, desperate wandering, armed with nothing but a half-formed theory and a dwindling supply of hope. He thought of Elara, of the spiderweb cracks spreading across her skin, of her small hand clutching the promise-stone. Her time was a finite resource, and he had already wasted so much of it. The Shattered Lyre was more than a destination; it was a chance. It might be his only chance.
The risk of action versus the certainty of failure. It wasn't really a choice at all.
With a grim, tight-lipped resolve, Kael bent down and picked up the syringe. It felt cold and unnervingly light in his hand. He unrolled the tattered sleeve of his tunic, exposing the pale, scarred skin of his forearm. He held the needle poised, ready to draw the blood.
Then he stopped.
A small act of defiance, a way of asserting some measure of control over a situation in which he had none, sparked in his mind. He rolled his sleeve back down. If Vex wanted to study his unique resonance, his Dissonant nature, then he would not give a sample from his arm. He would give Vex the most potent, most concentrated sample he could. He would give him the blood that was closest to the source.
He knelt, resting his weight on his good leg, and rolled up his other trouser leg. The silvery, lightning-bolt scars that traced their way up his calf seemed to hum with a faint energy in the oppressive quiet of the alley. He held the syringe and, without flinching, slid the needle into the soft flesh just beside the largest of the scars, the place where the Jag-Wolf's poison had been strongest. He felt a strange, resonant tingle as the needle pierced the scarred tissue. He drew back the plunger, and a single, dark red drop of blood, almost black in the dim light, filled the crystal chamber. It seemed to pulse with a faint, dissonant energy of its own.
He withdrew the needle, a fresh bead of blood welling up on his skin. He placed the filled syringe back on the small stone tray. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the tray retracted smoothly back into the rock wall, disappearing without a sound.
A moment later, a different object slid out from the same hidden slot: a tightly rolled sheet of thin, flexible, translucent crystal. The map.
"Your path lies north, through the pass known as the Widow's Jaw," Vex's distorted voice said, one final time, the sound seeming to fade as it spoke. "Do not return to Barren. Our business is concluded."
The slot in the wall sealed shut with a quiet click, leaving no trace it had ever been there. The oppressive, watchful presence that had filled the alley was gone. Kael was alone, the weight of his decision settling upon him like a physical cloak. He had what he came for. He wondered, with a fresh wave of anxiety, what Vex now had in return.
He snatched the map, turned his back on the dead-end alley, and walked away. He didn't run, but his strides were long and purposeful. He left The Hole, left the discordant noise of the marketplace, and didn't stop until the last ugly, ramshackle structure of Barren was behind him.
He felt exposed, violated. The feeling of being watched, of being known, lingered long after he had left the settlement. It was a paranoid itch between his shoulder blades that he couldn't scratch. As he journeyed away from the ravine and back into the shadow of the Obsidian Peaks, he noticed something strange. The Dissonant scar on his leg, which usually emitted a low, steady hum that only he could perceive, was now silent. The constant, faint vibration that had become a part of his new reality was gone. It was as if giving away that single drop of blood had taken a small piece of his power with it, or had temporarily quieted its song. The silence from within was more unnerving than any external noise, leaving him feeling weaker, unbalanced, and more vulnerable than before.
Once he was sure he was a safe distance away, hidden in a cleft between two massive black boulders, he unrolled the map. It was unlike any map he had ever seen. The lines and symbols were not drawn with ink, but etched with a fine, faintly glowing crystal dust. It was a resonant map. As he held it, he could feel a faint, complex hum emanating from it, a silent song of direction and warning.
The glowing lines showed the treacherous paths that wound their way through the heart of the Obsidian Peaks. Other, fainter lines of a different, angry-red color, marked areas of high Dissonant interference—the "screaming veins" the miners had spoken of. And there, at the very center of the intricate map, was a single, brightly glowing symbol that pulsed with a quiet but powerful energy.
The symbol of a broken lyre.
The map was real. The lead was real. The Shattered Lyre existed. And the price he had paid for this knowledge, the silence in his own scarred flesh, was already making itself known. He had bought his hope with his own blood, and he could only pray the cost would not be too high.