Chapter 36
Kian's body thrummed with the Song's dissonant power. His veins glowed with fractured light, and every step he took left ephemeral notes shimmering in the air. Jin Yue kept pace beside him, her blade now reforged from star-shard remnants, its edge singing in harmony with his unstable energy.
"Can you control it?" she asked, eyeing the way the ground cracked and healed beneath his feet.
"Not control," Kian said, his voice layered with echoes of Aria, the Fractured, and Lian. "Balance."
The Devourers circled overhead, their forms bloated with stolen melodies. Their song had grown louder, a cacophony that clawed at the edges of the First Song's fragile harmony.
"They're herding us," Jin Yue said. *
"Toward the ruins."
Kian nodded. The Devourers' assault had a pattern—destroying villages, collapsing mountains, but always leaving the path to the astronomer's citadel intact. "They want us there. Where the Song began."
The Citadel's Dirge
The ruins of the astronomer's citadel loomed, its walls now fused with the First Song's crystalline growths. At its center stood the shattered pedestal where Kian had merged with the Song, now rebuilt into a jagged altar.
The Devourers descended, their song swelling to a deafening roar.
"Now!" Jin Yue shouted.
Kian raised his hands, unleashing the Song's stored power. Discordant light erupted, tearing through the Devourers' ranks. But for every creature destroyed, two more emerged from the void, their forms adapting to the Song's frequency.
*
"They're learning," Kian growled. "The Song feeds them."
"Then change the song," Jin Yue said, slashing through a Devourer's tendril.
Lian's Whisper
The air rippled. Lian's spectral form materialized, translucent but urgent. *
"The Song isn't the enemy—it's afraid. The true Devourer is the Silence it was born to destroy. You have to merge them!"
"Merge chaos and order?" Kian shook his head. "That's what the Fractured wanted!"*
"No," Lian insisted. "The Fractured wanted dominance. You have to balance them."
Jin Yue parried a Devourer's strike, her blade screaming. "Do it, Kian! Before we're overrun!"
The Convergence
Kian closed his eyes, diving into the Song's core. Memories collided—Liangu's guilt, Aria's sacrifice, the Fractured's rage, Lian's hope. He wove them together, not into harmony, but into a conversation.
The Song shifted.
The Devourers froze, their stolen melodies unraveling. The citadel's crystals shattered, releasing waves of raw, unshaped sound.
"What's happening?" Jin Yue shouted over the din.
"They're remembering," Kian said. "The Silence… it's not emptiness. It's the pause between notes. The breath before the song."
He pressed his hands to the earth. The First Song and the Silence merged, not as conquerors, but as partners.
The Last Note
The Devourers dissolved, their stolen melodies returning to the earth. The citadel's ruins bloomed with poppies, their petals crimson and gold. Lian's form solidified, whole and human, his eyes clear of the Song's weight.
"You did it," he whispered.
Kian collapsed, the merged energies draining from his body. Jin Yue caught him, her star-shard blade crumbling to dust.
"What now?" she asked, her voice raw.
Lian knelt, placing a poppy in Kian's hand. "We rebuild. Together."
The Epilogue
The world healed unevenly.
Mountains retained their haunting hum, rivers their staccato flow, but life returned. Villages rebuilt with walls that sang in the wind. The astronomer's citadel became a garden where poppies grew wild, their petals humming with the First Song's memory.
Kian's hair turned white, his eyes flecked with starlight, but he walked unburdened. Jin Yue's arm remained missing, replaced by a tattoo of crystalline vines—a reminder and a vow.
And Lian?
Lian planted poppies, each one a verse in the world's new, imperfect song.