"Not every sound is heard with the ears. Some vibrate in the soul, waiting to be listened to."
— Tilden, the Bard of Scars
It was a rainy night in Tharnwood. The rain drummed on the wooden rooftops, turning the village into a stage for a melancholic symphony of droplets and muffled thunder. The glow of oil lamps flickered through window cracks, while the scent of wet earth mingled with the aroma of thin broth wafting from simple homes. The village was small, tucked away in the northern reaches of Myrenhal, cradled by hills cloaked in endless forests.
At Velma's inn, an old bard played a silver lute, his calloused fingers coaxing low, resonant notes that seemed to make the fire in the hearth sway in rhythm. His name was Tilden. Children feared him, elders respected him, and adults tolerated him when they weren't too drunk to listen. But there was a red-haired boy with lively brown eyes and an expression hungry for stories. He sat in the corner, knees drawn up, hands smudged with soot from the inn's oven.
Maple.
He had no surname, no known parents. They said he was found on the village outskirts, wrapped in rags beside a woman's body, her eyes empty and a glowing runic mark etched above her womb. The midwife who took him in died weeks later of swamp fever. He ended up in the care of Velma, a sturdy, practical, and tough woman who always said, "If you can't work, you don't need to eat so much." Still, Velma taught him to survive: how to chop wood, clean fish, sweep horse dung, and lie just enough to avoid a beating.
Maple grew up surrounded by the smell of sour ale, the warmth of poorly fed fires, and the constant hum of other people's conversations. But nothing captured his attention like Tilden's music. He'd hide to watch the old man tune his strings, listening to him murmur words in languages no one else knew. One day, Tilden called the boy over.
"Your eyes hear more than your ears, lad. That's rare," the bard said, handing him a small piece of wood and a rusty runic dagger. "Carve. Don't think. Feel."
The wood was nothing special. But when Maple finished carving, he saw a faint glowing line appear in the groove. A rune. Small. Flickering. Alive. Tilden laughed.
"Music lives in things, boy. You've got the ear for wood. And maybe… for stone, too."
For the next four years, Maple trained in secret. Tilden returned whenever he could, teaching him to hear the hidden sounds: the rhythm of trees in the wind, the echoes of footsteps beneath the ground, the notes buried in the crackle of a fire. Tilden wasn't just a bard. He was a runic, one who wove sound, emotion, and physical form through carvings and vibrations. Every lesson was an adventure.
There were moments when they'd sit for hours in silence in shallow caves, listening to the drip of water echo off the stones. Tilden would have Maple mark the time between each drop with taps on the ground until he could predict the next one without hearing it. He said sound was a current, an invisible stream, and a true runic bard had to swim in it without drowning.
Maple learned to craft small sound amulets: pieces of wood carved with runes that hummed at certain tones when he whistled. He learned to use echoes to measure enclosed spaces, to detect lies in the breath of others, to create silence around himself by cutting sound with softly sung counter-notes. But all of this was forbidden. The ancient runes had been outlawed by the Order of Silence, a mystical sect that hunted bards who dared to play the forbidden sounds.
Once, while wandering a forgotten stretch of Sylvelin Forest, Tilden showed Maple a tree etched with runes that resonated under the touch of a hand. When Maple pressed his palm to it, he felt a vibration climb his arm, as if the tree held hidden memories. Tilden watched him with a weary but proud look.
"All matter has memory, Maple. And every sound is a key. We're just players of the wrong locks until we find the right one."
One autumn night, Tilden arrived wounded. One leg was blackened with poison, his lute cracked. He could barely speak, but his final words were:
"Maple… follow the wind… where it echoes differently… there's a temple… and you'll remember…"
He left the boy his lute, a wooden necklace carved with a strange rune, and an old notebook filled with disjointed writings, incomplete maps, notes on creatures, places, and sounds. Within its pages, Maple found entries about light-sounds, forgotten echoes, resonating minerals, and cryptic passages that glowed under moonlight.
Tilden died that night. With him went the last song the world knew.
Maple buried his master in the woods, under a tree that hummed in the wind. For the next two days, he stood still, trying to make the lute play without going out of tune. On the third night, he carefully carved a rune into the instrument. The wood yielded strangely. A warmth rose through his hands.
The sound that came wasn't a note. It was a whisper. And it spoke his name.
The next morning, he left. Not out of courage. But out of necessity. Tharnwood was too small to hold that kind of silence.
End of Prologue.