The dead stone sat on Kaelen's desk, a paperweight for a problem he couldn't solve. It wasn't corrupted. It wasn't broken. It was just… offline. Holding it felt like shaking hands with a stranger who was looking right through you.
"Explain it to me again, Lyra," he said, his voice carefully neutral. They were in his private study, the scent of old paper and pine a stark contrast to the unsettling void the stone emitted.
Lyra shifted in her chair, picking at a loose thread on her tunic. "I don't know how to explain it. It's just… easier. When everything gets too loud, I can just… find the quiet. It's like finding a spot with no wind."
"But you're not just finding it," Kaelen pressed gently. "You're creating it. You silenced the stone's entire song."
"It didn't have anything important to say anyway," she mumbled, not meeting his eyes. "It's just a rock."
The dismissal was like a needle to his heart. To him, every stone held the memory of a mountain. To her, it was background noise.
He tried a different tack. "Does it happen when you're upset? Or stressed?"
She shrugged, a masterpiece of adolescent non-communication. "I guess. When Jax was being annoying. When Bren was pushing. When I have too much homework." She finally looked up, her gaze pleading. "It just makes my brain feel… clean. For a minute."
Clean. The word hung in the air. He remembered the seductive whisper of the Blight, promising easy power. This was different. This promised easy peace. And in a world that had known so much chaos, he could see how intoxicating that was.
He dismissed her with a promise to talk more later. The moment she was gone, Elara slipped in, having heard the rumors.
"She's not the only one," Elara said without preamble, leaning against the doorframe. Her arms were crossed, a basket of herbs hooked over one elbow. "Old Man Hemmet's grandson, Pip. He got frustrated trying to light a kindling spell yesterday. The kid just sighed, and the firewood went cold. Not wet. Cold. Like it forgot it could burn."
Kaelen stared at her. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I thought it was a fluke. A weird, one-off glitch." She nodded at the dead stone on his desk. "That doesn't look like a glitch."
A cold knot tightened in Kaelen's stomach. It wasn't an isolated incident. It was spreading.
The next day, it was in the marketplace. A young apprentice baker, overwhelmed by the heat of the oven and the baker's constant yelling, accidentally turned a tray of rising dough into a inert, doughy brick. The yeast's lively, bubbling song was just… gone.
A few days later, two teens got into a shouting match over who a girl, Nessa, liked more. In the heat of the argument, Nessa, flustered and overstimulated, threw her hands up. The vibrant, tangled melody of their conflicting emotions didn't just calm down; it cut out completely. The two boys were left standing there, anger vanished, replaced by a flat, confused emptiness. They just walked away from each other, the fight forgotten, the passion extinguished.
The kids started calling it "The Mute." It wasn't a failure of magic. It was a new, terrifying skill. A way to opt-out.
And it was becoming a trend.
Kaelen saw them huddled in corners of the square, not laughing or talking, just sitting in shared, comfortable silence. They looked peaceful. Relaxed. They looked the way he felt after a long, hot bath. And it terrified him.
He tried to talk to them, to explain the danger. "The Song is what holds the world together," he told a small group, including Lyra and Jax. "It's the connection between all things. To sever it, even in a small spot, is like… it's like cutting a thread in a tapestry. Do it enough, and the whole thing unravels."
Jax, ever the pragmatist, just shrugged. "Seems fine to me. My dad's tapestry is still holding up."
Lyra didn't even argue. She just looked at him with a pitying expression, as if he were an old man ranting about the weather. "You don't get it, Master Kaelen. You're from a time when the world was simpler."
The irony was so thick he could taste it. He had fought a war against a force that wanted to unmake reality, and this child thought his world was simpler?
The final straw came when he found Lyra teaching a smaller child how to do it. "No, don't try to feel the leaf," she was saying, her voice a soft, patient monotone. "Just… listen for the space around the feeling. Find the quiet behind the green. Yeah, like that."
The leaf in the child's hand faded from a vibrant emerald to a pale, dusty grey. Not dead. Neutralized.
Kaelen felt a surge of panic, sharp and acidic. This wasn't just a coping mechanism anymore. It was being curated. Shared. It was going viral.
He wasn't dealing with a classroom discipline problem. He was witnessing the birth of a cult. A cult of apathy, led by a girl who just wanted a little peace and quiet.
And he had absolutely no idea how to stop it.