The plains south of Stonecross stretched wide and green under a calm sky.
A month ago, it had been nothing but ash and broken glass. Now the grass moved like water, thick with new life. Flowers that no one had seen in generations dotted the banks of the marshes.
It was Feyra's doing — her breath had reached this far.
Sergeant Harry adjusted the strap of his pack as his team crossed the ridge. Behind him, three Servitors hauled supply crates, their hides streaked with faint golden lines from Bloomscript runes. Every footstep pulsed in quiet rhythm.
"Feels too perfect," said Scout Elen, walking beside him. "No wind, no birds. Even the frogs stopped croaking."
Harry nodded. "After all we've seen, I'll take silence over screaming."
But he didn't like it either.
The Bloomring engineers set up markers along the valley floor.
Archivist Daren crouched beside a stream, dipping a resonance wand into the water. The runes along its shaft glowed once — then flickered out.
He frowned and checked the tablet strapped to his wrist. "That's odd. Readings just… stopped."
Elen knelt beside him. "Equipment failure?"
"No," Daren said. "It's still powered. There's just nothing to read. Like the air forgot how to echo."
A Servitor snorted uneasily. Feyra's light had reached even these beasts; their reactions were sharper now, almost aware.
Harry looked toward the horizon, where the wind rippled the grass — and stopped. The motion froze mid-wave, as if the entire field had forgotten to move.
By evening, the campfire crackled weakly in the still air.
Elen stared at her hands. "Every time I try to hum the marching rhythm, it dies in my throat."
"Because there's nothing to hum against," Daren muttered. "No resonance, no resistance. Just empty air."
When Draven arrived with Brenn and Joran the next morning, the silence still held. Feyra padded behind them, her fur dim, blossoms drifting around her paws.
Joran pressed a rune stone into the soil. It didn't glow. He lifted it again, rubbed the surface, tried once more — nothing.
"Same as Stonecross," he said. "Bloomscript works until it touches this ground, then it just… quits."
Feyra's ears flattened. Her fur lifted, but she didn't growl. She simply stared at the dirt and backed away.
"She feels it," Brenn said quietly.
Draven knelt, placing his hand against the soil. It was warm, but dead — no pulse beneath. The Codex shimmered faintly at his belt, opening a single half-formed page.
Something learns from the song.
Draven stood. "We close this area. No digging, no harvesting, no Bloomscript use."
"Thirty kilometers?" Brenn asked.
"Thirty. And mark the line with Feyra's petals. Nothing crosses without my order."
That night, a pale light spread through the grass.
Golden veins crawled beneath the ground like glowing roots.
One soldier — Private Ilen — knelt to touch a shining thread. The instant his fingers brushed it, his heartbeat stuttered. He gasped, hand turning numb.
Harry grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "You all right?"
"I… felt it. Like my pulse jumped out of me."
The gold faded under their eyes, leaving only black soil.
Daren ran tests again; the readings came back blank. No Bloomscript, no Dominion tone — just silence.
He whispered to Elen, "Whatever this is, it's not corruption. It's imitation. Like the ground's trying to hum back."
By dawn, reports came from the north and west — the same symptoms.
Patches of dead air. Fields that swallowed light. Runes that dimmed for no reason.
They called it the Silent Bloom.
In the war tents, Draven listened to the accounts without interruption. Feyra lay at his feet, tail still, blossoms pale.
Zor had refused to fly over the area. Each time he neared the zone, lightning broke off mid-arc and died in silence. Varyn had been seen pacing the mountain ridge, restless and uneasy.
"They know it's wrong," Brenn said.
Draven nodded. "But they can't sense it. There's nothing to sense."
Outside, Joran leaned against the forge cart, staring at the sky. "We used to fight noise," he said under his breath. "Now we fight nothing."
At the same hour, miles away beyond the ravine, Vael Ruun watched through a crystal relay tuned to the field.
The glass showed the Bloomring soldiers moving along their perimeter lines, their resonance banners flickering like dying embers.
He recorded every change, every pattern of silence. The numbers matched perfectly with his models.
He smiled slightly, whispering to himself, "The song is spreading."
The next morning, no sound greeted the sunrise.
Grass bent under a wind that didn't make a sound.
Draven and Brenn stood by the treeline, watching a line of Bloomscript runes burn out one by one across the open field.
No explosion. No smoke. Just erasure.
The Codex flared once, showing a single line of text before fading:
The Chain breathes.
Draven's voice was steady. "Fortify the perimeter. Dig trenches. Keep the line lit day and night."
Brenn glanced at him. "Against what?"
Draven looked over the dead field. "Against nothing. Until it decides to speak."
Notes:
1. Silent Bloom Fields — Regions where the Harmony Anomaly spread into the soil. They erase resonance, creating "void zones."
2. Detection — Beasts and Bloomscript feel only emptiness. The Codex detects absence, not presence.
3. Harmony Anomaly — Self-learning frequency mixing Soulsteel and Bloomscript. It imitates life's rhythm but lacks will — an artificial heartbeat.
4. Vael Ruun's Observation — He monitors Bloomring reactions through resonance relays, treating the spreading silence as a success test for Project Crown Mirror.
5. Thematic Parallels — Feyra heals life; the Anomaly imitates it. Zor brings storms; silence swallows thunder. The war has shifted from the visible to the unseen.
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