Lorenzo's reaction was immediate. He gently took his sister's hand, his touch a silent anchor in her rising panic, and led her away from the public library to the dusty solitude of his personal study. The moment the heavy oak door closed, the charged silence was more telling than any scream. He turned to her, his voice low and steady.
"Tell me everything," he said. "From the beginning. Don't describe it as a feeling. Describe it as music."
Bianca struggled for words, her breath catching in sobs. "It was a week ago. My Opus… it's always been so easy, like breathing. But now, when I reach for it, there's a knot. A tangle. When I try to play the simplest melody, a sour note forces its way in. It hurts, Lorenzo. It physically hurts, like a string snapping in my chest."
As her agitation grew, the room itself seemed to react. A simple glass of water on Lorenzo's desk began to ripple, its surface vibrating with a discordant hum. The vibrant red petals of a rose in a nearby vase slowly began to curl and brown at the edges, life draining from them in the face of her corrupted magic. Lorenzo watched the decay, his blood running cold. He had read of this. The "Echo of Withering," a sign of advanced Dissonance.
"They'll find out," Bianca whispered, her terror palpable. "I can't hide it. Last term, a boy in my class, Julian… his Opus was so beautiful, so complex. Then it started to sound… angry. An Inquisitor came to the academy. The headmaster told us Julian's family had moved away suddenly." She looked at Lorenzo, her eyes pleading. "No one ever saw him again."
The name hung in the air, a testament to the cold, swift justice of The Conservatory. In that moment, Lorenzo's years of detached, scholarly curiosity burned away, replaced by a fierce, protective resolve. The world had always pitied him for his silence, while it celebrated Bianca for her song. Now, her gift was a death sentence, and his silence was a shield. They could not detect a Dissonance that wasn't there. He was a ghost in their world of music.
He gripped her shoulders, forcing her to meet his gaze. "You will not practice," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "You will not reach for your Opus for any reason. Let it sleep. Do you understand?"
She nodded, tears streaming down her face.
"I will find a way," he swore, more to himself than to her. His mind raced, sifting through the thousands of pages he had read, discarding Conservatory doctrine and seizing upon the forbidden and the heretical. Theories of Harmonic Resonance, of Sympathetic Vibration, texts that The Conservatory had burned centuries ago. They were fables, long shots. But they were all he had.
A fragile hope began to dawn in Bianca's eyes, the first light in a long and terrifying night. But just as she opened her mouth to speak, the great door to the study swung open. Their father, Duke Valerius, stood silhouetted in the doorway. His Opus was one of the most powerful Brass compositions in a generation, and his presence alone felt like a pressure in the bones, a silent, booming authority that demanded order.
His sharp gaze moved from Lorenzo's scattered, heretical-looking books to Bianca's tear-streaked, terrified face. "What," his voice resonated, a force that needed no volume, "is the meaning of this disturbance?"