The Singing Stones from the Salt-Folk rested in a small leather pouch on Shuya's belt, a quiet, mineral-weight reminder that kindness could still be found in the world's harsh corners. The Wind Dancer flew on, leaving the rust-colored hues of the Weeping Canyons behind for a landscape of rolling, golden plains that stretched to the horizon like a vast, sleeping beast. This was the Sun-Scorched Steppe, a sea of grass under an immense, unforgiving sky.
The sheer scale of it was daunting. There were no landmarks, no mountains to navigate by, only the endless, whispering grass and the blazing arc of the sun. For days, they saw no one. The isolation was a physical pressure, amplifying their internal struggles. Lyra and Neema's physical wounds were healing, but a new tension had settled between them—a warrior's shame at having been so effortlessly incapacitated. They drilled together in the ship's hold, their movements sharp and frustrated, trying to carve a path back to their former strength through sheer, punishing repetition.
Kazuyo remained the group's silent heart of darkness. He would occasionally, at Amani's gentle insistence, walk the deck, his steps slow and mechanical. His eyes would sometimes track a bird in the sky or the endless ripple of the grass, but there was no recognition in his gaze, only a passive, optical registration. The one flicker of response he had shown in the Ashen Pass had not repeated itself. It was as if that single act of focus had exhausted a year's worth of spiritual reserves.
Shuya spent his days in a different kind of drill. He would sit cross-legged in his cabin, a Singing Stone placed before him, and try to meditate. He wasn't trying to summon his light, not directly. That felt like trying to lift a mountain with his bare hands. Instead, he was trying to listen. He remembered Yoru's words: "You are brawlers in a war of philosophers." He needed to stop brawling.
He would focus on the stone, on the tiny, crystalline geometry within its rough shell. He tried to feel the memory of the earth's song that Anya had spoken of. At first, there was nothing. Just the ache of his own failure, the ghost of Valac's contemptuous voice. But slowly, over days of patient, frustrating effort, he began to notice subtleties. The way the light caught differently in each crystal facet. The faint, almost imperceptible vibration the stone held, a residual echo of the canyon winds. It wasn't power. It was… information. A deeper layer of reality he had been too busy shining upon to ever truly see.
One evening, as a spectacular sunset bled across the steppe, Amani joined him. She watched his efforts for a long while before speaking. "You are trying to hear the stone's story," she said softly. "But you are shouting with your spirit to do it. You are a sun, Shuya. You are used to illuminating everything at once. Try instead to be a single ray of light, focused on one single crystal. Do not seek to hear the whole song. Seek to understand a single note."
It was a fundamental shift in perspective. He had always thought of his power in terms of scale—a field, a wave, a shield. He had never considered precision.
He closed his eyes again. This time, he didn't try to envelop the stone with his awareness. He imagined his consciousness as a needle-thin beam of light, piercing the stone's surface and focusing on one, specific point of crystal deep within. He let go of the need for a result. He simply observed.
And then, he felt it. A sensation so faint it was less than a whisper. It was a quality of stillness. Not Kazuyo's powerful, nullifying silence, but a simple, ancient, mineral patience. The stone held the memory of a million years of slow growth, of pressure and heat and time. It held the memory of the canyon's wind, not as a force to be resisted, but as a familiar breath. It was a testament to endurance.
A tear traced a path down Shuya's cheek. He wasn't generating light, but in that moment of profound, focused connection, the light within him—dim and guttered—pulsed. Not with power, but with understanding. It was a different kind of warmth, not the blaze of a bonfire, but the gentle, sustained heat of a hearth.
He opened his eyes. The cabin was dark, but the Singing Stone before him glowed with a soft, internal luminescence, having resonated with his focused attention.
It was the first spark of hope he'd felt since Silvervein.
He immediately went to Kazuyo's cabin. His friend was sitting in his usual spot, a silhouette against the star-filled viewport. Shuya didn't try to talk to him. He didn't try to pour healing energy into him. He simply sat opposite him, placed a Singing Stone on the floor between them, and began the same exercise. He focused his awareness into a single, precise point, and projected not light, but the concept of the stone's enduring stillness.
He held that focus for an hour, his mind a laser beam aimed at the void where his friend used to be. He felt nothing in return. No flicker, no shift. Just the vast, empty silence.
Disappointment threatened to crush him. He was about to give up when a thought occurred to him. He wasn't Kazuyo. He couldn't create silence. But maybe he didn't have to. Maybe his role wasn't to fill the emptiness, but to remind it what it was.
He shifted his focus. Instead of projecting the stone's stillness at Kazuyo, he simply held the concept in his own mind, a small, perfect, patient point of reference in the cabin's darkness. He was no longer trying to heal. He was just… being. Being a still point, next to the silence.
And then, something infinitesimal happened.
Kazuyo, who had not moved voluntarily in weeks, slowly, slowly, tilted his head a fraction of an inch. It wasn't the purposeful turn he had made in the Ashen Pass. It was more like a flower subtly angling towards a hidden sun. His vacant eyes didn't focus on Shuya or the stone, but the direction of his gaze had undeniably changed.
It was nothing. It was everything.
Shuya didn't celebrate. He didn't break his concentration. He simply maintained that focused point of stillness, a single, clear note held in the symphony of the night.
The next day, the monotony of the steppe was broken. Amani, who had been listening to the spirit of the land, raised an alarm. "The song of the plains is changing. There is a dissonance ahead. A place where the wind does not flow, it… stutters."
They found it an hour later: a wide, shallow river that should have been a silver ribbon cutting through the grass. But the water was unnaturally still, its surface a perfect, unmoving mirror. On the far bank stood a circle of standing stones, ancient and pitted by time. The air around the circle was thick and heavy, and the sound of the wind died completely as it approached, creating a pocket of absolute auditory vacuum.
"A place of power," Zahra murmured. "But it has been corrupted. Stagnated. Like the lake in the Sunken Cathedral, but older. Much older."
This was not a trap. It was a landmark. A test nature had placed in their path. The river was too wide for the Wind Dancer to cross without landing, and the still waters felt treacherous.
As they debated, Shuya looked at the Singing Stone in his hand, then at the circle of stones across the river. An idea, born from his morning's meditation, began to form. It was reckless. It was based on a flicker of insight and a desperate hope.
"I have a theory," he said to the group. "The stones across the river… they are meant to sing with the wind. But something has stilled them. I think… I think I can remind them how."
He looked at Kazuyo, who was standing passively near the railing. "And I think he's the only one who can get me across."
It was a gamble of terrifying proportions. But the glimmer of response he'd seen the night before was a thread of hope he had to pull on.
He walked over to Kazuyo, placing a hand on his shoulder. He didn't speak. He simply held the memory of the Singing Stone's patient stillness in his mind and poured all his will into a single, silent request: Just for a moment. Lend me your silence. Not to negate. To cross.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, Kazuyo's hand twitched. A wave of absolute silence, thin and focused as a blade, shot out from him, not to attack, but to touch the surface of the stagnant river.
Where the silence touched the water, the unnatural stillness broke. The water didn't ripple; it simply… accepted the silence, becoming a solid, glassy pathway exactly one foot wide, leading directly to the circle of stones.
It was a bridge. A bridge of stillness.
Shuya didn't hesitate. He stepped onto it. The path held. He walked across the river, each step firm on the silenced water, until he stood in the center of the stone circle.
The air was dead. He could feel the ancient stones around him, yearning for the wind's song, trapped in this unnatural hush. He took the Singing Stone from his pouch, held it aloft, and did what he had practiced. He focused his entire being into a single, precise point of awareness, and he projected not light, but the memory of song he had felt within the stone.
He was a tuning fork, striking a single, pure note against the overwhelming silence.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, one of the great standing stones shuddered. A low, deep hum resonated from it, a note so profound it vibrated in Shuya's bones. Then another stone joined, and another, until the entire circle was humming, a chord of the earth itself that shattered the stagnant air.
The wind, freed, rushed into the circle with a joyous roar. The river behind him began to flow again, gurgling and splashing over the now-vanished bridge of silence.
Shuya stood in the center of the singing stones, not as a triumphant Sun-Bearer, but as a musician who had remembered how to play a single, perfect note. He looked back across the river at Kazuyo. His friend's head was still tilted at that slight, curious angle. And for the briefest of moments, Shuya thought he saw a flicker of something—not recognition, but a deep, ancient knowing—in the depths of his empty eyes.
They had not gained any great power. They had not defeated a mighty foe. But on the golden plains, beside a once-stagnant river, they had taken the first, trembling step on a new path. They were learning to use the fragments of what they had left, not as blunt instruments, but as precise tools. The road to the east was teaching them that before they could learn to cultivate the universe, they first had to learn to listen to a single, silent stone.