The Blight Basin was a monument to silence. The permacrete dome was a grey, featureless blister on the landscape. The air around it was still and dead. Sensors showed no magical resonance, no life signatures—only a low, toxic hum of chemical decay.
Breaking the seal was a somber ceremony. As the heavy airlock doors were cracked, a gust of acrid, metallic smell washed over them. Inside, under the diffuse light from the dome's apex, the ground was a cracked, rainbow-sheened pan of petrochemical sludge and rust.
"It's worse than the archives described," Valentine murmured, her scanner chirping alarms. "The catalysts present could interact with the Vitae's magic harmonic in… unpredictable ways."
"Charlotte's warning," one of the Guardians said, her hand tightening on her resonator.
"Charlotte's proof of concept," Sage countered, his heart hammering. "If we can heal this, we heal her argument."
They set up a perimeter. The broadcast drones whirred to life, sending a live feed back to the Spire and every public screen that would carry it. Roxana's director ensured the camera captured the daunting, ugly scope of it.
Lysander gathered the Choir. They didn't hum the full Chord. That was too broad, too blunt. Instead, guided by Sage and Valentine's analysis, they began to hum a specific, seeking note—a harmonic tuned to the resonant frequency of the primary heavy metal pollutant: lead.
The note was ugly. It was a dull, grinding sound. It hung in the dead air.
For an hour, nothing. Doubt spread, palpable even through the feed.
Then, a vibration. A subtle shimmer across a patch of lead-contaminated sludge. The particles weren't dissolving. They were… dancing. Vibrating in place, shaking loose from the toxic matrix that bound them.
"It's working," Sage breathed. "It's not destroying. It's disaggregating. Making it possible to filter."
It was a small, unglamorous start. Not a magical forest. A slow, meticulous sorting. But it was real. It was a conversation with the poison. And the poison was answering.