The air in the Great Arena of Orestes had shifted from skeptical frost to a humid, electric heat. On stage, Aster and Astra were a blur of silver and shadow, their synchronization so perfect it felt as if a single soul were inhabiting two bodies. After the final notes of the fifth song—a haunting orchestral piece that had gripped the audience in a trance—Aster took a brief, calculated pause. He stood at the center of the stage, his chest heaving slightly, his silver hair dampened by sweat.
He didn't look at the audience yet; instead, he signaled to a technician hidden in the wings. This was the second phase of his cultural heist.
Deep within his workshop, Aster had spent nights engineering high-output Resonance Speakers. These were not mere amplifiers; they were enormous mana-conductive horns that utilized the same "Synaptic Link" technology as the Raze unit on the mountain peak. He had ordered them to be placed at strategic junctions throughout the capital city—at the mouth of the Great Mine, in the center of the Merchant Square, and atop the large Inns.
With a single flick of a mana-switch on his console, Aster activated the network.
The Awakening of the City
Suddenly, the music didn't just belong to the arena. It exploded across the capital like a sonic shockwave. From the soot-stained slums of the Lower Tier to the sprawling markets of the merchant district, the sound poured out of the speakers with crystalline clarity. People who had stayed home out of exhaustion, cynicism, or the fear of the "foreign Arts" suddenly found their stone walls vibrating with the Snowflakes' melody.
The effect was instantaneous and gravitational. Like iron filings drawn to a massive magnet, the citizens of Orestes began to pour out of their homes. Families stood on balconies, children stopped playing in the dirt, and even the tavern brawls ceased as the "Song of the Sentry" reclaimed the air.
Within minutes, a river of people began moving toward the arena. One hour into the concert, the "vacuum" of empty seats that Aster had feared was utterly obliterated. The heavy stone gates of the arena groaned under the weight of the incoming crowd as nearly 17,000 people packed into the tiers. The empty obsidian benches were swallowed by a sea of dark-clothed miners, their faces still caked in the dust of their twelve-hour shifts, their lanterns glowing like a thousand stars in the stands.
***
The Miner's Anthem: A Heart of Stone Bleeds
Aster looked at Astra and gave a sharp, imperceptible nod. It was time for the centerpiece of the evening—the song titled simply, "Miners."
Unlike the previous high-energy tracks, this song began with a slow, heavy beat that mimicked the rhythmic strike of a pickaxe against a deep-vein rock. Astra's piano notes which she created with her magic were deep, percussive, and melancholic, echoing the loneliness of the dark shafts where a man might go hours without seeing a fellow human's face when entering the small one man tunnels. Aster didn't just sing; he created wailing sounds, mimicking the sound of the wind whistling through a narrow tunnel.
The lyrics, which Aster had written after weeks of silent observation, hit the crowd like a physical blow. He sang of the "unseen gold" within a worker's spirit, the weight of a mountain carried on one's shoulders for the sake of a family's hearth, and the fear that one might never see the moon again if the ceiling decided to speak.
The reaction was visceral. In the stands, massive men with scarred hands and hardened hearts began to tremble. These were men who had been told since birth that their only value was the ore they produced. For the first time in their lives, someone wasn't asking them for more quota; someone was singing a song about acknowledging their existence.
In the flickering mana-light, tears carved clean, white paths through the black soot on their cheeks. The silence of the 17,000 was so profound it felt heavier than the mountain itself. It was the sound of a nation finally being seen.
And in the front row, King Boron sat perfectly still. His knuckles were white where he gripped the iron railing, and his chest felt as if it were being squeezed by a giant's hand. He was moved—more than he had been by anything in decades—but his legendary Orestian pride was a cage. He refused to clap. He refused to let his face soften. He remained a statue of iron, a grim monument of a King, even as the music threatened to melt the very foundation of his soul.
Behind him, Arliene stood with her hands clasped to her heart. She didn't look at the crowd; she looked only at her son and daughter. A fierce, radiant pride shone in her eyes. Her children weren't just playing music; they were performing magic to awaken a new desire to hear music in the hearts of the orestan people.
And in the VIP seats, Princess Lumine was anything but silent. She was standing on her seat, her royal poise forgotten, cheering with a wild, infectious energy. Her rose-quartz eyes were glowing with a supernatural light as she felt the "disharmony" of the city finally being replaced by a singular, beautiful resonance. To her, this was the first day Orestes had truly been alive.
***
The Rhythm of the Forge: Rap and Rock
As the show moved into its final hour, Aster began to push the boundaries. They played ten songs in total, moving through a landscape of sound that the Orestians had no names for. They played soaring rock melodies with distorted mana-strings that mimicked the roar of a furnace, and "aesthetic" ambient tracks that felt like the quiet of a snowfall.
But the biggest shock—and the biggest success—came when Aster introduced a style he had adapted from the memories of his past life: Rap.
The rhythmic, percussive delivery of the lyrics, combined with a heavy, driving bassline that shook the very foundation of the arena, sent a shockwave through the crowd. Aster took the lead, his voice dropping into a fast-paced, staccato flow that matched the frantic energy of a steam engine.
"Maybe the mountain people are genetically built to like rough songs," Aster thought to himself, a dry wit flickering in his mind.
He watched in fascination as a group of grizzled, elderly miners—men who usually found any loud noise offensive—began to headbang in perfect time with the beat. The "roughness" of the rap, its raw honesty and its percussive grit, resonated perfectly with the mechanical nature of their lives. The arena erupted. The 17,000 people weren't just an audience anymore; they were a single, pulsing organism, a forge firing at maximum capacity.
The noise was deafening—a roar of approval that drowned out even the steam vents of the nearby refineries. The Orestians, usually so reserved and stoic, were shouting, jumping, and pumping their fists in the air. The "Snowflakes" had done the impossible: they had turned a city of iron into a city of fire.
***
The Final Silence
Suddenly, Aster raised his hand high above his head.
The music cut out instantly. It wasn't a fade; it was a decapitation of sound. The silence that followed was so sudden it felt like a physical blow to the ears. The erupting crowd froze mid-cheer, their voices dying in their throats as they looked toward the stage in confusion and hunger.
Aster stepped to the very edge of the stage, the silver lights making his sweat-soaked hair look like a halo. He looked out at the 17,000 faces—his "conquered" nation—and his expression turned solemn. He looked older than his fifteen years, draped in the heavy mantle of a master conductor.
"You have heard the Snowflakes," Aster said, his voice amplified by the resonance stones so that it sounded like the mountain itself was speaking. "You have heard the melodies of Wynfall, and you have heard the rhythm of the forge."
He paused, the tension in the arena stretching like a wire.
"But now... it is time you heard the true voice of Orestes. It is time you heard a son of the stone who has lived among you all this time, Your own blood is going to sing for his people ."
Aster stepped back into the shadows, gesturing with a graceful sweep of his arm toward the wings.
"I give you... Elian."
The crowd went deathly silent. Every eye in the arena, from the King in his royal row to the lowest laborer in the back row, shifted to the small, nervous figure stepping out into the blinding white spotlight. Elian stood there, his hands shaking, his breath visible in the cold night air. The miners leaned forward, many recognizing the face of the boy who had once sang songs on the street for copper coins in the mud of the marketplace.
The King held his breath, his eyes wide. The moment of truth had finally arrived. The mountain was silent, waiting for its child to speak.