Fractured Interlude — Some Chapters Should Never Have Hummed
There are no footsteps in this chamber.
Only hums—not cast, but remembered.
A room where sound forgets to echo.
At the far edge of a mirrorless hall beneath the Doctrine's sealed vaults,
a figure waits beside a stringless instrument.
He does not sit.
He smiles.
The Smiling Cantor tilts his head as the glyphlights flicker to life.
A second presence enters—not with movement, but with pressure.
A hand folds behind a robe of ink-threaded silence.
VAEN:
"They're beginning to remember."
CANTOR (softly):
"Only the ones we permitted. Recollection is a trick of rhythm. And rhythm… is ours to assign."
VAEN:
"You assigned seven volumes."
CANTOR (with amused tilt):
"Songs. Carefully arranged. The pulse misaligned just enough to keep him wandering.
Each chapter tuned to bury her name. To dull the beast.
To mask the Watcher's hum behind false snow."
A pause.
VAEN:
"And yet…"
CANTOR:
"Yes."
(He kneels beside the instrument. It does not play.)
"He heard something outside the page."
The Cantor stands. Glyphglass forms ripple beneath his feet.
A projection rises—Zephryn, walking the Lyceum halls. No fear. No hesitation.
The glyph on his forearm flares—not lightning, not memory. Something else.
It bends the frame of the Choir's lens.
CANTOR:
"We shaped him to hesitate. To doubt.
We gave him Selka's fury, Kaelen's weight, Solara's silhouette in the fog.
A hundred false starts."
VAEN:
"But not the tether."
Silence.
CANTOR (reluctantly):
"The creature."
VAEN:
"The one she sang into."
CANTOR:
"She named it before we could unname it.
We called it drakelith, but it is not.
Its hum… reaches back."
A chord hums through the chamber—unbidden.
The Smiling Cantor flinches.
CANTOR (quietly):
"It responded before the glyph did.
He was supposed to shatter in Volume III.
We embedded that moment like scripture—let him watch her die again.
And again.
And again."
VAEN (stone-voiced):
"You made him think he escaped."
CANTOR:
"He needed hope to stay compliant.
Volume IV was a kindness.
Volume V, a lullaby.
By Volume VI, the Trial had rhythm.
By Volume VII, he believed the pulse was real."
VAEN:
"But the Watcher never stopped feeding him."
A new image blooms—Kyyan, behind a rusted pot, brushing steam from his eyes.
A silhouette watches him, breathing through the forest veil.
CANTOR (gritted):
"The Hollow Watcher should have been contained.
He hid the tether.
He fed the beast.
He sang—knowing."
VAEN:
"And what is the beast?"
The Cantor hesitates.
The hum of the creature returns, faintly, through the Choir's walls.
It is not a cast. It is not a glyph.
It is a remembrance.
CANTOR:
"It is not ours.
Not Choir. Not Doctrine. Not Veilborn.
It dreams without us."
The Cantor turns, mask trembling slightly.
CANTOR:
"The name Solara embedded… it sleeps beneath its heart.
He calls it Bubbalor, but that is not its name."
VAEN:
"Then find it.
Find what it is.
Find where the Watcher sleeps.
And if it sings again—cut the tongue from time itself."
Another pause.
Then the Cantor asks something no Choir voice should need to:
CANTOR:
"And if we cannot?"
Vaen steps into the Choir's light for the first time.
No glyph burns on his body.
No hum escapes his lips.
But every thread of the room bends around his presence.
He speaks the final line with stillness sharp enough to break volumes.
VAEN:
"Then it begins."