The streets of Auralis buzzed the morning after the performance. Merchants shouted their prices, nobles passed in gilded carriages, and gossip drifted through the air like pollen. Yet beneath the usual noise was something different. Everyone from tavern keepers to palace guards whispered about the masked boy. They called him the Echo. The Ghost of Sound. The Phantom Virtuoso. But the name that stuck came from a little girl in the slums who had heard him play from a rooftop. She called him Nocturne.
By midday, the name had traveled through every corner of the capital. And yet, no one knew who had played or where he had gone. The Serenhall Theater staff swore he left no footprints backstage. Even the golden ink on the poster had faded into nothing overnight.
Far from the city center in the quiet district of Lyren's Cross a boy sat atop a crumbling bell tower. He wore no mask now just a plain brown cloak and fingerless gloves. In his lap rested a wooden flute barely patched together. His face young but sharp stared down at the awakening city. His eyes were a dull gray with something deeper beneath something ancient.
He placed the flute to his lips and played a soft note. The melody drifted downward blending with the wind carrying warmth to a mother struggling to light her fire and a child crying over an empty bowl. The music wrapped around them unnoticed like a sigh from the heavens. And when it ended the mother's fire caught and the child's tears paused for reasons they could not name.
The boy looked down at his flute and whispered not a name but a date. Then he stood and pulled from his satchel a smooth white mask shaped like a falcon's beak. It was not the one from the theater. This one was for the flute.
He slipped it over his face and walked into the fog as the bell behind him rang without being touched
Somewhere in the palace Princess Seraphina sat at her piano and stared at the keys. She had not left her room since the performance. She had sent three royal guards to find him and all returned empty handed. She was the kind of girl who solved every mystery given to her and yet this one rattled her bones.
She placed her fingers on the keys and tried to mimic the notes from last night. But no matter how she played it it sounded hollow like painting a rose without scent. She stopped breathing for a moment and whispered the name to herself
Nocturne
A word she had never heard but felt etched into her blood
She stood suddenly her gown trailing behind her as she walked out of the chamber barefoot ignoring the palace maids who gasped in confusion. She had made her decision
She would find him
Even if it meant tearing apart every concert hall alley and forgotten chapel in the empire
Because something in that music had called to her soul
And she could not ignore it