Elara saw me first. She was overseeing the raising of a new lodge's earthen frame. Her eyes, sharp as ever, took in my slow walk, the distant look on my face. She dismissed her workers with a gesture and met me at the edge of the central green."You're back," she stated, her gaze searching mine. "You look like you fought a ghost and lost.""I didn't fight it," I said, my voice hoarse. "I let it scream itself out. The Core… it's quiet now. The poison is inert."Her eyebrows shot up. "You cured it?""No. I listened to it. Until it was done." I shook my head, the memory a cold weight. "It's not a victory. It's an… emptiness. A clean wound."Before she could probe further, Rielle and Lyra hurried over, drawn by my return. Their excitement at seeing me safe faded as they felt the change in my Aura not weaker, but quieter, more diffuse, like a still pond after a storm."The deep-song from the south," Lyra said, her surveyor senses prickling. "It's changed. The dissonance is gone. But there'

As we reached the edge of the bronze trees, the envoy spoke one last time.“A warning, from one listener to another. Your silencing of the Weeping Core… it was necessary. But in the great silence that followed, other things have been heard. Not just by us.”It looked south, beyond its own grove, into the deeper, wilder darkness we had not explored.“The Convergence stirs many sleepers. Some are not as… benevolent… as the Sylvanate. Your new song is bright. In the coming dark, bright songs attract attention. Be ready.”We stepped out of the ordered forest and back into the scarred, recovering hills. The envoy faded back into the trees without a sound.We stood there, three tiny figures between a perfect, alien harmony and a broken, chaotic city we had one year to save from its own amplified death rattle.The race wasn’t for territory or power anymore. It was a race to teach a city how to sing before the universe turned up the volume and blew out every speaker. And we had just learned w

Lyra, monitoring with a Sylvanate-tuned crystal, whispered, “It’s working. The passive drain in the area is focusing on her. The node is… concentrating. Consuming.”Another minute. Anya’s steady stream of Aura began to flicker. She was burning through her reserves. Her body began to tremble.“She’s reaching her limit,” Rielle hissed. “She needs to pull back!”“Not yet,” Lyra said, her eyes glued to the crystal. “The node’s cohesion is fluctuating. It’s almost… full. Just a little more.”Anya sagged, one hand dropping from the earth to brace herself. Her Aura stream became a thin, fraying trickle. She was running on fumes.“NOW, ANYA! PULL BACK!” I shouted.She didn't move. She didn't tug the moss-rope tied around her waist.“She can’t!” Rielle cried. “The apathy… it’s taken her will! She can’t choose to stop!”The horror of it hit us. The node’s despair wasn't just eating her power; it was consuming her will to resist. She was giving everything, and had lost the ability to decide when

I felt their instant, agonizing efforts to comply. Lyra, on the verge of dissolution, let go of her failing clarity and instead became a conduit for the massive, roaring tone Finn was generating a sonic tsunami of pure ‘A’ note that blasted into the Asylum. The million screaming voices were drowned out by one, immense, mindless shout.Vance, the soldier used to projecting order, had to perform the ultimate act of control: controlling only herself. I felt her struggle, then a sudden, profound shift as she turned her formidable will inward, crafting her own Aura into a perfect, self-referential, stable loop. It was Stability that led nowhere, did nothing. A wheel spinning on a fixed axle.For a heartbeat, nothing.Then, the Screaming Asylum node didn't dissolve. It shattered. The chaotic noise, confronted with an overwhelming single noise, couldn't maintain its complexity.It fractured into a thousand harmless echoes that faded into the ambient Aura. Lyra’s signal, battered but intact,

We left within the hour. The walk to the edge of the Sylvanate forest felt different. The last time, the bronze trees had hummed with serene power.Now, the air at the treeline crackled with a sickly, greenish static. The perfect geometric rows were broken. Some trees were snapped in half. Others were covered in a creeping, black-vined fungus that pulsed slowly.We stepped into the forest. The silence was wrong. No bird sounds, no hum of sap. Just that faint, greasy static.“The song here is… wounded,” Rielle whispered, her hand on the bark of a tree. “It’s scared.”“Which way?” Elara asked, her eyes scanning the shadows between the perfect trunks.Lyra held up her tuning crystal. It glowed, not with its usual steady light, but with a frantic, flickering pulse.“The distress signal is gone. But there’s a… pull. That way.” She pointed deeper in, towards the center where the main structure had been.We followed the pull. The evidence of fighting grew worse. Not with weapons, but with co