Chapter 3 – The Song in the Stone
The boy's hand still glowed.
Faint. Flickering. But undeniable.
Anterz stared at it like he was watching a match burn in a library. Not from fear. From inevitability.
The boy didn't look possessed. No twisted voice. No burning eyes. Just a quiet, almost proud serenity. A child who had been chosen.
Or worse—convinced.
---
"You remember something?" Anterz asked gently.
The boy nodded.
"What?"
The boy didn't answer.
Instead, he hummed.
Three slow notes. A lullaby without words.
Around the square, a few villagers joined in, as if the melody had already been there, buried in the dirt beneath their tongues.
Elaria whispered, "That's not a hymn."
Anterz felt it too.
It wasn't devotion. It was instruction.
---
Arieth stepped forward, her glow now dimmer, her face calm.
"The fracture doesn't command. It teaches," she said. "Each one holds a piece of divine memory. Not just who the gods were—but what they did."
She looked at the boy.
"This one remembers the song that shaped the first walls of heaven."
Anterz's voice came low.
"And you let him carry it?"
"I let him share it."
---
He turned to the villagers.
"How many of you have touched a fracture?"
Silence.
One hand raised.
Then another.
Then six. Ten. More.
Not all were glowing. But all had something in their eyes.
A certainty Anterz had seen before—on the faces of those who'd once followed gods into war.
---
"We need to leave," Elaria murmured beside him.
"No," Anterz said. "We need to see what happens next."
---
That night, the singing didn't stop.
It changed.
It layered.
Voices stacked atop one another—not in chaos, but in echo. Each tone carried something deeper than pitch: memory. Events long dead, lives once lived. A woman sang with the cadence of a storm. A man spoke in rhythm with falling leaves.
By midnight, the entire town was performing the past.
And the stones listened.
---
Cracks formed in the walls around the well.
Not from pressure.
From pattern.
The vibrations pulled the stone into shape—runic. Smooth. The well's base flattened, widened, and grew steps leading downward.
The singing had shaped it.
Carved not with tools—but with remembered intent.
---
Elaria grabbed Anterz's arm.
"This is divine resonance. It's how the gods built things before time."
"And now mortals are doing it."
"Because you shattered the lock," she said. "The Tower's fall broke the barrier between memory and matter."
He stared at the spiral stairs.
"They're not restoring the past," he said slowly.
"They're replaying it."
---
Arieth appeared beside them. She didn't glow now. But she shimmered—like the edge of a dream.
"Come," she said. "It's open."
---
They descended together—Anterz, Elaria, and Arieth—into the base of the well.
The steps led into a small chamber, barely ten feet wide, lit by a low blue radiance that pulsed from the walls themselves.
There were carvings there.
Anterz stepped close.
Not words.
Not art.
Memories.
---
When his hand touched the wall, the chamber breathed.
Suddenly, he was somewhere else—
On a bridge of fire, sword in hand, the sky cracking above him.
A voice screamed: "Anterz! The fracture must not awaken!"
He staggered back, panting.
"What was that?" Elaria demanded.
He looked at her, shaken.
"A memory of something I never lived."
---
Arieth touched a different wall.
"I remember this place," she whispered. "Before it was a well. Before it was even a village."
She turned slowly.
"This chamber isn't new. It's reactivated. The gods didn't just leave fragments of themselves. They left temples made of memory."
---
Elaria stepped to a corner. Touched the wall.
She froze.
Eyes wide.
Then pulled her hand back fast, shaking.
"What did you see?" Anterz asked.
She didn't answer right away.
Then, slowly:
"Myself."
"But not me."
Her voice cracked.
"She was happy."
---
They stood there in silence for a long moment, the chamber pulsing softly like a heartbeat.
Above, the song shifted again—growing faster. Sharper.
Anterz turned toward the stairs.
"They're not going to stop."
Arieth smiled.
"No."
He met her gaze.
"Then I will."
---
He climbed out of the chamber.
Back to the square.
The boy still hummed. The others followed. The well now glowed like a beacon.
Anterz unsheathed Valteris for the first time in weeks.
The blade sighed.
> "So the story begins again."
He walked to the edge of the well.
The villagers didn't stop him.
Arieth stood behind.
"You would destroy memory?" she asked.
"No."
"I would quiet it."
And he drove the blade into the earth beside the well.
---
The song stopped.
Not instantly. Like water draining. One voice. Then another. Then silence.
The well dimmed.
The boy blinked.
Looked lost.
Looked… free.
Anterz turned to Arieth.
"This is not how we rebuild," he said.
She met his gaze.
And for the first time…
She nodded.
--