"Come on, let's get out of here" Farworth said, "Their is a place in the Academy I like, and it's almost nighttime."
"I haven't had a decent meal yet..." Arata replied to that invitation.
"I got snacks." Farworth said as he pulled out two packets of potato chips.
Lyra got up from her workstation. "Let's go."
Arata sighed as he followed them up to the terrace.
They sat at the terrace table, the lights from the veins shimmering below.
Farworth placed a small crystal disc on the surface and pressed a finger to it.
A low, familiar tone filled the air.
Flora's voice.
It's so quiet here… can you hear it too? The flame, it still sings in me…
Arata froze. Even Lyra looked startled.
Farworth's expression stayed calm. "I extracted this from the chamber's residual field. Not an echo. A harmonic imprint. It's her — or what the Veins remembered of her."
Lyra's knuckles whitened around her tablet. "That's not possible."
Farworth smiled faintly. "Possible and permitted are not the same thing. The Veins remember everything the Flame consumes. Sometimes, when grief aligns with resonance, memory answers back."
Arata's voice was low. "You mean she's alive in there."
"No," Farworth said gently. "She's remembered. The world's way of apologising for how it burns."
Lyra frowned. "That sounds like theology, not science."
Farworth shrugged. "Perhaps they've just been pretending to be different disciplines all this time."
He turned back to Arata. "When she spoke, what did you feel?"
"Like she wasn't gone. Like she was waiting for me to understand something I missed."
Farworth nodded. "Then listen better. Not for her voice but for what the world was saying through it."
He rose, slipping the crystal back into his pocket. "The Veins are waking, Squadron Leader. And they're using resonance as language and Dragon blood as ink."
He started to leave, then paused. "Ask her what she wants, next time she sings. Everything alive does."
And with that, he vanished into the long hall, his footsteps fading like a metronome into the dark.
Lyra exhaled, long and slow. "Well," she muttered, "that was subtle."
Arata managed a faint smile. "You work with interesting people."
"He's not one of ours," she said, watching the door close behind Farworth. "That's what worries me."
"Until he does not answer to the Flame tribunal, he is fine in my books."
They watched the red veins glowing between black rooftops.
Neither spoke for a while. The silence between them wasn't heavy more thoughtful, alive with what neither could say.
Finally, Lyra spoke again. "Does it hurt?"
Arata blinked. "What?"
"When the world remembers through you."
He hesitated. "It doesn't hurt. It just… feels like carrying someone else's heartbeat."
Lyra turned toward him, her expression unreadable in the half-light. "If it gets too heavy," she said quietly, "you don't have to carry it alone."
For the first time, her voice wasn't clinical. It was almost gentle — the kind of tone that comes only when someone means it and doesn't expect an answer.
Arata looked at her, truly looked — the faint exhaustion under her eyes, the steady strength in her posture. "You don't even like me," he said softly.
"I don't like paperwork either," she replied, a faint smile tugging at her lips. "But I still do it because someone has to."
That drew an honest laugh out of him. It startled both of them.
Lyra tilted her head toward the sword. "So. What does she want, you think?"
Arata looked down at Resonance, its faint blue veins glowing quietly against the dark stone.
He thought of Flora's voice and then of the world's quiet, aching hum beneath it.
"I think," he said, "she wants me to listen."
Lyra nodded. "Then start there."
They stayed on the terrace a while longer.
Two figures against the deepening sky, one haunted by a voice that shouldn't exist, the other staying close enough to remind him he wasn't the only one to carry that voice
Below them, the Veins pulsed once.
Morning slid across the atrium's stained-glass ceiling, breaking into shards of blue and amber that crawled over the marble floor. The Academy woke the way it always did—precisely, obediently.
The first siren tore through the halls. Cadets stirred, groaned, moved. Boots hit stone. Trays clattered. The day resumed like clockwork.
Breakfast passed without incident.
Then, just after the second siren, the announcement came.
"Cadet Arata. Your presence is requested at the Veinworks. Please report immediately."
The cafeteria went quiet for half a second too long.
"Again?" Flint muttered around a mouthful of food.
Wanuy set his utensil down slowly. "That was fast."
Arata frowned. "Even I wasn't aware this time."
Flint stood and slapped his palm against Arata's shoulder in a sharp, friendly high-five. "Good luck, man."
Sierra gave him a brief nod. Nothing dramatic. Just acknowledgement.
Wanuy didn't move.
He looked at Arata, expression unreadable. The last time Arata had been summoned to the Veinworks, names had vanished from registers. Songs had followed him back.
This felt like bad luck.
"Okay," Arata said lightly, forcing a grin as he stepped away from the table. "Meet you on the flip side."
No one laughed.
....
Arata made his way to the Freight lift.
The freight lift waited at the edge of the Veinworks, its massive chains humming softly as if already aware of where it would descend.
Farworth stood beside it, coat dusted with chalk once more, hands folded behind his back. His expression revealed nothing. Lyra was there too, balancing a stack of instruments against her hip, stylus tucked behind her ear.
Arata approached last. The scabbard of Resonance was visible beneath his cloak, dark against the stone.
One more figure waited with them.
"Cadet Tomas Elrik," the boy said when Lyra glanced his way. "Assigned as technical support."
His voice was calm. Neither nervous nor proud.
He was young, slightly taller than Arata, with clear eyes and hands already scarred by years of workshop burns. A coil of wire hung from his belt, and he carried himself with the quiet assurance of someone who fixed things rather than questioned them.
Farworth nodded once. "Everyone's here."
The freight lift groaned as its doors slid open, revealing the darkness below—red light pulsing faintly, deep and patient.
The lift dropped through layers of light and shadow. Walls of polished alloy became rock, then crystal veined with faint red glow. The hum grew louder the farther they descended, until it pressed behind their ribs.
This was deeper than the last time he was there with Miran for Resonance Field maintenance.
When the doors opened, the air that met them was cool and old. The tunnel ahead curved in great ribs of stone. Light pulsed beneath their feet as if the earth itself breathed.
Farworth raised a lantern rune. "Welcome to the Choir."
Lyra adjusted her pack straps, voice low. "Still think that name's an exaggeration..."
"You'll hear soon enough"
They walked.
The sound began as vibration, a low harmony felt more than heard. It resonated in bones and teeth, in the sheath of Resonance at Arata's side. The deeper they moved, the more defined it became, it was like thousands of voices humming under water.
The corridor widened into a circular chamber. The floor here was clear crystal, and below it flowed rivers of light: red, white, and blue currents weaving and dividing like blood under glass. The pattern shifted slowly, every pulse echoing a hidden rhythm.
Farworth set the lamp down. "This is where every resonance leaves an imprint. Every offering, every loss, every song."
Lyra knelt by the edge, watching the colours turn. "They're synchronised?"
"They are beginning to be," Farworth said. "It was more of an network before, but now the vein's are starting to behave like an organism....almost"
Arata felt the weight of it through his boots the same deep, patient vibration of something vast he had felt that day. Resonance warmed against his hand.
Tomas crouched beside a console half-buried in dust and powered it with a small battery pack. Readouts flared to life on his wrist screen.
"Field stability at ninety-two percent," he said quietly. "Pressure normal. Energy density rising slowly but consistent."
Lyra glanced at him. "Good. Keep an eye on that."
He nodded once and returned to the data.