The chamber trembled long after the blind man spoke.
Not violently. Not even noticeably to most. But Ilias felt it—deep in his chest, in his bones, like the world itself had taken a breath and held it.
The Choir stood silent. Not out of fear. Out of *reverence.*
Ilias finally found his voice. "You said the Architects. Who are they?"
The blind man smiled faintly, fingers tracing the edge of a tuning fork that hovered in the air beside him. "The first composers. The ones who wrote the laws that sound obeys. The rules of resonance. The structure of harmony. The framework of reality.
Seraph crossed her arms, jaw tight. "You make them sound like gods."
"They're older than gods," the man said quietly. "Gods sing within their symphonies. The Architects are the symphony."
He turned his head toward Ilias, milky eyes unseeing but somehow still knowing. "And now, one of them just heard you."
A chill passed through the room.
Ilias swallowed. "You keep saying 'heard.' But you're deaf. How do you even know this?"
The blind man didn't flinch. He simply lifted his hand, and the air around it shimmered—faint ripples, like heat rising from stone.
"Sound is touch," he said softly. "You don't listen to it. You feel it. Against your skin. In your bones. Behind your eyes. Every word you speak leaves a trail of movement in the air. I follow that trail."
Seraph watched, fascinated despite herself. "You read vibration."
He smiled. "And you misunderstand it. You think silence means peace. But to those who feel sound—silence is death."
Ilias hesitated. "Then how did you lose your hearing?"
That quieted the room again. Even Reverb's usual static went silent on the comms.
"What happened?" Ilias asked carefully.
The blind man was quiet for a long moment. Then he spoke, voice low, distant, like he was remembering something he wished he could forget.
"Their voice doesn't speak in tone or rhythm," he said. "It speaks in reality. Every note they utter bends existence to match it. I listened too long—and my mind couldn't translate what it heard. My ears shattered before my sanity did."
Seraph's expression softened, just slightly. "Then why stay here? Why keep listening?"
"Because I still remember one thing," he said. "The Architects don't destroy. They *correct.* Every anomaly, every dissonance, every Blessed—is eventually tuned back into the cosmic key."
He pointed toward Ilias. "You, child, are out of tune. And the Architects *will* come to fix you."
Ilias shook his head. "You're saying they'll kill me."
"Not kill," the man said quietly. "Rewrite."
Silence.
Seraph's hand moved to her blade, fingers tightening around the hilt. "What does that mean?"
The blind man tilted his head. "It means they won't just erase you. They'll erase the *possibility* of you. Every choice you made. Every life you touched. Every ripple you created. Gone. Like the universe correcting a typo."
Ilias felt something cold settle in his chest. "That's not possible."
"It's already happened," Korran said quietly.
The alien stepped forward, violet eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. "My people keep records. Oral histories passed down for millennia. We remember worlds that no longer exist. Entire civilizations that sang too loud. Too bright. And the Architects came."
"What happened to them?" Seraph asked.
Korran's voice darkened. "They vanished. Not destroyed. Not conquered. *Erased.* No debris. No ruins. No history. Just a perfect note left behind, resonating in the void where a planet used to be."
Seraph turned to him, eyes wide. "You're saying the Architects sing planets out of existence?"
"Not out of existence," Korran corrected. "Into harmony."
The word *harmony* suddenly felt like a threat.
Ilias stared at his hands. They were trembling. "So if they're listening… how do I stop them from hearing me again?"
The blind man smiled—not kindly, but *knowingly.*
"You don't stop the Architects from listening," he said. "You learn to sing beneath their frequency."
Seraph frowned. "You mean hide."
"No." The man's voice hardened. "I mean *evolve.*"
The chamber lights flickered.
Once. Twice.
Then every instrument in the room resonated in unison—a single low tone that made the air hum, made Ilias's teeth ache, made his heart stutter.
Reverb's voice crackled through the comm, urgent and distorted. "Kid, whatever that old man just told you—he's not lying. Network sensors across three sectors just spiked. Something's scanning the planet."
Seraph's blade ignited, humming cold and sharp. "The old ones?"
Reverb hesitated. "No. Worse. The Council just declared global Code Black. They're mobilizing everything. Every Hunter. Every Sanctifier. Every asset they have."
Ilias looked up toward the ceiling—toward the stars he couldn't see, buried beneath layers of stone and steel and city.
"They heard me," he whispered.
And somewhere far away—beyond Elyria's borders, beyond the light of any sun, beyond the edge of known space—something ancient stirred.
It shifted its tone.
Just slightly.
Like tuning itself to a frequency it had been waiting to hear for centuries.
The woman from the Choir stepped forward, glowing runes flickering across her skin. "If the Architects are listening, then you have less time than we thought."
"How much time?" Seraph asked.
The woman tilted her head, listening to something no one else could hear. "Hours. Maybe days. It depends how far they are. How fast they move."
"And when they get here?" Ilias asked.
"Then you'll either be ready," the blind man said, "or you'll be *gone.*"
Korran crossed his arms. "There is another option."
Everyone turned to him.
"You could run," he said simply. "Leave the planet. Disappear into the outer systems. The Architects are vast, but they're not infinite. If you stay quiet, stay small—"
"They'll find him eventually," the blind man interrupted. "They always do."
"Then what do I do?" Ilias's voice cracked. "Just sit here and wait to be erased?"
The blind man smiled faintly. "No. You do what every Blessed before you has done. You learn. You grow. You become loud enough that they *can't* erase you."
"How?"
"By mastering what you are," the woman said. "The Blessed don't follow the rules of resonance. They *make* them."
Seraph frowned. "And how do you teach someone to break the laws of reality?"
The woman smiled. "We don't. The universe does."
The blind man tapped his cane against the floor. Every tuning fork in the room resonated in response, filling the air with a single, perfect tone.
"There are three paths for the Blessed," he said. "Submission. Erasure. Or ascension."
"Submission means hiding," the woman added. "Living small. Never using your full power. It works—for a while. But it's a slow death."
"Erasure is what happens if you're too loud, too fast," Korran said. "The Architects notice you before you're ready. And they correct you."
"And ascension?" Ilias asked.
The blind man's smile widened. "Ascension means becoming something the Architects *can't* correct. Something that exists outside their rules."
"That's impossible," Seraph said.
"It's been done," the blind man said quietly. "Once. Maybe twice. The Old Ones—the first gods—they were Blessed who ascended. They learned to sing so perfectly, so powerfully, that even the Architects couldn't rewrite them."
Ilias stared at him. "You're saying I could become a god?"
"No," the man said. "I'm saying you could become something *worse.*"
The room went silent.
Seraph's jaw tightened. "What does that mean?"
The blind man turned toward her, milky eyes empty but somehow piercing. "The Blessed who ascend don't become gods. They become *forces.* They stop being people and start being *concepts.* Fire. Silence. Chaos. Change." He paused. "They lose themselves in the process."
Ilias felt something cold settle in his chest. "So either I die, or I stop being human."
"Or," the woman said gently, "you find a third path. One no one's found before."
"And how do I do that?"
"You survive," she said simply. "Long enough to figure it out."
Reverb's voice crackled through the comm again. "Hate to interrupt, but you've got company. Council forces just entered the lower tunnels. They're sweeping sector by sector."
Seraph cursed under her breath. "How long do we have?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe less."
The blind man stood slowly, leaning on his cane. "Then it's time you left."
"What about you?" Ilias asked.
"I've been dead for years, boy. I'm just waiting for the universe to notice." He smiled faintly. "But you—you still have a choice. Use it wisely."
The woman from the Choir gestured toward a passage at the back of the chamber. "Follow this. It leads to the old transit lines. From there, you can reach the surface."
Korran stepped forward. "And if you survive the Council, the Cult, and the Architects—" He paused, violet eyes glowing. "Find me. My people know things the Council doesn't. Things about the Blessed. Things that might help."
Ilias nodded, throat tight.
Seraph grabbed his arm. "We need to move. Now."
They ran.
As they disappeared into the tunnels, the blind man stood alone in the chamber, surrounded by the Choir.
He tilted his head, listening to something far away.
"They're coming," he said quietly.
"The Council?" the woman asked.
"Yes." He smiled faintly.
The chamber trembled.
Faintly. Barely perceptible.
But it was there.
Something vast. Something ancient.
Turning its attention toward the small, backwater planet called elir.
And in the tunnels below, running through the dark, Ilias felt it too.
A pressure. A weight.
Like being watched by something so vast it couldn't fully see him—only the *space* he occupied.
He ran faster.