Aren learned early that his family stood between worlds, belonging fully to none.
They were not poor, but they were never careless with coin. They were not powerful, but neither were they ignored. His father's trade placed them firmly among the Midbound—those who carried the weight of this world without shaping it.
Edrin Vale was a merchant who travelled often from place to place. He dealt in metal components, Resonance stones, and crafted goods meant to support instruments rather than empower them directly. Stabilizers, Tuning cores, Reinforced strings. Things nobles rarely noticed, but which common instruments relied upon to survive daily use.
Whenever Edrin returned from a journey, Aren would sit quietly near the door, pretending to read books while listening to hooves fade outside, crates scrape across wood, and his father's weary sigh as he finally stepped back into the home.
Those sounds told Aren more than words ever could.
They spoke of long roads, harsh bargaining, and a world that never slowed down for those without influence. Sometimes, when Aren was young enough to be carried, his father took him along on short trips—nearby villages, trading posts, river markets. It was on these journeys that Aren first saw the other side of their world.
Peasants—no, not peasants. The word felt wrong.
They were known as the Lowbound.
Men and women with calloused hands and tired eyes. Their instruments, when they had them at all, were simple—percussion tools, wind whistles, rhythm boards. Tools meant for labor, not combat. Their Resonance was functional, not celebrated.
Aren watched them work in fields to the rhythm of crude beats, using sound to pace endurance rather than unleash power. He saw children practicing scales on cracked flutes, hoping for an Awakening that might lift them higher.
He saw hunger.
Not the sharp kind that killed quickly—but the slow, grinding kind that stayed.
At night, when they stayed in inns meant for travellers like them, Aren lay awake listening to the muffled sobs of strangers through thin walls. He didn't ask questions.
He already understood.
His mother, Lyra, noticed more than she let on.
"You don't look away," she said once, watching him observe a group of Lowbound workers unloading cargo under a blazing sun. "Most children do."
"I want to understand," Aren replied quietly.
Lyra smiled, though there was sadness behind it. "Understanding doesn't always make things lighter."
"No," Aren said. "But it makes them clearer."
She said nothing after that, only rested a hand on his head and smoothed his dark hair gently.
Back home in Harmelune, life followed a steady rhythm.
Mornings were filled with preparation—his mother organizing trade ledgers, his father inspecting goods. Afternoons were quieter. Aren read everything he could find, books stacked around him in uneven towers.
By now, he understood the basics of Resonance.
Every soul in this world carried a Chord, an innate frequency that aligned with sound. During the Awakening at age ten, that Chord would manifest as a Relic of Sound—a sacred conduit between spirit and world.
Most people awakened instruments aligned with their temperament.
Steady souls produced percussion.
Quick minds birthed wind.
Emotional hearts often resonated with strings.
And then there were the rare ones—those whose Relics defied classification.
Aren lingered on those stories.
His father owned a locked chest at the back of their home. Aren had never opened it, but he knew what lay inside.
Relics.
Not instruments—no, that word felt too small. They were called Harmonic Arms.
Lyra once explained it to him late at night, her voice hushed as if the walls themselves might listen. "Harmonic Arms are relics that don't just channel sound," she said. "They command it."
Blades that sang.
Bows that bent resonance itself.
Guitars whose chords could reshape battlefields.
"They're rare," Lyra added. "And dangerous."
Aren remembered that.
Especially when his dreams returned.
The broken guitar haunted him more vividly now.
Sometimes it lay abandoned in a field of ash. Sometimes it floated in endless darkness. The strings were always snapped. The wood always cracked.
But there was something new.
Whenever he reached out, the air around it trembled—as if the world itself was waiting for the sound that never came.
He would wake with his heart racing, fingers curled as if still holding it. And every time, the silence felt heavier.
Aren began to make friends as he grew older.
Children of merchants, craftsmen's sons and daughters. They played in the streets, practiced simple melodies, talked excitedly about the Awakening as if it were a festival rather than a judgment.
Some of his friends lived harder lives than his own.
There was Mira, whose family repaired instruments for Lowbound workers. Her hands were always stained with polish and resin. She smiled easily, but Aren noticed how she flinched whenever nobles passed through town, and there was Talen, whose father had once failed his Awakening. His instrument had shattered on manifestation, leaving him Resonance-less. Talen laughed loudly, but his eyes dimmed whenever Awakening was mentioned.
Aren listened more than he spoke.
He remembered his first life—how connections had always come at a cost. How betrayal wore friendly faces. So he kept himself guarded, careful not to lean too heavily on anyone.
Yet sometimes, when Mira laughed or Talen boasted, Aren felt something unfamiliar stir.
Warmth.
He pushed it aside.
Lyra told stories in the evenings. Not fairy tales meant only to entertain—but histories softened by time. "Our ancestors were not nobles," she told him once, her voice low as the fire crackled. "But they walked close to legends." She spoke of a man generations ago—an ancestor whose Relic had been a guitar. Not just any guitar. A Harmonic Arm said to resonate with unfinished songs. "He wasn't the strongest," Lyra said. "But he changed things. Protected villages. Ended conflicts without bloodshed."
"And what happened to him?" Aren asked.
Lyra hesitated. "History forgets endings it doesn't understand."
That night, Aren dreamed more clearly than ever.
The broken guitar pulsed faintly in the dark.
Listening.
Sometimes, memories of his first life slipped in without warning.
A cold apartment.
Empty hallways.
Faces that turned away when he needed them most.
When hunger came, he endured.
When loneliness settled in, he accepted it as part of life.
He had survived before.
He would survive again.
But this time… he wasn't sure survival was enough.
As he lay awake one night, listening to the gentle hum of Harmelune settling into sleep, Aren stared at the ceiling and wondered:
If everyone awakens a song… what happens to someone born with silence?
The answer did not come.
But somewhere, far beyond the town, a broken chord trembled.
Waiting.