The morning Aren left his hometown, the sky hovered between night and day. Not dark enough to hide in, not bright enough to promise anything. Mist clung to the road like a held breath. Aren stood beside the waiting carriage. His fingers curled around the strap of his travel pack. The leather was worn, faintly warm from his grip. He focused on that sensation, grounding himself, because if he looked too closely at his parents, he feared his resolve might crack into pieces.
His mother knelt in front of him, straightening his collar with soft, careful hands—hands that lingered as if reluctant to let go. She had already done it twice. "Eat properly," she said, voice gentle, almost rehearsed. "And listen. Even when you don't understand." Aren nodded.
His father said nothing at first. He simply rested a firm hand on Aren's shoulder—steady, anchoring. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. "Watch more than you speak," he said. "And whatever happens… remember who you are." Aren swallowed and nodded again, he did not trust himself to answer.
When the carriage door opened, the sound cut through the moment like a blade. Wood creaked, harnesses chimed faintly with embedded Resonance.
Finally,
Aren climbed aboard without turning back, he knew if he saw his mother's eyes again, he might not leave at all.
The road to the capital stretched longer than distance alone could explain.
Ten days.
Ten nights.
Time folded differently out here, measured not by miles but by rhythm. Villages passed like soft notes in a melody—children tapping patterns on stone, elders humming while they worked. Aren noticed it everywhere now "sound was never idle". Even silence carried tension, like a pause waiting to resolve.
At night, wrapped in a thin blanket, Aren lay awake listening to the carriage wheels strike the road in steady cadence.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Sometimes, between those beats, he thought he heard something else.
A faint discord.
On the fourth night, he dreamed again. The broken guitar lay before him, strings snapped and hanging loose. This time, the dream felt closer—he could smell old wood, feel the rough grain beneath his fingers. And somewhere beyond the instrument, a presence watched.
Not threatening.
Waiting.
When Aren woke, his heart pounded, and for a moment, he could swear he heard a dry chuckle—fading like sound swallowed by distance. He sat up, breathing hard. Just a dream, he told himself. Yet the old man's face—weathered, unreadable—rose unbidden in his thoughts.
On the sixth day, the carriage passed an arena.
The structure loomed from the earth, massive and scarred, its stone walls etched with harmonic sigils. Sound rolled from within in heavy waves—cheers, chords, the crack of Resonance colliding.
A battle.
Two figures stood at opposite ends, instruments raised. When one struck a note, the air twisted. When the other answered, the ground shuddered.
The crowd roared.
Aren pressed his hand against the carriage window, breath shallow. This wasn't violence born of rage.
It was control.
Power shaped by intent. As the arena fell behind them, Aren's reflection stared back at him in the glass—dark hair, blue eyes too old for his face. For just a moment, he imagined the old man standing there instead, watching the arena with quiet disinterest.
Power isn't loud, that imagined voice seemed to say. It only pretends to be.
Aren shivered.
Lyrenhold appeared at dawn.
The capital did not simply rise from the land—it resonated with it. Towers of stone and crystal caught the light, their surfaces humming faintly. Bridges arched like frozen soundwaves. Spires pierced the sky, crowned with amplifiers that pulsed gently, as if the city itself breathed.
Aren's chest tightened.
This was where Awakening decided futures.
Or ended them.
The Awakening Hall stood at the city's heart, vast and circular. Names carved into its pillars glimmered faintly—figures whose Resonance had shaped history. As Aren stepped inside, the air shifted.
Attentive.
Children filled the hall, some whispering nervously, others standing rigid with ambition burning in their eyes. Instruments gleamed at their sides or rested expectantly on the platform. Aren stood among them, empty-handed. When his name was called, the echo carried farther than it should have.
"Aren Vale."
He stepped forward.
As his palm touched the stone dais, silence fell.
Not the absence of sound but the kind that listens.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—
The air trembled, not with force but with recognition.
Somewhere deep within that stillness, Aren felt it—a presence stirring, familiar and distant all at once. And in that moment, unbidden and sharp, he remembered the old man's gaze.
Not pity, not judgment.
Expectation.