Descending into the Fracture Scar was like entering the belly of a wounded, screaming beast. The uneven, fragmented terrain we had encountered upon approach intensified. Now we walked on a surface that felt constantly on the verge of collapse, an unstable mass of dark, brittle matter. The cracks grew deeper and wider, revealing glimpses of the bubbling dissonance churning beneath. The angular formations, the strange pillars we had seen from a distance, proved even more unsettling up close. They weren't simply rocks; they were constructs made from the same shattered matter of the Veil, their geometry deliberate but incomprehensible, as if a mad architect were trying to impose order on chaos.
But, as in the Echoic Waste, sight was secondary to sound—or rather, to the sensation of sound. The primordial dissonance here wasn't just a static field of rhythmic pain. It was dynamic, active. It was a chorus of agony, a symphony of screams, wails, and crunches that reverberated across the landscape. The Veil didn't just bleed; it howled.
For me, the experience was almost incapacitating. It wasn't just the random waves of noise hitting me anymore. It was a constant torrent, a primordial cacophony trying to erase my own rhythmic coherence. I was forced to walk with my eyes closed often, trying to anchor myself to my own internal heartbeat, to the faint resonance of the fragments I carried within, so as not to become completely lost in the ambient scream. The dissonance was a constant assault, a rhythmic torture trying to tear me apart.
Sciel was wearing his headset, but his face showed clear tension. His device kept blinking erratically, providing only fragments of usable information. "The dissonance... is too strong. Too... pure . There are no patterns. It's like... trying to trace a signal in a white engine," he managed to shout over the ambient howl.
Lune was suffering too. I saw her stagger at times, her face pale. The agony of the Veil must have been overwhelming to her keen senses. But, as before, I could notice that she sometimes paused, concentrating intensely on the chorus of dissonance, as if trying to find something within it.
"There are... voices," he said once, his voice hoarse. "In the scream... echoes... distorted... but voices."
Voices in the primordial agony. The idea was disconcerting. The Silencers? Echoes of the past? Or something more twisted?
Gustave and Maelle, with their physical strength and tools, stayed focused on the terrain at hand. Maelle used her scanner to find safer paths, avoiding the deepest crevasses and areas of concentrated dissonance. Gustave, with his sword drawn, led the way, searching for any sign of threat, any movement amid the chaos. His stoicism was essential, reminding us of the need to keep going, even when the environment tried to knock us down.
As we moved forward, the strange geometric structures became more frequent. And they began to exhibit... unusual behavior. They weren't static. Their shapes seemed to tremble slightly, vibrating at a frequency that was almost inaudible to the human ear, but which felt like an additional pang of dissonance in my mind. And from some of them, strange filaments of dark matter extended skyward, as if the structures were trying to communicate with something above.
"I think those things... are amplifying the dissonance," Sciel shouted, pointing at the filaments. "They're channeling the Veil's agony... directing it... making it more... intelligent."
Had the Silencers created these devices to increase their power over the wounded Veil? To use its agony as a weapon?
Then, we saw the first creature .
It didn't emerge from the shadows. It didn't materialize from dissonance, like the Rhythmic Shadows of the Labyrinth, nor was it made of solidified sound, like the Sound Silhouettes of the Wasteland. It was something different .
It was humanoid, but twisted. The shape was recognizable, but the flesh was warped, stretched, as if sculpted by dissonance itself. It moved with an unnatural fluidity, its limbs bending at impossible angles. And it didn't make a sound, but an absence of sound. It was as if the air around it fell silent, creating a piercing emptiness that was even more disturbing than the cacophony surrounding us.
And he had eyes. Eyes that seemed to pierce the surrounding chaos, eyes filled with an icy, inscrutable intelligence.
"A Silencer," Gustave whispered, gripping his sword tightly.
The Silencer didn't attack immediately. It watched us. It studied our forms with those unnaturally clear eyes. And then, it pointed .
Not toward us. He pointed toward the Scar. Toward the heart of the agony. As if inviting us... or commanding us ... to go deeper.
The fear was almost overwhelming. This creature, born from silence in a sea of screams, emanated a cold and threatening power. But why not attack? Why the invitation (or order) to go deeper?
The response was swift. From behind the Silencer, another creature emerged. Then another. And another. Not all were humanoid. Some had grotesque forms, a mixture of deformed flesh and stony angles. But they all shared the same unsettling quality: the absence of sound, the piercing eyes, and the cold intelligence.
It was a group. A twisted chorus of silences amid the primordial howl. And their leader, the first Silencer, gestured toward the Scar, reiterating his silent invitation (or command).
Sciel looked at his device, which had stabilized for a moment. "The fragment's signal... is beyond them. In the midst of the strongest dissonance. I think... they're guiding us ."
Leading? Why? What did the Silencers want from us?
Gustave gritted his teeth. "If they want us to go deeper... there must be a reason. And it's not likely to be a good reason. But the fragment is there... and we can't turn back."
It was an act of faith. Letting our enemies, the architects of silence, guide us through their territory. But we had no choice. The fragment, and the truth about the Fracture, lay beyond this silent chorus.
With heavy hearts, we followed the group of Silencers. They moved with unnatural speed, gliding over the unstable ground like ghosts. They guided us into the heart of the Fracture Scar, into the loudest howl, into the very source of the primal pain. And in that chorus of silence, I knew we would face not only the deepest secrets of the Fade, but also the truth about the Silencers and their silent agenda.
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