Kael's hand closed around the crystal-paper, the symbol of the broken spiral feeling like a brand against his palm. He tucked the Jag-Wolf fang back into his belt, the familiar weight a small comfort, and pushed himself away from the table. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to disappear back into the wilderness where the dangers were at least honest in their intentions. But he had come too far to turn back now. He was here for answers, and this dark, narrow alleyway was the only place in this wretched town that might hold them.
He navigated the back of the tavern, pushing through a curtain of thick, greasy hides that served as a rear exit. The alley was even darker and more narrow than it had appeared from inside. The towering black walls of the ravine pressed in, seeming to lean over him, blocking out the sky. The stench of refuse and stale drink was overpowering. The alley ran for about twenty paces and ended abruptly in a sheer, flat rock wall.
A dead end. A trap.
He stopped, his hand resting on the hilt of his fang-knife, his senses on high alert. He scanned the oppressive shadows, the cracks in the rock, the rooftops of the shacks above. He saw nothing. He heard nothing but the distant, discordant noise of Barren and the frantic beating of his own heart.
"The fang is impressive."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was distorted, filtered through some kind of resonant device that made it sound like grinding crystal, stripping it of all warmth, gender, and inflection. It echoed unnaturally in the narrow space, seeming to emanate from the very stone around him.
"A beautiful tool for a brutal purpose," the voice continued. "But the scar is what interests me. I saw it, on the one-eyed fool's security crystal. A Dissonant mark. Not born, but made. You survived a blight. The question isn't what you want from me. The question is… how?"
Kael stood his ground, fighting the urge to whirl around, to find the source of the voice. He knew he wouldn't. This was Vex's territory, Vex's rules. "I need information," he said, his voice steady, projecting it into the empty space in front of him. "Not to make conversation."
He remembered Silas's advice, to listen. Vex had revealed something. The one-eyed fool's security crystal. The barkeep was Vex's lookout, and the tavern was monitored. Vex was even more cautious than the stories suggested.
"I am looking for a place," Kael said, choosing his words with care. He wouldn't mention Elara, not here. He would make it about himself. "A place of power. An old place. A place where Dissonance is strong. I need to understand the nature of my… condition."
The distorted voice let out a sound that might have been a laugh. It was like a brief avalanche. "So, the little wolf-killer has a thirst for knowledge. Information has a price, boy. And I see no coin on you. I trade in value, not in sob stories. Show me something. Show me why your questions are worth my time. Show me why I should tell you anything at all."
As the voice spoke, a small, perfectly spherical crystal orb, the size of his fist, rolled out from a dark crack near the base of the rock wall. It came to a stop at Kael's feet. It glowed with a warm, gentle, golden light, and it hummed with a pure, powerful harmony that was the absolute antithesis of his own being. The sound of it was like a physical pressure against his senses, a pure expression of the orderly world he had left behind.
"That is a Harmony Sphere," the voice explained, a hint of something that might have been amusement in its grating tones. "A meditation tool. Used by the Chorus Masters themselves to center their minds. They say its internal resonance is so perfect, so stable, that it cannot be broken by any normal force. Let's see what an abnormal force can do with it."
This was the test. Kael understood immediately. Smashing it would be easy. A raw scream of power would shatter it into dust. But that wasn't what Vex wanted to see. Any thug could break things. Vex wanted to see how he would break it. It was a test of his control, his finesse, his very nature.
He bent down and picked up the sphere. It was warm in his hands, the pure, harmonious vibration thrumming against his palms. It felt clean, orderly, and utterly alien. He closed his eyes.
He listened to its song. It was a single, perfect, unwavering note of pure creation. He then reached inside himself and found his own song, the grating, chaotic hum of his Dissonance. He brought the two together in his mind. He didn't slam them into each other. He carefully, precisely, introduced a single thread of his own wrongness into the sphere's perfect harmony.
He visualized not a hammer, but a single drop of poison in a pristine well. The sphere's warm glow began to flicker. Its steady hum wavered, becoming discordant and ugly, like a beautiful voice trying to sing while being strangled. Kael pushed a little more of his essence into it, carefully "de-tuning" the perfect resonant structure within.
The glow died completely. The hum faded to an aching silence. The warmth in his hands bled away, leaving the sphere cold and inert. He had not broken its form, but he had killed its song. He had snuffed out its soul.
He opened his eyes and gently set the now-dead sphere back on the ground.
The alley was silent for a long moment. Even the distorted voice seemed to be holding its breath. "Very good," it finally said, the grinding sound seeming to hold a new note of respect. "Very… precise. You are not just a hammer."
The voice paused, then continued. "The place you seek exists. A relic of the age before the Great Song became a cage. Deep in the heart of the Obsidian Peaks, there is a ruin the old prospectors call the 'Shattered Lyre.' It was a temple, they say, dedicated to a more primal, chaotic form of resonance. A place where harmony and dissonance were seen not as good and evil, but as two necessary strings on the same instrument. Its archives are buried, but legends say they hold the truth about the world's nature." The voice filled the alley with a final, chilling warning. "But the place is not empty. The Dissonant energy there has corrupted the very rock, breeding abominations. Screaming Echoes, things of shattered crystal and pure rage. It is a tomb. That is what you seek."
"Now," the distorted voice said, its tone shifting back to business. "For my price."
"I told you, I have no money," Kael said, his hand still resting on his fang.
"I did not ask for money," the voice replied, the sound seeming to solidify in front of him. "I deal in secrets. And you, boy, hold a very valuable one: the secret of how you survived. The secret of how to reverse a Dissonant blight." The voice paused. "I don't need to know the whole process. Not yet. I just need a piece of it. A sample. A key to begin my own research."
A thin, narrow slit opened in the rock face, and a small, sharp, crystalline syringe slid out, resting on a stone tray. It was hollow, with a needle-fine point designed to pierce flesh.
"A single drop of your blood," the voice commanded, its distorted tones leaving no room for negotiation. "So that I might study the nature of your unique, scarred resonance. That is my price for the map to the Shattered Lyre."
Kael stared at the syringe. He was trapped. To refuse was to lose his only lead, to be cast back into the wilderness with no direction. But to accept… to give a sample of his own unique, powerful blood to this dangerous, unknown, and utterly untrustworthy information broker… it was a decision that could have devastating, unforeseen consequences. He would be giving away a piece of himself, a key to his own nature, with no idea what lock Vex intended to put it in.