They traveled for seven days through fractured lands.
Not by foot or flight, but by thread — Caela's salvaged ley-compass guiding them from one pocket reality to another. Each crossing was a melody of displacement. They passed through forests that remembered different suns, across rivers that sang lullabies in forgotten dialects, through cities half-remembered by time, where ghosts politely asked for directions.
Each realm bore the scars of the Rift's chorus.
Some trembled on the edge of fading, like the notes of a song about to end. Others had become louder, swelling with untamed possibility, as if trying to compensate for their brush with oblivion.
Haraza said little.
Not because he had no words, but because the silence was loudest now.
Every step he took, the keystone pulsed beneath his ribs — a steady beat, not painful, but present. Like a chorus waiting for a cue. The Song of Closure still lived in him. He had turned it aside, rewritten it, but not undone it. And the world… knew.
It watched him.
In the flicker of ley-fires.
In the hush before sleep.
In the hush after.
On the eighth day, they arrived at the Tear.
A great wound, suspended in sky — not a rift anymore, but a scar. Like something had clawed at the fabric of the world and been denied. The energies around it shimmered between dimensions, but there was no chaos, no whispers. Just gravity. Emotional, magical, existential.
("I thought you sealed it,") Brannock muttered, brow furrowed.
("I did,") Haraza replied. ("But a scar always remembers.")
Lirien knelt and placed her hand on the soil. ("The land here is... listening.")
("To him,") Caela said, looking directly at Haraza. ("It remembers who turned the final page.")
Ryve tossed a stone into the sky—it hung there for a moment, then gently descended. ("So, what's it saying?")
("That he's still the key,") Caela answered.("The Riftborn were sealed, but not forgotten. And every song has echoes.")
Haraza closed his eyes.
He could feel it—beneath the ground, within the air, stitched between atoms and syllables.
The world wasn't asking for salvation anymore.
It was waiting for permission.
That night, Haraza sat alone near the scar's edge. The others had made camp at a respectful distance, busy pretending they didn't notice the way the Rift still leaned toward him.
("You can still open it, can't you?") came a voice.
He turned. Lirien stood there, arms folded, gaze steady.
Haraza nodded slowly. ("Yes. Or something like it.")
("What would happen?")
("Nothing good. Or maybe… something necessary.") He looked up at the stars. ("We changed the song. But it's unfinished. There are notes unresolved. Worlds that don't know what they are anymore. If I open it again, maybe I can… tune them. Or lose everything.")
She stepped closer. ("You don't have to do it alone.")
("I know. But I might have to be the one who decides.")
Lirien sighed and sat beside him.
("You didn't ask for this. Any of it.")
("No," he agreed. "But I answered. That matters.")
For a while they sat in silence.
Then Haraza reached into his coat and withdrew something he hadn't touched since the Rift closed — a fragment of the keystone, cold and humming with latent song.
He held it in both hands.
("This,") he said, ("isn't a key anymore. It's a question.")
When dawn came, he stood at the scar's edge.
The others gathered behind him. None spoke.
Haraza took the fragment and held it to his heart.
He didn't speak words.
He spoke intention.
A pulse of tone rippled outward — not a command, not a summoning. A request. The scar shimmered. Dimensional energies twisted and twined, uncertain.
("I'm not asking to reopen the Rift,") he said, voice steady. ("I'm asking what comes after. I've sung the ending. Now I want the coda.")
The fragment vibrated.
So did the ground.
And then…
The scar closed.
Fully. Finally.
Not sealed. Not locked.
Healed.
A tone rang out — singular, soft, like the world exhaling after holding its breath for too long.
Brannock murmured, ("That it?")
Haraza nodded.
("That's the sound of a world letting go.")