Leaving the Echoic Wasteland was, in a way, a relief, but it didn't last. As we headed south, guided by the stubborn, fluctuating signal from Sciel's device, the landscape of the Fade began to change in eerie ways. The rolling hills and echoing canyons gave way to a desolate, rugged expanse. The ground became uneven, covered in sharp shards of a dark matter that seemed to have been torn from the very flesh of the Fade. Strange, angular rock formations, like broken bones protruding from a wound, dotted the horizon.
But the most disturbing thing wasn't what we saw, but what we felt. The air itself was charged. Not with controlled dissonance or bouncing echoes, but with something rawer, more painful. It was primordial dissonance , the remnant of the original wound. I felt like the Veil here didn't just hold dissonance, it oozed out of it , like a wound that never heals.
For me, this sensation was almost unbearable. My own rhythmic perception, tuned to sense the currents of the Veil and the resonances of harmony, felt constantly assaulted. It was like having an exposed nerve in the middle of an erratic electrical field. Random waves of pure, formless noise pounded me, not in my ears, but directly into my rhythmic awareness, causing a stabbing pain that sometimes made me stop and gasp. The Veil in this area didn't sing; it moaned.
Sciel visibly cringed. Despite his protective earplugs and the calibration of his device, the primordial dissonance was affecting his readings and, I presume, his own rhythmic well-being. His device blinked with warnings, showing zones of extreme "rhythmic incoherence," areas where the fabric of the Veil seemed to be in a constant state of tearing at a fundamental level.
"The Veil... is suffering here," Sciel murmured, his voice strained. "These are the... 'wounds' of the Fracture the chronicles speak of. Places where the rhythmic structure was permanently damaged. The dissonance isn't a side effect; it's the nature of the place."
We moved slowly, each step a deliberation. The ground often felt unstable, as if matter itself were about to crumble beneath our weight. Occasionally, we encountered "pockets" of concentrated primordial dissonance, areas where the air shimmered with a distorted light and the rhythmic pain was so intense that we had to skirt around them, guided by Sciel's erratic but helpful readings and my own sense of the intensity of the rhythmic pain.
These pockets of dissonance weren't traps; they were symptoms. Physical manifestations of the Veil's suffering. Avoiding them meant navigating around the most open and painful areas of the wound.
Gustave led the way with stony seriousness, his eyes scanning the terrain for less unstable paths. His practical, physical approach was a necessary anchor in an environment that assaulted our most subtle senses. Maelle used a tool to scan the ground, looking for signs of weaknesses or breaks in the surface, helping to avoid dangerous falls or trips on the unstable terrain.
Lune seemed to deal with the dissonance differently. Her heightened senses picked up on the Veil's "scream" intensely. I saw her clench her fists, her face tense, sometimes closing her eyes for a moment, as if trying to block out the sound of the ambient agony. But I also noticed that sometimes, amid the chaos, she would pause, listening for something else.
"There are... patterns," he said once, his voice low. "Even in this... scream. As if the pain had... a structure. Ancient... echoes... trapped in the dissonance."
Those "trapped echoes" resonated with the lore of the Silencers and the Fracture. Were they remnants of the harmony they tried to erase? Or perhaps echoes of their own presence?
As we traveled, we began to see subtle signs that this place wasn't just a natural wound. In the distance, we discerned formations that seemed too regular to be random. Pillars of dark matter that didn't twist wildly like their surroundings, but instead rose with a disturbing geometry, despite being visibly eroded by dissonance.
"Look at that..." Maelle pointed out, shining her flashlight at one of the distant formations. "It looks... constructed."
Sciel adjusted his device. "Unusual rhythmic readings around those structures. It's not the random primordial dissonance. It seems... contained. Channeled. As if someone had tried to... organize the wound."
The thought was disturbing. Had the Silencers, with their focus on silence and anti-harmony, attempted not only to break the Monolith, but also to control or study the resulting Fracture? Had they left behind their 'laboratory' or 'outpost' in the midst of the wound?
As we approached The Fracture Scar, the primordial dissonance became almost a physical presence. It felt like a constant weight on my chest, as if the air itself were trying to tear me apart rhythmically. My own internal rhythms—my heartbeat, my breathing—felt forced to fight against the external cacophony. Maintaining focus, maintaining my own rhythmic coherence, required constant effort.
The landscape grew more dramatic. Gigantic fissures yawned in the ground, revealing unfathomable depths of bubbling dissonance. Angular towers that defied gravity rose like monuments to the rending. And in the distance, now clearly visible, stretched... the Scar itself.
It wasn't a singular formation, but a vast expanse of terrain where the dissonance was denser, more visually distorted. The air flickered and twisted above it. The Scar seemed like a hole in the reality of the Veil, a place where rhythmic logic itself had completely disintegrated. And within it, or perhaps at its edges, the strange geometric structures were more numerous.
The fragment's signal in Sciel's device was now stronger, pointing directly toward the heart of that anomalous expanse. But it was also more erratic than ever, fluctuating wildly, as if the fragment itself were struggling against the surrounding dissonance.
We stopped at the edge of a rocky ridge overlooking The Fracture Scar. The wind coming from it carried no sound, but a sense of rhythmic emptiness, a suction trying to pull at my very essence. My companions seemed to sense it too, their postures tense, their faces serious.
"That's the place," Gustave said, his voice low. "The Scar. It feels... worse than I expected."
"It's an open wound," Sciel replied. "The very source of the primordial dissonance. And if my readings are correct... there's... activity there. Rhythmic patterns that aren't just the chaos of the wound."
The Silencers. Or what was left of them. Or perhaps, the defenses they left behind.
We knew the path through The Fracture Scar would be unlike anything we'd ever faced. It wouldn't be a deceiving maze, nor a confusing wasteland of echoes. It would be a journey through the pure pain of the Veil, where dissonance was a constant assault and where we might come face to face with the architects of silence.
I took a deep breath, feeling the primordial dissonance scratch at my rhythmic being. The fear was there, a cold knot in my stomach. But so was the determination. The truth about the Fracture, and perhaps the key to truly healing it, lay in that open scar. And a crucial fragment waited in its midst.
We prepared ourselves mentally and physically for the next step: leaving the relatively (but only relatively) safe terrain behind and descending toward The Fracture Scar. The "Deepest Wounds" phase had just begun in earnest.
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