The map wasn't inked.
It was carved—onto the underside of an old violin.
A cracked, weather-beaten relic that hung in Ilya Van's war room like a forgotten god. She took it down with reverence, running her mechanical fingers over the strings.
"This belonged to the last true conductor," she said.
"Before the Silence began."
Arian tilted his head. "What's the map lead to?"
Ilya looked at him carefully.
"Not a place."
She touched the bow to the strings.
"A memory."
---
They journeyed east, through frost-wrecked valleys where sound didn't echo and trees grew in jagged silence. Orca stayed at the rear, no longer speaking unless spoken to. As if aware that its presence bent the air too heavily around the others.
Arian kept his thoughts to himself.
Six voices inside him. Each whispering in moments of stillness.
Seraph hummed softly when he rested.
Velar wept in corners of his mind.
And somewhere beneath it all, his own voice—the weakest, the most uncertain—clung to the edges of their harmonies.
Was he still Arian?
Or had he become something else entirely?
---
They found the village after four days of travel.
Or rather, what remained of it.
Northel Hollow—once a town of musicians and dreamers—was now a graveyard.
Homes splintered. Instruments rotted. And in the center, a stage built from bone and ash.
"The Republic tested the first harmonic weapon here," Kes muttered. "It turned song into fire."
Nima stepped forward, clutching a crumpled page from a burnt journal.
"Look."
A melody was scribbled in broken notes.
One Arian recognized.
It was the first melody he ever heard. The one that came to him in dreams. Before the journey. Before the voices.
His knees weakened.
"This is mine."
Orca appeared beside him.
"No," it said. "This was hers."
Arian looked at Orca.
"You said the seventh wasn't a person."
"I said it wasn't a who," Orca replied. "But every voice has a shape. And hers was left behind."
Nima narrowed her eyes. "Whose?"
Orca turned slowly.
"The woman who started it all."
---
They entered the ruins of what used to be a concert hall.
Collapsed beams. Dust-thick air.
At the center: a grand piano, warped and cracked, but still standing.
Orca moved to it and touched a single key.
It screamed.
The sound bent time.
The room trembled, flickered.
And then the past bled through the present—
---
They stood in the same hall, years earlier. Whole. Alive.
A crowd gathered. A woman stood at the piano.
Tall. Elegant. Fire in her eyes.
Arian's breath caught.
Nima whispered, "That's… my mother."
Arian turned sharply.
Her mother. And his.
It was the same woman.
Her fingers danced across the keys, playing the forgotten song. The one etched in his dreams. Her voice filled the room—not with words, but feeling.
Hope. Defiance. Fire.
Orca whispered, "Her name was Elin Thorne. The composer of the first rebellion."
Kes's face twisted. "My sister."
Arian stepped backward.
"You all knew."
Orca nodded. "She seeded the voices in seven vessels. One in each generation."
Nima clenched her fists. "But why?"
Kes answered, barely audible. "To undo the Silence… from the inside."
---
The memory ended.
The hall returned to ash and ruin.
Only the piano remained, humming slightly.
On its top sat a small box.
Arian opened it.
Inside: a wax cylinder recorder.
And a note.
> For the Seventh. When the time is right, play this beneath the Spire.
Nima touched his arm. "The Spire? You mean…?"
Kes whispered, "The Republic's Throne."
The cylinder pulsed.
The final key.
---
They camped that night in the ruins.
Orca stood watch, scanning the wind.
Arian sat beside the old piano.
He turned to Nima.
"She was my mother too?"
Nima nodded. "Half-siblings. Raised apart. Hidden to protect the line."
"Did she know we'd end up here?"
"I don't think she wanted us to," Nima said. "But I think… she hoped."
They sat in silence.
Until Arian spoke again.
"When I sing the final note… what happens to me?"
Nima looked away.
And didn't answer.
---
As dawn approached, Orca whispered to the wind.
"The Republic knows now."
Kes cursed under his breath.
Arian stood.
"We head to the Spire."
"And if they stop us?" Nima asked.
He looked down at the wax cylinder.
Then at the disk holding the six voices inside him.
"If I sing the song," he said, "they won't be able to stop anything ever again."
---
And far away, inside the glass citadel of the Republic—
A shadowed figure watched the stars dim over Northel Hollow.
He smiled.
And spoke for the first time in decades:
> "The Composer's children have awakened."
> "Activate Project Echo Null."