Kael was being unmade by a sound. The Screaming Echo's psychic shriek had bypassed his defenses entirely, and his world was dissolving into chaos. The ground beneath him seemed to heave and tilt like the deck of a ship in a storm. His vision fractured into a kaleidoscope of swirling, meaningless colors. He couldn't think. He couldn't focus. He couldn't even find the familiar, grating comfort of his own Dissonance; it was utterly drowned out by the creature's overwhelming psychic noise. He stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet, his mind a howling void. He was moments from a final, merciful collapse.
And then the pain in his leg became a fire. The silvery scars, which had been humming in sympathy with the valley's ambient energy, erupted with a brilliant, pulsing light. A new power, raw and untamed, surged up from the scar. It was a Dissonant energy, but it was not his own. It was wild, primal, and tinged with the cold, predatory hunger of the Jag-Wolf whose poison had created it.
His first instinct, born of a lifetime of suppressing his own nature, was to fight it. He tried to push the wild energy back down, to cage the beast that had awakened in his own flesh. But it was impossible. The power from his scar was not fighting him; it was resonating in a perfect, terrifying feedback loop with the Screaming Echo's shriek. The two chaotic frequencies were locked together, amplifying each other, and he was trapped in the middle.
As the psychic pressure built to an unbearable level, a desperate, insane idea sparked in the wreckage of his thoughts. He couldn't fight the feedback loop. The power of the Echo and the power in his scar were already connected. What if he stopped trying to sever the connection and instead seized control of it? What if he didn't try to silence the song, but chose to join it?
It was a terrifying gamble. To embrace this wild, alien energy could destroy him. But to do nothing was a certainty of the same fate.
He stopped fighting. He let the wild power from his scar surge through him, a jolt that made his teeth ache and his vision swim. He stopped trying to impose his own song on the world and instead opened his senses to the horrifying duet already being played. He listened to the ugly, jagged rhythm of the Echo's chaos, to the wild, hungry pulse from his own scar, and with a guttural cry that was part pain and part defiant power, he added his own Dissonance to the mix.
He didn't try to overpower the Echo's scream. He harmonized with it.
He matched its terrible, fluctuating pitch. He found the frantic, uneven beat of its psychic shriek and made it his own. He became the third instrument in a trio dedicated to pure chaos, a counter-song to the Echo's melody of madness.
For a moment, the effect was catastrophic. The three chaotic frequencies, now joined, amplified one another exponentially. The psychic pressure became a physical force, and Kael felt as if his skull were about to crack open. The very air around them seemed to shimmer and tear. But through the agony, he felt a shift. He was no longer just a victim being battered by the storm. By joining the song, he had gained a hand on the rudder. He was riding the wave of insanity.
And now he could steer.
Slowly, with an immense effort of will, he began to change his note. He didn't make a sudden shift; that would break the harmony and sever his control. He began to subtly, gradually, raise the pitch of his own Dissonance. It was like tuning an instrument while it was being played at full volume. He pulled the shared frequency of their terrible duet higher.
The Screaming Echo, trapped in the feedback loop he now controlled, was forced to follow his lead. Its own psychic shriek began to climb in pitch, rising from a grating roar to a piercing wail. The unstable energy holding its mismatched body together began to flicker and spark violently. It seemed to realize, on some primal level, that it had lost control of its own weapon, but it was too late. It was caught in Kael's song.
Higher and higher he pushed the frequency. The wail became a thin, piercing needle of sound that seemed to vibrate at the very edge of reality. Kael felt a deep, resonant strain within the crystal shards that made up the Echo's body. They were vibrating at their breaking point, their chaotic energy being focused into an unsustainable, singular point. He poured the last of his own energy and the wild power from his scar into one final, focused push, driving the frequency beyond any possible limit.
The Echo's psychic scream cut off.
The abrupt, total silence was more shocking than the noise had been. The shimmering, unstable energy that had held the creature's shattered body together destabilized and, with a soft whump, it imploded. The mismatched crystal shards that had formed its monstrous shape, now stripped of their animating, chaotic force, lost all cohesion. They clattered to the valley floor in a dead, inert pile, just a collection of broken rocks.
Kael collapsed to his knees, his body trembling uncontrollably. The world swam back into focus, solid and blessedly stable. The brilliant light from his scar faded back to a dull, latent hum, leaving his leg feeling numb and strangely empty. He was drained, more completely and profoundly exhausted than he had been after the physical struggle with the Jag-Wolf. That had been a battle of flesh and bone. This had been a battle for his own mind.
He had won. But the victory was terrifying. He looked down at the silvery scars on his leg, now quiet once more. He understood now. The scar was not just a mark of his survival. It was a reservoir. A wellspring of a dangerous, wild Dissonance that he did not fully understand and could not fully control. It was a weapon, yes. But it was a weapon that could just as easily turn on its wielder, a beast chained to his own flesh. And he had just taught it a new, terrible song.