The note she sang echoed longer than it should have.
It traveled not through air, but through memory—slipping between cracks in stone and time, carried by the unseen resonance that still clung to the Kingdom's forgotten bones.
Crystal stood still as the last shimmer of her voice faded, her chest tight, as if she had exhaled part of her soul. Beneath her feet, the balcony floor quivered with the faintest hum, like a tuning fork remembering how to vibrate. In the distance, something answered, a note faint and trembling, but there.
Alive.
She turned her head. The sound had come from below, from the city's oldest wound: the Forgotten Opera.
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Long ago, the Opera had been the beating heart of Kronic Kingdom. A cathedral of music, where symphonies were born beneath vaulted ceilings of starlight glass and velvet seats whispered with wonder. But after the Curse of Silence, the Opera had been sealed, left to decay like a song no one dared to finish.
The wind changed direction as Crystal descended the spiraling tower steps, her breath visible in the gathering cold. Lanterns had long since gone dark here, and the stone felt slick with age. The streets whispered with paper and leaves.
As she stepped into the square before the Opera, she stopped.
The massive doors...once sealed....stood open.
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The interior was a graveyard of beauty.
Shattered instruments lay where they'd fallen. Curtains hung in tatters. And on the grand stage, beneath a single shaft of moonlight, stood a figure.
Still. Delicate. Bound in golden thread.
She was not breathing.
She was not human.
But she was watching.
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Crystal stepped forward slowly, her eyes locked on the girl who stood like a forgotten statue. The light caught her porcelain face...flawless, save for a single hairline crack down her left cheek. Her eyes shimmered like crystal rain. Around her feet, broken puppet strings curled like the roots of a forgotten tree.
Then… she moved.
The girl tilted her head, her eyes widening slightly. A soft hum drifted from her lips—mechanical at first, then blooming into a fragile trill, like a music box remembering its first lullaby.
"You…" the girl whispered. "You sang."
Crystal stopped breathing.
The marionette's fingers twitched. Her strings began to glow faintly, lifting her from the ground as if in a dance not yet choreographed. She hovered just above the stage, golden threads curling like smoke.
"I heard it," she said. "The light. The note that woke me. You're the one who sings… with sorrow in her soul."
Crystal stepped forward. "What's your name?"
The girl hesitated. "I… I was called Liora. The Songbound Marionette. But I lost my name when the silence came. I've been sleeping in echoes ever since."
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Crystal reached out. Her hand trembled, not with fear...but with knowing.
She had dreamt of this moment. Of finding another voice, buried but not broken. Someone like her. Someone who remembered.
"I'm Crystal," she said. "And we're going to bring the music back."
Liora blinked. Her golden strings tightened like harp strings readying a song. Her voice, though quiet, carried the weight of centuries.
"Then let this be our duet."
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Outside, the storm of silence continued to roll.
But inside the opera, two voices...fragile, luminous...began to rise.
And somewhere in the shadows of a cracked cathedral, Nocturne's hollow eyes opened.
He felt the tremble in the silence.
And he hated it.
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Next Chapter: "The Marionette's Verse"