Voices of the Shattered Song

Dawn filtered through the high windows, thin as watered wine. Color from the stained glass slid across the stone like slow rivers. On the choir steps the Wardens stood in their worn gray robes, shoulders squared as if habit alone could brace the day.

Alyssia’s place in the circle was still marked as “apprentice” in the old rolls, though she had been here seven years. Sometimes she wondered if that mark had less to do with her skill than with the hour of her birth.

She had heard it whispered often enough: that she came wailing into the world the same night the veil had cracked, while bells rang in warning and a gargoyle fell. Born under an omen. Born of a fracture. The thought clung to her even now, as stubborn as dust on the cathedral’s stones. No matter how straight she stood, no matter how cleanly her voice wove through the Song, some part of her still felt like a flaw carried in flesh.

Brannoc began the first note. The bass rolled out of him like thunder traveling through the clouds. The sound was rough, yes, but still large enough to make the choir chamber’s dust lift and glitter.

Elira came in next, smoothing the edges. Daran tapped two fingers against his chest to find the beat and set his voice beneath hers, a steady pulse. Saelith’s contralto bent the line lower, sorrow giving it weight. Maeron shot a glance toward Alyssiaand tilted his chin; his tenor cut clean and bright above the rest. Last of all, Ilyrion lifted his narrow, high tone; thin as a blade, but true.

Alyssia waited and listened for the seam. There it was, between Elira and Daran, where the sound wanted to slip. She took a breath and let her voice rise, clear and high, threading every wavering place. The note settled. The song held.

All along the hall, the gargoyles stirred in their alcoves. Kaelor flexed stone claws against his ledge; Serenya’s carved wings rustled as if catching a draft that wasn’t there. Corvane’s eyes lit with a faint inner fire. The resonance from the human singers and the reflected notes from the gargoyles almost balanced. Only the fifth note of the scale wasn’t reflected as it should have been.

As the music faded, the air above the choir shimmered slightly, like heat over summer stone. Crimson threads of light flickered across the vault and vanished.

Alyssia felt the tremor in her bones. It was becoming more noticeable with each morning. It felt like the veil was strung across the Cathedral like a harp string pulled too tight. She forced the doubts she sensed in the shadows of her mind away. We are here. We are singing.

The echo of the notes carried and thinned. The whispers slipped in on the echo. “You don’t belong here,” they breathed. The words too soft to be sound, yet too sharp not to be heard. “They keep you because there is no one else.”

Alyssia maintained her posture; her back straight, her hands loose at her sides. She was twenty-one now, her voice stronger and less afraid than when she had arrived at the cathedral. But it still took effort not to look around to see where the words had come from.

“Again,” Brannoc rumbled, his breath catching. “From the second.”

They began once more. The scales climbed like steps toward a door none of them could see. The gargoyles hummed faintly on their perches. Alyssia met Elira’s glance and found the older woman’s smile, fragile but determined, waiting for her. Alyssia gave it back. She lifted her chin, found the seam, and sang.

“Too old, too thin,” the whispers said, focusing on each Warden in turn. “Too proud. Too angry. Too sad.”

The veil quivered overhead, a faint shimmer like spider silk drawn taut.

When at last Brannoc lowered his hand, the sound settled like dust. The Wardens sagged as if the stairs themselves had tilted. Alyssia stepped back, her breath neat, and her heartbeat calm by force. She would not pant in front of them. She would not show the tremble that lived in her hands after every morning scale.

“Good,” Elira said softly. She was always the first to say it. “Good enough.”

Ilyrion made a sound that wasn’t quite agreement. “Until the Blood Moon is here. Then we shall see if it is truly good enough.”

Alyssia kept her eyes on the floor, where light colored red from the stained-glass cut across her boots. In the arch above, a hairline tremor ran through the invisible film of the veil, then was gone.

We are here, she thought. We are singing. That has to count. She felt the whispers slip away, almost like a draft going under a door.