Chapter 4: Voices of the Past

"Some echoes do not fade—they wait, humming beneath the dust of silence."

---

The staircase swallowed the light behind us.

With every step deeper, the air thickened, laced with a music too old for mortal tongues. It thrummed in the stone walls, in the bones of the steps, in the beat of my heart. Like something ancient was listening. Or singing.

Leander walked beside me, his grip on my hand never wavering. The warmth of it grounded me—proof that we were still real, still here, even as the world around us shifted from marble and mortar into memory and magic.

At the bottom, the stairs ended at an obsidian arch etched with runes I didn't recognize. But my voice did.

A single note rose in my throat—unbidden, unplanned. It slipped past my lips like a sigh… and the runes responded.

They lit like starlight.

The door opened.

We stepped into a chamber forgotten by time.

It wasn't dusted with cobwebs or ruin. No, this room was preserved. Sacred. Music hovered in the air like breath, whispering from the corners, rustling the tapestries that depicted the golden age of Aeloria.

A great tree, its leaves shaped like notes.

A queen with stars in her crown and a book pressed to her chest.

A gate of mirrors that shimmered like water.

And at the heart of the room—floating above a pedestal—was a book unlike any I had seen.

It was bound in silver and velvet, its cover sealed with a lock shaped like a treble clef. The pages glowed faintly, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.

I stepped closer.

The moment my fingertips grazed the cover, the lock dissolved into stardust.

The book opened.

Not with paper and ink.

But with a voice.

"To she who bears the true song… I have waited for you."

Leander and I both stilled.

The voice was clear and regal, tinged with melancholy. It came from the book itself. A diary, but not written—a voice-bound relic. Only someone with the right resonance could awaken it.

"Queen Aria," I whispered.

The voice continued.

"They think I sleep. But sleep is kind. What I endure is not slumber—it is silence. A silence placed upon my soul, a curse woven by betrayal."

A chill ran down my spine.

Leander leaned in, brow furrowed. "Betrayal? But the prophecy said the kingdom fell to protect the world…"

The voice went on, pages flipping themselves with each new memory.

"The prophecy was rewritten. Twisted. The truth buried beneath orchestras of lies. The chosen voice was never meant to be a prize—it was meant to be a shield. A key. A weapon against the rising darkness that dwells in the void between songs."

I looked to the wall—where a mural of the Gate of Echoes shimmered.

"They stole my voice to protect their secrets. Now only one pure enough, powerful enough, may sing me free. If you are her… beware the serpent among the nightingales."

The voice faded.

But not before one final, haunting phrase.

"He wears a crown, but sings with another's voice."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Leander stood rigid. "This changes everything."

I nodded slowly, heart pounding. "Someone in the court… in the contest… is not who they say they are."

---

We didn't tell anyone what we'd found.

Not yet.

We returned to the others just as the Harmony Trial was beginning. Our performance was the last of the day—unplanned, unscheduled, as though fate had carved out a moment just for us.

The stage shimmered with starlight when we stepped on it. The court fell into silence.

We didn't speak.

We sang.

Not just a duet—but a story. My voice laced with longing, his with strength. Notes of discovery, of trust, of secrets too old to name. Our harmony twisted into the chamber, weaving into the audience like threads of truth.

The judges watched in awe.

And when the final chord faded, the magic above the stage exploded into a burst of crystalline feathers—raining silver light.

The Gate of Echoes behind the throne glowed faintly.

A sign.

We had passed.

But not without cost.

Seraphina watched us from the shadows, her hands clenched in her gown, her mirror eyes narrowed to slivers of fury.

And in that moment, I knew—

The war for Aeloria had begun.

Not on battlefields.

But on stages.

And the most dangerous weapon… was a beautiful lie.

---

The silver feathers were still falling when we left the stage.

They dissolved before they touched the ground, like snow made of magic. The court erupted in applause—wild, unfiltered, confused. No one had ever seen a reaction like that, not even for Seraphina.

But applause couldn't drown out the pounding in my chest.

We had sung a duet, yes—but it wasn't just a performance. It had been a message. A declaration. A key unlocking something deep inside me, something I didn't understand yet.

Leander was quiet as we stepped back into the waiting chamber.

The other contestants stared at us with wide eyes and sharp tongues hidden behind polite smiles. Some were stunned. Some furious. Others whispered behind gloved hands, eyeing me like I'd grown wings.

Only Seraphina didn't bother pretending.

"You must be very proud of yourself," she said, voice like velvet folded over steel. "The orphan girl with the miraculous voice… now stealing spotlights and royalty. Quite the narrative."

I met her gaze. "I didn't steal anything."

"No?" She tilted her head. "Then what exactly did you unlock out there? Because that wasn't court magic. That was something older."

I didn't answer.

Because I didn't know.

But her eyes narrowed—just slightly—as if she could sense the truth unraveling behind mine.

Before she could say more, a chime rang through the chamber.

A scroll floated into the air and unrolled itself. The queen's voice echoed from it, laced with enchantment:

"The Harmony of Hearts trial has ended. Five duets have passed. One… has failed. One… is missing."

A ripple of confusion moved through the room.

"Missing?" Ronan stepped forward, brows furrowed. "Who?"

A pause.

Then a name I didn't expect.

"Princess Elira of Virelle."

My breath caught.

Elira—the girl with the sapphire-threaded hair and a voice like rain on glass. Reserved, but never cruel. She'd kept to herself, but there was something vulnerable about her I'd always noticed. And now… gone.

"She vanished," the queen's voice went on, "during her duet performance. Her partner was found alone, disoriented. He remembers only the beginning of their song—then… silence."

Seraphina's jaw tightened. "Another one."

Leander leaned toward me. "She's the second."

"The first was glossed over," I whispered. "The palace said she withdrew voluntarily. But now—"

"Now it's a pattern."

A sick feeling settled in my gut.

Something was taking contestants. During performances. During moments of vulnerability, when their hearts and voices were open.

But why?

Leander placed a hand on my back. "We need to tell the queen what we found in the chamber."

"No," I said quickly. "Not yet. Someone in the court is hiding the truth. If the wrong person hears it, they'll erase it. Like they erased her."

A pause.

He nodded once. "Then we dig quietly."

That night, as I lay in my chambers, the silver brooch Leander had given me pulsed with faint light. I held it in my hands, wondering if it could hear the frantic rhythm of my heartbeat.

A soft flutter caught my attention.

A small paper bird—folded with perfect edges—perched on the edge of my windowsill.

I reached for it.

It unfurled into a note, written in music.

Not words.

Notes.

A melody I somehow recognized, though I'd never sung it.

My fingers traced the tune, and I heard it in my mind—a lullaby, echoing from somewhere distant. A memory I didn't remember having. A name whispered beneath it, scrawled in elegant gold ink:

"For Lyra. From Her Songmother."

Songmother.

The word rippled through my bones.

I didn't know what it meant.

But it meant something to me.

And suddenly, the voice in the silver book wasn't just prophecy—it was personal.

Someone knew who I truly was.

And they were calling me to remember.

---

The moment I stepped beyond the threshold of the Echoing Hall, I felt it—an invisible weight that clung to my skin like mist. The corridor beyond was not the one I remembered walking through before. Gone were the marble walls and golden sconces. Instead, soft violet light streamed from glowing orbs suspended mid-air, and the floor pulsed with a rhythm I could feel in my bones.

Music. Not played—remembered.

It was like walking through a memory that didn't belong to me.

I turned a corner and stopped.

There, suspended in midair, floated a shimmer of light. It pulsed, forming into a swirling figure of a young girl, singing a lullaby I didn't recognize. Her voice was haunting—pure, but mournful. As I stepped closer, I realized with a chill that her face was familiar.

Elira.

Her eyes were wide, distant. She didn't seem to see me, and yet her voice called to something deep within me.

"She sang too soon," a whisper came from behind.

I spun. Leander stood in the hallway, his usual princely charm dimmed by unease.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, heart still racing.

"I followed the trail of song. I knew you wouldn't stay behind like the others." His gaze drifted to Elira's spectral form. "I saw this same vision… right before she vanished."

My throat tightened. "What do you mean—this vision?"

He stepped closer, voice low. "The night before she disappeared, I heard her singing in the courtyard. Not her usual melodies—something… ancient. The next morning, she was gone. No signs of struggle. Just a single feather and the scent of roses."

I remembered the feather Queen Aria held in her hand when she announced Elira's absence. "You think this has something to do with the trials?"

"No," he said, his voice grim. "I think the trials are revealing what's already inside us. Elira may have unlocked something too soon—something that wasn't ready to be seen."

The floating vision faded into dust. The hallway darkened again.

Just as the silence became unbearable, a soft hum began beneath our feet. The hallway shook, and the violet orbs flared brighter.

Leander grabbed my wrist. "We need to go."

But I didn't move.

Because I heard it again.

My mother's lullaby.

Only—how could that be?

The melody drifted through the air, sweet and sorrowful, wrapping around my heart like a vine of memory. I took a step forward, away from Leander's grip, chasing the sound like a thread through the dark.

"Lyra!" he called, but I barely heard him.

Because at the end of the hall stood a tall, mirrored door I had never seen before. Carved into its surface were notes of music—ancient, etched in silver.

I raised a hand toward the doorknob, trembling.

And then—it opened itself.

Inside, I glimpsed what could only be described as a temple of song. Columns carved from glass, ceilings draped in shimmering silk, and at its center: a pedestal, atop which sat a music box made of crystal.

And when I stepped inside, I heard her voice again.

"Lyra," she whispered. "The past is not forgotten. It's only hidden… until you dare to remember."

The box clicked open.

And everything went dark.

---

The darkness wasn't empty.

It breathed.

A soft wind curled around me, carrying the scent of lavender and ash. Shadows twisted in the corners of the temple like dancers awaiting their cue. In the center, the music box on the pedestal gleamed, now fully open, its mechanism humming with quiet, haunting melody.

The lullaby.

It poured from the box like smoke—fragile and ghostly. And with every note, the space around me began to change.

Glass pillars melted into trees made of shimmering light. The silk ceiling unraveled into a sky of twilight stars. And at my feet, the floor became a pool of mirrored water, reflecting not my face—but a child's.

A girl with dark curls and bright eyes. My eyes.

My breath caught.

Was this… me?

The reflection moved, not as I did, but as she once had—running through a garden I'd never seen, laughing as flower petals swirled in her wake. Behind her, a woman followed. Her face was hidden by sunlight, but her voice—oh, stars above—her voice was the very melody that had awakened the Gate of Echoes.

"Mother," I whispered, the word slipping past my lips like a secret I didn't know I'd been keeping.

A breeze rippled the mirrored pool, distorting the reflection. The girl vanished. The woman turned to me.

And for the first time, I saw her face.

Sharp cheekbones. Warm eyes that shimmered like starlight. And lips curled in a sad, knowing smile.

"You've grown, little echo," she said, her voice ethereal—half wind, half memory. "But time is short, and the past… is dangerous."

"Who are you?" My voice cracked. "Are you real?"

"I am what remains of the truth," she replied. "A fragment sealed away by the spell that cursed this kingdom. I sang once—for love, for freedom. And the world punished me for it."

Her hand reached toward me from the mirror, fingertips brushing the surface.

"You must be careful. This contest is more than trials and songs. It is a trap laced with prophecy—and lies."

"What lies?"

She looked toward the fading horizon. "The voice they seek… is not the one they want."

Before I could ask more, the music box's melody stuttered.

The temple shivered.

Cracks raced across the crystal walls. The stars overhead began to blink out one by one, like dying candles.

"Wait!" I cried. "Please—don't go!"

The woman's figure flickered. "Find the Song of the First Flame. It lies beyond the Vale of Silence. Only then will you know the truth."

Then she was gone.

The mirror shattered.

And the next moment—I was lying on the cold marble floor of the Echoing Hall, the music box cradled in my hands, and Leander kneeling beside me, panic etched across his face.

"Lyra! Stars, you vanished—I thought…" He shook his head. "What happened? Where did you go?"

I sat up slowly, breath still shaking. "I think… I just remembered something I was never meant to forget."

I opened the music box again.

No sound came out.

Just a single glowing feather, floating gently into my lap.

And for the first time, I didn't feel fear.

I felt fate, breathing down my neck.