Song of the Ruin-Ward

The melody started in the stone.

Not in the air, nor in the trembling remnants of Cindergate's outer ramparts, but in the foundation. Deep. Old. Like something that had been waiting not just for footsteps—but for her name.

Evelyn paused mid-step as the sound—more vibration than song—began to echo upward from the floor beneath the Hall of Singed Judgments. The sigils that had long since faded on the pillars lit faintly, flickering like embers stirred after years of cold.

"It's waking," Ithryn said beside her, his voice low with reverence. "The Ruin-Ward remembers."

Torren stood behind them, hand on his sword's hilt. "That supposed to be comforting?"

"No," Ithryn said. "It's supposed to be true."

The Hall's ceiling stretched upward into broken domes, open to the ashen sky. Dozens of statues lined the walk ahead—Warden figures in cloaks of carved obsidian, their hands clasped around invisible blades. But their faces were cracked. Missing.

Only the last one remained untouched.

A woman kneeling, one hand to her chest and the other holding what looked like a blade formed from twisted wind. Her name had been effaced, but Evelyn could feel it lingering behind her teeth.

Vaelsha.

She didn't know how she knew it. She just did.

Ithryn knelt. "This is where the First Song was broken."

"What song?" Evelyn asked.

"The one that kept the Hollow sealed."

Torren moved closer, squinting at the statue's base. "There's a chamber under us."

Ithryn nodded. "The Ruin-Ward. A reliquary of broken truths and things not meant to survive the old wars."

A low tone pulsed from the statue, and the floor around them shimmered with runes.

Then it opened—not like stone parting, but like an idea forgotten and now suddenly remembered.

The air beneath was cold. Deep. Singing.

They descended.

Torchlight followed them like drifting flame-motes. Evelyn's heart beat in rhythm with the hum in the stone, with the pulsing in her core.

At the base of the spiraled descent lay a circular chamber, ringed with glowing glyphs.

In the center floated an artifact: not a weapon. Not a scroll.

A fragment of sound.

It shimmered like mist, shaped vaguely like a harp-string—twisting, suspended in an impossible lattice of echo and memory.

"The Song-Fiber," Ithryn whispered. "The last strand of the original Flame Chord."

Evelyn stepped closer, and the walls around them began to resonate.

Images flared.

A woman screaming as fire consumed her hands.

A child with hollowed eyes drawing glyphs in her own blood.

The Hollow King's crown falling from a tower made of tongues.

Evelyn's mother, whispering into the heart of a cracked core.

And finally—a choir of voices, singing not to bind… but to unmake.

The Ruin-Ward.

Evelyn reached out.

The fiber didn't burn. It didn't freeze.

It just sang.

Into her hand. Into her mind.

Into her core.

"You are not the first to burn," the chamber seemed to say.

"But you may be the last to remember why."

The glyphs on the wall flared, and suddenly Evelyn knew.

She could sing this song.

Not alone. But not as a child anymore.

As a bearer.

As someone who remembered what it meant to choose light in the presence of ash.

The chamber began to quake.

Torren drew his blade. "What's happening?!"

Ithryn turned toward the exit, his eyes wide. "You've stirred it too fast. The warding roots are still fractured. They'll collapse the vault—!"

Evelyn gritted her teeth, drawing the fiber closer to her chest.

"Then re-sing it," she hissed.

And she did.

No words. Just tones. Colors. Feelings.

The old, broken chords began to hum with her. Ithryn joined her—his voice rough, but practiced.

Even Torren, unsure, added a whisper beneath his breath.

The quake slowed.

Stone held.

And for the first time in centuries, the Ruin-Ward held a harmony again.

They emerged into the upper chamber hours later, ash clinging to their cloaks.

The statue of Vaelsha had crumbled. Not shattered—just… released. Her watch was over.

Evelyn held the Song-Fiber wrapped in cloth against her chest. It pulsed faintly. Warm. Familiar.

Torren stared at her differently now.

Not with fear.

Not with distance.

But with recognition.

"You're becoming something else," he said.

"I already have," she replied.

Ithryn bowed. Not deeply. But with the reverence of a man who had waited.

"For the first time," he said, "I think the Hollow should fear something."

Evelyn looked toward the far sky.

And the rift that still glowed above.