They said no sound could echo within the caves of Iridrel. But when Nyra sang, the stone didn't just echo—it cracked.
The descent had been treacherous. Beneath the Ashen Spire, through tunnels laced with dormant flameworms and whisperglass, Kael, Nyra, and Thalen followed the fractured trail left by an ancient choir—one that had long ago tried to harmonize with the Spiral's voice and been broken by it.
The Caves of Iridrel were not on any map, nor marked in any of the Aeon Scribes' records. They existed only in curse-lore and lullabies. And yet, here they were: walls black as oil but laced with glowing threads of blue crystal—crystallized sorrow, Nyra called it. Harmonic marrow.
Thalen touched one and pulled back. "It weeps," he muttered. His fingertips glistened with something like molten silver. "Like it's remembering pain."
"They all do," Nyra said. "Stone holds song better than any book. These caves remember the Spiral's scream."
Kael felt the weight of it. Each step pressed against something deeper than fear. There was an urge to scream, to claw at his own chest just to let the pressure out.
At the heart of the cavern, they found it: the Choir Stone. A monolith of fused voices, petrified mid-harmony. Each face frozen in agony or rapture—it was impossible to tell which. Their mouths were open still, as if still trying to sing.
Nyra stepped forward.
"I can't harmonize with this," she whispered. "I have to unmake it."
Kael frowned. "What does that mean?"
She didn't answer. She began to hum—a low, dissonant tone that made the cave shiver. The Choir Stone trembled.
Then she sang.
It wasn't a song made for ears. It was made for truths buried in rock, for wounds that never scabbed. The melody bent the walls inward, twisted light into shadow, memory into flame. Kael dropped to one knee, his fire sputtering from the sheer force of her voice.
The Choir Stone screamed back.
But Nyra's voice overpowered it, not through strength but sorrow. Her song was one of endings, of stillborn hopes and broken promises. And the stone, once proud in its silence, began to fracture.
With a final, piercing note, she shattered it.
The Choir Stone exploded into dust and melody. Sound fled in every direction, and in its wake, a new passage opened—spiraling downward, lit by flame that did not burn.
Kael helped her stand. She looked pale, her lips stained with silver.
"It remembered," she said. "Now it forgets."
They stepped into the passage.
Somewhere far below, the Spiral shifted.
And listened.