A few years had passed since the Deep Gloam breathed again.
The world did not change overnight, but it changed in the places that mattered—in the hearts of those who once feared sound and now danced in it, in cities that rebuilt with melodies etched into their stone, and in the quiet moments when strangers shared songs without names.
Elen, once the Spire's Echo, now traveled freely. Not as a weapon, not as a relic, but as a seeker.
She wandered from village to village, wearing no sigil, carrying no instrument but her voice. Her song was soft. Incomplete. Still searching for its full shape. She did not rush it. She listened.
One evening, she arrived in a valley painted in moonlight—Valmere, a place untouched by the Breath Between. Not because they had refused, but because they had been forgotten. War had scarred their soil. Silence was their inheritance.
Children stared from windows as she passed. Elders whispered behind closed doors.
But one girl followed her.
