Veridian Blood Score: Conducting the Apocalypse

Chapter 2: The Stifled Frequency

Silence was not merely the absence of sound. It was an Absolute Silence.

To a normal person, silence is just an empty space, but to Valten, whose soul was tethered to the resonance of magic, this silence felt like giant hands crushing his lungs. He could not hear his own heartbeat. He could not hear the scrape of his boots against the marble floor. Even the sound of Elara’s breathing, who had been standing right beside him, had vanished as if she had never existed.

The world before Valten’s eyes began to distort. The brilliant light from the chandelier faded into a dull gray, as if color were being drained out of reality itself. He turned toward the window, finding the palace guards who had been slumped over now rising in jagged, disjointed movements, like marionettes pulled by invisible strings.

The Rival Conductor, the man in the black cloak standing amidst the ruined gates, stepped forward. Each step produced no sound, yet it created a shockwave that sent the musical scores on Valten’s desk flying, shattering them into fine white dust.

Damn it, Valten thought, his eyes narrowing sharply. He is using the Void Silence Technique. He is not just nullifying sound; he is negating the existence of molecular vibration in this area.

Valten tried to move his hand to cast a tonal spell, but the air around him felt as dense as concrete. His muscles locked up. He realized something horrific: within this zone, the laws of physics, and the musical magic he had mastered, were invalid. This was his opponent’s domain.

The cloaked man stopped in the center of the hall. He pulled back his hood, revealing a face obscured by a silver mask that covered his eyes, leaving only a sneering mouth visible. It was Vane, his former peer at the Central Academy, the man who had defected to the Emperor’s side ten years ago, right at the moment the Blood Feast occurred.

Vane did not speak. He raised his index finger, and a high-pitched tone, felt only through the vibration of the skull, slammed into Valten.

CRASH!

Valten was thrown backward, smashing through an oak table until it splintered into pieces. He felt his ribs c***k. Warm blood flowed from the corner of his lips, yet he could not hear it hit the floor. The pain was visceral, real, and agonizing within the suffocating quiet.

Elara, still trapped in the zone of silence, tried to draw a dagger from beneath her gown. But Vane merely glanced at her, and instantly, Elara fell to her knees, clutching her own throat as if an invisible hand were strangling her.

Valten gritted his teeth. He had to do something. If he remained passive, Vane would erase them from history, not just literally, but existentially. Valten closed his eyes, focusing his remaining consciousness on the smallest frequency he could catch: his own heartbeat, which he felt through the pulse in his wrist.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

He began to synchronize his heartbeat with the vibrations in the air. He did not try to fight Vane’s silence. Instead, he made it a canvas. If Vane was a painter who wanted to erase everything, then Valten was a conductor who would insert notes between the strokes of that void.

Valten grabbed a shard of wood from the shattered table, gripping it like a conductor’s baton. He struck the wood against the floor, a blow that physically produced no sound, but magically triggered a low-frequency explosion from the point of impact.

Rumble!

Suddenly, the window glass in the hall exploded outward. Sound flooded back into the room like water breaking through a dam. Valten’s ears rang violently; the pain of the sudden influx of sound nearly made him lose consciousness, but he had succeeded. The Void Silence seal had cracked.

"You are still as noisy as you were ten years ago, Valten," Vane’s voice finally sounded, heavy and authoritative, shattering the broken silence.

Valten stood up, gasping for air, wiping the blood from his lips with the back of his hand. He stared at Vane with eyes full of pure hatred. "And you are still a loyal lapdog, Vane. How does it feel to lick the Emperor’s boots every night?"

Vane chuckled, his laugh sounding like a blade being dragged across a whetstone. "The Emperor offers order. You offer chaos. The world does not need a new song, Valten. The world only needs to stop moving so that we may rule it forever."

"Music is change," Valten retorted, his voice now cold and measured. "And every change you do not desire is a threat to you, isn’t it?"

Vane raised his hand again, and a black aura began to shroud his fingers, a dark resonance magic capable of rotting anything it touched. But this time, Valten did not wait. He had spent ten years researching for this moment.

He did not use traditional musical magic. He used the Void Tone frequency he had learned from his father’s score. Without a violin, without an instrument, Valten whistled a very specific low note. The note did not sound like music, but rather like a vibration that made the air around Vane ripple.

Vane’s eyes widened behind the silver mask. His black magic, which had begun to solidify, suddenly dissipated, the atoms within it torn apart by the frequency Valten had generated.

"Impossible," Vane hissed, taking a step back for the first time. "That... the resonance you are using... it exceeds the limits of Veridian magic!"

"This is not magic," Valten cut in, his eyes flashing with triumph. "This is the physics you forgot when you sold your soul."

Valten did not give him a chance. He directed his left hand toward the ceiling, gathering the remnants of energy in the room. The students, who had been frozen in silence, began to regain their senses. Elias, still trembling in the corner of the room, looked at Valten with eyes full of wonder and fear. Valten looked at him briefly, giving a cue through firm body language.

"Elias! Get your violin! Now!" Valten commanded.

Elias, whose magical talent had always been deemed 'defective' because he could never play a stable note, suddenly understood. He grabbed his violin. He did not play the classical songs learned at the academy. He played the same note as Valten’s whistle.

One by one, the other students joined in. The room began to fill with an inharmonious frequency, a dissonance specifically designed to disrupt Vane’s energy field.

Vane was pushed to the brink. His black cloak began to tear from the increasingly wild sound vibrations. He knew that if he stayed, his own resonance would turn inward and destroy his body.

"Do you think you’ve won, Valten?" Vane shouted amidst the noisy symphony of destruction. "The Emperor has set the date for the grand concert. When the eclipse arrives, your Void Tone will be useless against the eternal silence that will descend upon the entire land!"

Vane reached into his cloak and threw a small metal orb onto the floor.

BOOM!

Thick black smoke filled the hall, smelling of sulfur and ozone. When the smoke cleared, Vane had vanished. All that remained were his scorched footprints on the marble floor, which was now cracked in several places.

The hall fell silent again, but this was a different kind of silence. A silence that left behind physical and emotional exhaustion. Valten slumped into his chair, breathing heavily. Elara approached him, her breathing ragged, her silk gown slightly torn at the shoulder.

"You're insane," Elara whispered, her hands trembling as she touched Valten’s shoulder. "You nearly killed us all. If that resonance had failed, we would all be dust on this floor."

Valten stared at Elara, then turned his gaze toward his students, who were still holding their instruments with trembling hands.

He saw hope in their eyes, but he also saw terror. They had just witnessed how music could kill, rather than simply pampering the ears.

"That was just a warm-up, Elara," Valten’s voice was raspy, but his tone was cold as steel. He stared toward the shattered remains of the door. "If they come for an execution, then we will answer with an oratorio that will bring the palace crashing down before their concert even begins."

Valten rose, even though his body felt as if it had been run over by an iron carriage. He walked to the center of the hall, where he looked at his students one by one.

"You are no longer castaways of this world," Valten declared, his voice echoing through the remnants of the ruined hall. "As of today, you are the architects of destruction. Are you ready to bend reality to your will?"

Elias, standing closest, nodded firmly. Murmurs of agreement, soft but filled with resolve, began to rise from the other students. They were no longer just desperate children; they were weapons that had just been sharpened.

However, in the midst of the moment, Valten realized something he had missed. He turned toward Elara, who was hiding something behind the sleeve of her dress. A royal seal that glowed faintly, it was a tracking device.

Elara had not come just to warn him. Elara had come to mark their location.

Valten felt a chill crawl down his spine. Vane’s trap was only the overture. The true royal force, led by the legendary Royal Conductor, was on its way, and they now possessed the exact coordinates thanks to Elara.

"Elara," Valten called out, his voice low and menacing. "What are you hiding in your sleeve?"

Elara froze. She knew she had been caught. Her eyes filled with tears, deep regret shining within them. "Valten, I... I had no choice. They threatened to kill my brother."

Valten stared at the woman he loved, his heart torn between fury and a familiar pain. He knew he had to make a decision: let Elara go and face the consequences of their destruction, or hold the royal informant captive and turn her into the final pawn in his symphony of death.

"Forgive me, Elara," Valten said, his hands moving swiftly to weave a note of magic that caused Elara to fall unconscious into his arms.

He looked at his students. "Prepare yourselves. They are at the door."

Outside, the sound of thousands of soldiers marching began to rise, rhythmic, disciplined, and lethal. They had not come to negotiate. They had come to erase a historical error named Valten.

The second act of this symphony had just begun, and this time, the stage was a battlefield.