Chapter 3: Songs in the Shadows
1128 Words
There were songs in the shadows.
Not the kind sung in taverns or temples—these were melodies that whispered beneath your thoughts, that curled around your soul like smoke. Songs that remembered pain. Songs that were pain.
Aurelia heard them more often now.
Each time she and her crew ventured closer to the cursed lands—places abandoned by time, wrapped in silence and sorrow—those shadow-songs grew louder. More insistent.
But she refused to listen.
Because deep inside the harmony was another voice. A voice that wasn't hers.
---
They traveled east, toward the Blackwater Wastes.
Talon had discovered a fragment of an ancient song inscribed on the stone feathers of a fallen temple. It spoke of a Resonant Flame, a mythical fire that once burned away dark enchantments and purified corrupted song-magic.
“We’ll need it if we want to reach the heart of the curse,” he explained. “Without it, the magic there will tear our minds apart.”
Kael groaned. “So, into the cursed desert of doom we go. Great.”
Nyra cleaned her blade in the corner. “Better than playing court jester for Elarion’s false crown.”
Thistle spun on a tree branch, tails flicking. “The Flame is real, but it’s not what you think. Flames burn more than just curses.”
Aurelia said nothing.
Her hands were trembling again.
That morning, she had awoken from a dream where she stood in the ruins of a glass castle, singing a lullaby that cracked the sky. When she looked in the mirror, it was Queen Eris’s face that stared back.
She hadn’t told the others.
Not yet.
---
The Wastes were worse than any of them imagined.
Black sand stretched to the horizon like a sea of ash. No wind. No sky. Just heat and the smell of things long dead. Every step felt heavier than the last, as though the land itself didn’t want them to move.
By the second day, even Ashen—the great silver dragon in human form—seemed weakened, his fire dimming.
“We’re being drained,” he growled. “This place feeds on song.”
Aurelia closed her eyes and hummed a note of protection.
Her voice shimmered in the air like silver silk, forming a ward around the group.
But in doing so, she heard it again—that other melody, just beneath hers. A soft, royal voice, ancient and aching:
> “Child of voice… child of mine…”
She cut the song short.
---
That night, they made camp in the broken husk of an obsidian spire—once a tower of the Songguard, now little more than jagged stone.
While the others rested, Talon approached her.
“You’re hearing her, aren’t you?”
Aurelia looked up, startled. “What?”
“The queen. Her voice. You flinch every time you sing now.”
She hesitated. “Sometimes it feels like I’m not just using magic… I’m unlocking something. Something sealed. Inside me.”
Talon nodded grimly. “The curse isn’t just spreading. It’s awakening. And it’s using you to do it.”
Aurelia stared at her hands. “Then what am I?”
He looked away. “I don’t know. Yet. But you’re still you, Aurelia. And that matters.”
“Even if I become her?”
“We won’t let that happen.”
---
The next day, they found the cave.
It was buried beneath a collapsed canyon and marked by the sound of music that wasn’t theirs. A distant harp tune echoed through the windless Wastes, impossibly clear and impossibly sad.
Inside, the walls were smooth glass, rippling with colorless reflections.
In the center: the Resonant Flame.
It floated above a stone dais, a twisting fire that hummed rather than burned. As Aurelia stepped closer, her pendant glowed, reacting violently.
A blast of memory slammed into her.
A throne room in chaos. Flames everywhere. A queen screaming as her court turned against her. “If you won’t hear my grief… then you’ll feel it!”
Aurelia fell to her knees.
She was there. In Eris’s body. Feeling her heartbreak, her rage. The betrayal of friends, the death of her child. Her voice becoming a weapon.
She screamed.
The crew rushed to her side—but before they could reach her, something rose from the cave floor.
A being made of ash and echo. A Whisperfiend.
Born of cursed sound, it struck with claws of vibration and howled with stolen voices.
Nyra intercepted it, slashing through its tendrils, but every time it was wounded, it split into more.
Kael’s daggers bounced off it. Thistle’s illusions flickered and failed.
Talon tried to weave a counter-song, but the thing fed on his melody, grew stronger with every note.
Aurelia crawled to the Flame.
She reached for it, thinking of all the pain she’d seen, the suffering this curse had caused, and the girl she used to be—singing under the spotlight, unaware of how short her time would be.
She didn’t need to steal the queen’s voice.
She needed to confront it.
Her voice rang out—soft, unsure at first. Then stronger. Not Hana’s voice. Not Eris’s.
Hers.
> “I am not your throne.
I am not your sorrow.
I am not your end.
I am tomorrow.”
The Resonant Flame flared, bursting into silver light. The Whisperfiend shrieked as her voice unraveled it like thread, its stolen melodies returned to the air.
Silence fell.
Then the Flame entered her chest.
Not burning—infusing. Cleansing.
Her pendant melted, its curse broken. In its place was a mark over her heart: a flame within a circle, pulsing in time with her breath.
The others stared in awe.
Aurelia stood.
“I know what we need to do now.”
---
That night, they made camp in a small canyon where music no longer felt dangerous.
Talon approached her again.
“You sang something new today.”
“I sang myself,” she said. “Not the prophecy. Not the queen. Me.”
He gave her a small smile. “Good. You’re going to need to hold onto that.”
She looked up at the stars.
“Her voice is still there. I can’t stop hearing her.”
“Then maybe,” said Thistle, slinking beside them, “you stop trying to silence her… and start listening.”
---
Deep beneath the ruins of Elarion, the Queen Without a Throne stood before a cracked mirror.
She touched it gently.
> “She sings,” Eris whispered. “She remembers.”
The mirror did not reflect her image—but Aurelia’s.
And for the first time in centuries, the cursed queen smiled.
---
End of Chapter 3
- Writer
