Chapter 5: The Band of the Broken
1038 Words
Their names were whispered now.
In taverns and temples, among nomads and nobles alike: The Flameborn, The Wandering Voice, The Queen’s Reversal.
But within their tight circle, they were simply a band of broken things.
And they were beginning to believe that broken things could still heal the world.
---
Aurelia sat on a fallen tree at the edge of a moonlit glade, softly strumming a lyren—a stringed instrument gifted by a fae merchant. She wasn't practicing. Not really.
She was remembering.
Her fingers traced chords that didn’t belong to this world. Chords from another life, another self. From Hana Lee, who had died under the stage lights.
But her song was no longer just hers.
> “Sing, and I’ll carry you.”
“Sing, and I’ll shatter you.”
“Sing, and I’ll set you free.”
Eris’s voice was a soft hum beneath every note now. Not a possession. Not yet. But a presence.
And tonight, that presence ached.
---
They had gathered three of the seven Sealed Notes—the ancient musical fragments locked in shrines across the realm.
The Note of Truth, unearthed in the Mierwyn Forest.
The Note of Memory, taken from a ruin swallowed by the sea.
And the Note of Sorrow, pried from the heart of a storm.
Each one brought Aurelia closer to the center of the curse—and closer to Eris.
But it also brought more pain.
Because every sealed note whispered stories. And the more she learned about Queen Eris, the harder it became to see her as a monster.
She had loved.
She had lost.
And she had been abandoned.
Just like Hana.
Just like all of them.
---
They made camp that night in the Hollowing Expanse, a barren plain where sound traveled for miles but returned distorted—echoes of things that were never said.
Ashen, usually quiet, sat beside Aurelia.
“I remember… pieces now,” he said.
She looked up. “Of your past?”
He nodded. “I wasn’t just a guardian. I was her friend. Eris. I was bound to protect her voice.”
Aurelia's breath caught.
“She sang to me in the cradle of stars. She trusted me. And I… failed her. When the council bound her voice, I turned away.”
She touched his hand gently. “You didn’t have a choice.”
He shook his head. “We all have choices. Even when they hurt.”
His golden eyes looked into hers.
“Are you ready to make yours?”
---
The next shrine was hidden in a city buried beneath a glacier—Frostmoor, once the jewel of the North, now frozen in eternal silence.
Legend said the people there had sung too loudly, dared to match Eris’s grief with their own—and were entombed by her final crescendo.
As the group stepped into the ice-crusted ruins, their voices dimmed.
Even breathing became quieter.
“Sound magic’s twisted here,” Talon muttered, rune-blade drawn. “One wrong note and—”
A wail echoed through the tunnels.
Not human.
A Dirge Wraith—a creature born of unfinished songs. Pale, eyeless, it floated through the ice like a shadow in water.
Thistle whistled low. “Someone’s still holding a grudge.”
Aurelia stepped forward, unafraid. She’d seen enough now to know that pain remembered itself through sound.
“This place doesn’t need fire or blades,” she whispered.
She began to sing—not a battle hymn, but a lullaby. One she remembered from her trainee days. Hana used to hum it between practices, when the loneliness got too heavy.
> “Let me carry your silence,
till it melts in my song…”
The Dirge Wraith shuddered. Then faded.
The shrine door opened without a word.
---
Inside, the Note of Compassion glowed soft blue.
But it didn’t give visions.
It gave feelings.
As she touched it, each of her companions gasped—overwhelmed with flashes of memory.
Kael, forced to steal to survive, watching his sister starve while nobles feasted.
Nyra, holding her commander’s hand as he begged her to save the child they’d been ordered to kill.
Talon, left behind by a brother consumed by cursed song.
Thistle, crying as his illusions vanished and the forest forgot his name.
Ashen, holding Eris’s crown as her tears turned to flames.
And Aurelia…
She saw Hana.
In her dorm room, staring at the wall, surrounded by trophies she didn’t want and silence that hurt worse than screams.
“I’m not special,” she’d whispered to no one. “I’m just loud.”
---
They emerged from the shrine in silence.
But something had changed.
They looked at each other not just as allies—but as survivors.
As family.
---
That night, Nyra offered Aurelia a toast of cactus wine.
“To the band of the broken,” she said with a grin.
Kael raised his mug. “Long may we limp.”
Even Talon chuckled.
And for the first time in weeks, Aurelia laughed.
It rang clear through the camp. No magic. No prophecy.
Just joy.
---
But far away, in the Court of Echoes, Queen Eris felt it.
The laughter.
And it burned.
She stood over a map of Elarion, tracing her fingers across the seals.
“They break the silence,” she murmured.
One of her generals, a masked Songbound Knight, approached. “Shall I dispatch the Choir Blades?”
“No,” Eris whispered. “Let them come.”
She closed her eyes.
“She must see the end for herself.”
---
That same night, Aurelia dreamed.
She stood on a glass stage surrounded by her crew—but they couldn’t see her. Couldn’t hear her.
Only Eris stood at the center, singing.
As Aurelia tried to join the harmony, her own voice became screams.
Then silence.
And then:
> “When you know the full song,
You must choose the final verse.
Me… or you.”
---
Aurelia woke with sweat on her brow and tears in her eyes.
She didn’t know which terrified her more—
Eris’s curse…
Or the truth that she might understand it too well.
---
End of Chapter 5
- Writer
