Chapter Sixty-One: A Dream of Silver

Mizukiya wished this tea ceremony could last a lifetime.

“Spring’s delicate breath,” her brother recited, his talent for poetry putting Mizukiya’s own to shame. “Awakens sleeping branches, a symphony blooms.”

“Sunlight filters through,” their mother followed. “Canopies of cherry blooms, painting earth with light…”

The princess’ biwa melody filled the air, her instrument’s song supplementing her family members’ works with joyful sounds. Cherry blossom petals flew onto the terrasse and the smell of tea filled her nostrils. The very spirit of spring blessed them with a beautiful sunrise.

“From fiery mountains to the azure sea, our islands rise in majesty…”

Mizukiya’s fingers failed to pinch a string. She raised her head in slight surprise, her flow interrupted.

“Daughter, why have you stopped?” Her mother asked.

“I...” Mizukiya scowled in confusion. “Do not know.”

What was that sound?

“Whispering palms and skies of blue, this land of ours, forever true…” A woman sang in her native Shinkokan, her lyrical voice carried by the spring wind. “O Isles of Valor, brave and free, we stand united in liberty; with hearts aflame and spirits high, we claim the stars, we touch the sky…”

“Do you hear that?” Mizukiya asked softly. She couldn’t recognize the woman’s voice, but her words carried such vibrant energy that they felt somehow familiar nonetheless. They appealed to something buried deep within herself.

“I don’t want to,” her brother replied, his joy swiftly turning to frustration. “I hate it…”

“Now, Doggotaro, everything will be fine,” Mother said kindly as she gently took her son into her arms. “We are here for you.”

We. The words struck Soraseo like a dagger to the heart, filling her with shame and loathing for a reason she couldn’t explain.

Wait.

Sora… Seo?

Soraseo?

“Once shadows cast by empires far, we broke the chains, we raised the bar,” the wind sang, the lyrics reverberating through the Imperial Retreat’s walls and gardens. “The songs of freedom filled the air, our destiny beyond compare.”

Soraseo held her head as a headache clouded her mind. Part of her wished to push out the distracting song from her mind and focus on the present moment, because something inside her felt that it would never come again.

Nonetheless, it also filled her with a strange kind of warmth. Her hands began to play the biwa in tandem with the foreign melody, the peacefulness of spring leaving place to a frantic summer pace.

“O Isles of Valor, brave and free, we stand united in liberty. With hearts aflame and spirits high, we claim the stars, we touch the sky.”

We touch the sky… She recalled touching the clouds once atop a ship, but ships do not fly. Lightning raged against the peaceful clouds obscuring her mind, ruining her peace.

“The waves embrace our storied shores, we honor those who came before,” the voice said, those words striking a chord inside Soraseo’s heart. “In unity, we forge ahead; by dreams and hope, our souls are led.”

We honor those who came before.

Soraseo’s eyes wandered to her Mother, who smiled back kindly at her. Her lips were blurred at the edges, alongside her hands and clothes. The entire terrasse shifted like a mirage with the exception of her brother, who was as solid as Soraseo herself.

“I remember now,” Soraseo said, her biwa fading away into a sheathed sword. She felt a pressure on her face as her mark’s light broke through the dream. “I won’t honor her this way.”

Mother had wanted her to forgive herself for her crime and to move on.

“No!” Her brother screeched in rage and fear, his hands gripping their mother’s illusion with all of his strength. “I refuse to leave!”

“I am sorry I wasn’t a better sister to you, brother,” Soraseo apologized, her heart steeling itself in resolve. “But this ends here.”

She would drag him into the future, however uncomfortable; for the past was dead and even the nicest dreams always came to an end.

Soraseo closed her eyes, and then she awoke amidst quakes and chaos. Her vision struggled to acclimate to the blinding light coming from outside the caldera above them and swirling mists hardly kept away by the heat; and when it did, the sight drew a gasp from her.

The volcanic chamber’s walls were paved with a thick layer of golden dust, as were most of the people trapped inside. Chronius, Mersie, her brother, the demons, and even the cultists and hostages had turned into fog-breathing gilded statues frozen in time, with Rubenzo and the hooded Spy alone having escaped their fate. They desperately worked to drag the petrified women away from the rising magma building up in the room’s center. A few were transforming back into flesh under the influence of the distant song resonating through the fog, while the Archer and Assassin’s marks shone through their owners’ metal shells. Cracks spread over their petrified remains as the Heroes within struggled to emerge back to reality.

The Devil of Greed’s hoard was gone—a failure which shamed Soraseo to her core—but its vile essence suffused the entire mountain. Her brother remained trapped inside his prison of gold alongside the cultists and demons in spite of her best efforts. His desire to avoid facing reality must have pulled him back into the pleasant illusion immediately after his sister broke out of it.

Quakes shook the ground and caused cracks to spread through the gilded stone. Soraseo recognized the signs of Mount Kazandu’s awakening. The mountain would stir from its long sleep soon, and its roar would shake the land with fire and stone.

They had to evacuate now.

A wall to the north collapsed, startling Soraseo. She first suspected a landslide, only for a tunnel to open up and a colossal stonetusk to charge through the rock in triumph. A familiar yeti rode on its back with a smile across his face.

“You’re awake too, I see!” he declared proudly

“Lord Mirokald!” The sight of an ally in these trying times warmed Soraseo’s heart. “Did you hear the song too?”

“I used my power to find my way to Ma, and it brought me out of the dream,” Mirokald explained with a laugh. “She slapped me with her trunk the moment I woke up. Serves me right for falling for it.”

His stonetusk trumpeted in response. Soraseo assumed that an intelligent animal’s mind might have greater resistance to the Devil of Greed’s power than humans simply because the Demon Ancestor struggled to interpret the former’s desires. Her gaze wandered to Rubenzo, who dragged more of the hostages away from the magma flood along with the Spy.

“What about me, you must wonder?” Rubenzo’s laugh thundered over the quakes. “I am already living the dream, Dear! What more could I want from life?”

Soraseo’s power detected no lies in his voice, which shamed her. She still had a long way to go before reaching Rogue’s level of focus.

The Rogue…

Soraseo’s head snapped up in alarm upon realizing that their enemy was missing. Her power immediately picked up movements in the fog above, her gaze sharpening until she saw a form moving half a dozen meters on the stone above her.

The Shadow of Envy was climbing the volcanic wall like a monstrous spider, grasping and hungering for the divine light outside the caldera. A cloak of jealous essence shielded them from the Devil of Greed’s false dreams and drove them on to pursue their ascent with feverish zeal.

Soraseo’s grip tightened on her sword. “Our foe is still after the false Artifact!” she shouted to her allies with the tip of her blade pointed at the Demon Ancestor. “We cannot let them escape!”

“They won’t,” she heard Lady Mersie’s voice reply to her side. Soraseo barely had time to look to the side to see her and Chronius emerge from their prisons of gold with daggers in their hands. “Let’s nail them.”

“Agreed, no actor should exit the stage until the play’s end,” Rubenzo replied with a nod before glancing at Mirokald and the Spy. “The two of you evacuate everyone you can through the tunnel. We’ll silence my predecessor once and for all.”

“What about you?” Mirokald asked Soraseo.

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“Take my brother with you, Lord Mirokald,” Soraseo added as she stretched her legs, her muscles rippling with strength. “A daughter of the Shinkoku does not run."

Soraseo leaped on a stone and ran across the wall.

Gravity was a harsh mistress, but it could be defied and overcome. Soraseo’s mastery of motion and movement guided her through the process, letting her feet find the right spots on which to push and leading her arms to flap the right way to increase traction the same way she had seen birds prepare for flight. She ran vertically and upward through the fog, knowing that stopping would mean a fatal fall while Lady Mersie and Chronius assisted her by throwing knives with preternatural accuracy.

The Shadow’s monstrous body of faces and supernatural accuracy let him sense the incoming projectiles. The Demon Ancestor leaped to the side of a golden wall to dodge them, with the knives’ blades striking nothing but air. Soraseo predicted their trajectory with her power, quickly caught up to them, and swung her sword with all her might.

Her blade slashed across the Shadow’s back in a flash of steel.

Her sword sliced them in half in an instant while she ran up the wall, only for the gash to vomit out a human corpse. Soraseo barely had time to catch a glimpse of their face—that of a wizened old man she didn’t recognize—before she was forced to stop two meters above the Shadow so as not to fall. Her free hand grabbed a prominent cleft while the other gripped her sword with all her might.

The corpse soon crashed onto the ground below while the Shadow’s split body parts reunited almost immediately afterward. Lady Eris had theorized that the Shadow’s form of immortality had a cost they weren’t willing to pay, and the way they healed their wounds told Soraseo why. The Demon Ancestor had stolen countless lives across centuries of evil, and sacrificed them as needed to recover from their wounds.

On one hand, this meant that the Demon Ancestor only had a limited number of hostages to draw from; on the other hand, each fatal strike threatened to take a life that could be saved.

“Do you know what I hate most, princess?”

Soraseo flinched in horror as the hundred faces making up the Shadow’s body whispered all at once with countless voices. A chill traveled down her spine as she heard Lord Oboro among them, alongside poor Erika.

“People like you and Daltia, who look down on us have-nots

from your marble pedestals,” the Shadow growled while raising their left hand at Soraseo. “You have everything and still find ways to complain.”

Their disjointed arm suddenly stretched twofold, with new faces growing to increase its length. Having learned her lesson from their first clash and knowing a single graze would kill her, Soraseo leaped to another spot on the wall rather than counter with her weapon, hopping from one cliff to another as the Shadow gave pursuit with snakelike limbs.

The Shadow’s power worked through touch, but still required conscious effort on their part. As long as she struck too fast for them to think about stealing her sword from unexpected directions, Soraseo could still land some blows.

However, their foe gave them no opening to exploit. Their hands surged faster than arrows with unnatural precision and struck with enough strength to shatter gilded stone, while their legs let them shift around with the expertise of countless climbers. They showed a martial artist’s borrowed instinct, aiming for Soraseo’s legs and joints with lethal focus. They constantly and relentlessly adjusted their position to prevent the Monk from counterattacking, jumping left to right and up without wasting a single breath.

Soraseo would have long been caught without her mark’s ability to predict the Shadow’s movements. Even then she was forced to stay on the move at all times, ascending closer and closer to the caldera’s summit while quickly running out of space to dodge.

“Why can’t you people appreciate your life?” the Shadow hissed with the anger of hundreds. “No matter how many of you I wear, it’s never right. It never clicks. Something’s always missing deep inside your rotten hearts!”

Soraseo didn’t waste her breath answering an enemy. More knives flew from below through the thick mist which blurred them from her view. The Shadow retained enough reflexes to dodge them, with the blades striking only the wall like earlier.

One of Chronius’, however, had its grip laced with runestones. The weapon hit the gilded wall with explosive force and opened a fissure. Cracks spread and caused parts of the caldera to collapse. Both the Shadow and Soraseo plummeted below into the chamber as they lost their footing.

The Monk spun in the air, her power guiding her movements. She shifted through hot air currents produced by the chamber, stabbed the stone with her sword, and used it to slow down her fall into a soft landing.

Meanwhile, the Shadow adjusted their trajectory and grew paws beneath their twisted hands. They impacted the ground on all four with a cat’s grace, only to find themselves surrounded from all sides. Rubenzo, Mersie, Chronius, and Soraseo quickly flanked the Demon Ancestor with their blades drawn.

Another earthquake shook the ground before they could press their advantage and nearly threw Soraseo off her feet. Fumes arose from the ground, with gilded stone buckling under the pressure beneath. Dirt then erupted in some parts in volleys of fire and suturing magma.

Old Kazandu was waking up.

Neferoa’s song rose all the way to the clouds.

While it was her enchanted voice that started the symphony, a chorus of other voices joined in. I heard men, women, and even children through the mist, their endless resonance spreading through the essence-ridden fog.

“O Isles of Valor, brave and free, we stand united in liberty,” they said, their joy so strong I struggled against the urge to join the chorus. “With hearts aflame and spirits high, forever free beneath the sky...”

The lyrics would have flowed better in Neferoa’s native tongue than Shinkokan, but we had to ensure everyone on the island could understand them.

“What is this song?” Daltia mused out loud. “I don’t recognize it.”

“This is the Fire Islands’ official anthem,” I replied.

Daltia raised an eyebrow. “The Fire Islands have none.”

“Hence why Neferoa came up with one.” I retorted with a smirk. “A song for a nation that yearns for freedom.”

“So you were right, Neferoa’s power carries through your soundstones.” Daltia smiled thinly at me. “You have taken away the free will of the few to safeguard that of the many? Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite, Robin?”

“Do you hear any orders within these lyrics?” I countered. “I don’t mean to command the people of this land, only to inspire them to stand up for themselves.”

And enough listened to wake up. Neferoa’s power worked by causing her words to worm their way into the target’s soul. Its simplest application was to give orders that the targets had to carry out, but they were merely a byproduct of the Class’ true ability: a voice that no one could ignore.

“Do you even understand what kind of weapon you and Marwen have created?” Daltia pointed out, her expression forlorn and full of concern. “Neferoa isn’t this world’s only Bard.”

“I know the risks,” I replied. I’d known them since I first confirmed that Soundstones could spread Neferoa’s power. I told myself that someone would have developed the technology on their own anyway, whether or not Mr. Fronan and I intervened, but I couldn’t lie to myself. The tools I used to save the world from one disaster might inspire another even if we prevailed. “I will worry about it after we save this country first.”

I could already see the consequences of our ploy on the environment. The golden hue in the sky cracked slightly as silver threads of rebellion broke through the gilded perfection. The mist that once swirled harmoniously around the Crown of Desire bloated and thickened in some places. Chaos had intruded upon the false Artifact’s consensual reality.

Its power revolved around manipulating the masses to perceive the world as they wished it to be, and it struggled to deal with dissent

. The chorus’ unified voice was splintering into a myriad of plural viewpoints.

“People are waking up, and their feelings travel through the fog,” I continued. “So long as souls rebel against the flow, your Crown of Desire will never reach a consensus. Your false reality cannot stabilize.”

“A temporary hurdle,” Daltia replied calmly. I hadn’t managed to shake her confidence yet. “You’ve said it yourself, Robin, this stubbornness will only last until the song comes to an end; and it shall. All you have done is buy some time for the Four Artifacts to wipe us all out.”

She was right, unfortunately. I’d hoped that the song alone would be enough to counter the Crown’s power, yet the fog’s thickness partly smothered it. Too many people preferred the false Artifact’s pleasant illusion to reality. They fed its power and maintained a deadlock.

Nonetheless, I still had a chance at winning this contest. Neferoa didn’t write this song for an island alone, but for everyone. Its true audience was now distracted enough to listen.

I gathered my breath, looked up at the golden star at the center of this chaos, and then shouted as loudly as my lungs would allow me.

“Crown of Desire, hear my voice!”

At the end of the day, Daltia’s Artifact was a contractual intelligence; a gestalt being formed by multiple bits taken from countless minds. A whole greater than the sum of its parts.

I had confirmed with Ravengarde’s example that such consciousness yearned to learn and grow further upon awakening. It was that drive that led Daltia to create this entity in the first place: she wished for a god that would strive to understand each and every individual’s perspective.

“Heed this song, which guides so many to rebel against your work!” I shouted to the false Artifact born of countless human dreams. “Take it into yourself and ponder its words, then let me ask you a question!”

And that understanding required a simple quality at the source of all inner conflicts.

Self-reflection.

“What is it that you wish for?”

My question rang across the golden mist and reached all the way to the heavens. I had no way of telling if the Crown of Desire listened to my plea; and if it did, it showed no hint of hearing my words. I had to hope my feelings and will would travel through the mist amidst the chorus of Neferoa’s song.

I had to push through, even if it would be in vain.

“This is useless, Robin,” Daltia said with confidence. She understood what I was trying to do, but believed she had covered her bases. “The Crown knows its purpose.”

“Then let your masterwork speak for itself!” I retorted before focusing back on the Artifact. “Fulfill my wish for understanding, Crown of Desire, and answer my questions!”

Daltia’s tongue clicked in her mouth. This, here, was the ultimate test of our philosophies. She had spent so many centuries crafting a god of her own creation in the singular pursuit of her ideal; its entire purpose was to bring about her paradise.

It simply couldn’t disagree with her.

I thus delivered the most important sales pitch in Pangeal’s history. A good Merchant had many tools in his arsenal of arguments, all born of human needs.

The quest for meaning and ideals.

“Do you wish to build your empty utopia on lies and deceit?! Will it give you any happiness?!”

The constant struggle for self-esteem.

“Will you do what you were born to, or what you want to do?! You were created to fulfill desires, but what of yours?!”

The endless search for love and belonging.

“Is that how you wish to spend eternity, as a force from above forever separated from the people which you gave everything to?!”

The craving for security.

“Once you have created a perfect world, will there even be a place for you in it?! What will happen to you once your impossible task is completed?!”

And the most powerful force in all of human history…

“Will you miss out on your own paradise?!”

Naked human greed.

For a timeless moment, my declaration seemed utterly ignored. My words rang into the mist only to be met with silence, with the Crown’s golden light undiminished and Daltia’s confidence unshaken. I knew I was risking it all, and that appealing to an Artifact born of damned souls’ basest instincts might backfire in ways I couldn’t anticipate, yet I stood proud and resolute while waiting for my case to be heard. When success couldn’t be guaranteed, I had always been willing to take the leap of faith.

Then I heard a droning screech.

A noise echoed across the fog of desire, so soft and yet so ominous in its consequences. The evershining light atop Mount Kazandu dimmed a little and allowed me to gaze upon a sight that filled my heart with hope.

That perfect crown had a crack.