Chapter 173 Sarn’s Last Hymn

The Correction fired from the giant’s eyes as a white beam, fat as a bell tower, aimed straight at Riven. The whole square went silent, every cadet and townsperson frozen with their mouths open as the light crossed the flagstones.

"No villain can hold back a hero’s birth," Sarn told the crowd, arms wide, "watch it end him."

Pryce perched on a toppled fountain among the crowd, loudly announcing the villain’s death to anyone nearby willing to listen. Three rows of listeners heard every word, nobody breathing while the beam crawled closer across the flagstones toward Riven alone.

"Hush, young man, he’s trying to concentrate," an old woman said, poking Pryce with her umbrella.

Heat from the beam washed over Riven’s face, a pressure that wanted him kneeling, bleeding and gone in one beat. He reached for Rest, the stillness he last touched in the Mirror Dungeon, then let it settle across his ribs.

[ Skill: Rest | Correction: halted | Beats held: 1 ]

"It stopped," Nix breathed from behind her pillar, "the whole thing just stopped."

The white beam stopped a hand from his chest, trembling in midair like a spear caught by an invisible fist. Across the square thousands watched the impossible, a Correction hanging still, the villain standing inside it with his hands open.

Riven spoke through his teeth, "One beat, Sister... that’s all I needed to prove you wrong."

"One beat is all it takes me to sing the next," she answered, lips pale.

Sarn leapt from the altar, red cords unspooling from her throat like whips and cracking against the flagstones in rhythm. Each lash landed on a different beat of the hymn, forcing Offbeat Step to dodge three overlapping patterns at once.

’The bell tolls long, which stretches the beat. Move too much and the Rest breaks.’

A cord caught his right forearm and opened a line across it, the sting arriving a breath after the cut. He held the stillness anyway because the instant he flinched the bell would finish and the beam would finish him.

"You still have no rhythm of your own," she said, lashing again, "only the one you are handed."

"I’ve got eight people’s rhythm... I’m not short."

Sarn spun the cords into a spiral, four lashes crossing at once to cage him inside the frozen beam’s glow. Riven slipped through the single gap between the lashes by letting the bell’s slow toll lead his own tired feet.

"Your arm," Mara said, slipping through the crowd to his other side.

"Later... I’m busy standing still."

Veska stepped in at his shoulder, spear grounded, taking the next lash squarely on the haft with a ringing crack. Behind them Isolde’s thread tightened around his ribs from across the steps, keeping his breathing even through the long toll.

She braced against the following strike, "Verified... you will not be struck a third time."

Nix slid sideways between two cords, her chain-blades parting a lash so cleanly that it fell in two neat pieces. Yukine’s frost crawled up another cord from the ground, pinning it to the flagstones like a dog on a chain.

"That is eight cords down and a dozen to go," she called, "I am keeping count for the invoice."

Selh climbed a barrel at the edge of the square, unrolling his scroll with trembling hands to announce the moment. He reached Collector of the Overdue before his voice died completely, leaving only a squeak and a very sincere bow.

"Pity, I wanted to hear Recently Upgraded," Ysabel said from the steps.

Lucas walked out of the crowd with his token raised, stepping between the frozen beam and the giant’s blank face. His voice carried across the whole square without effort, flat as a clerk reading a verdict nobody can ever appeal.

"I witness: the Unsung is not a person," he said, "it is a song wearing people."

The air rang like struck glass over the cathedral steps, a long note rolling out across all the distant roofs. The Record agreed with him, sinking into every chest in the square like a coin dropped down a deep well.

"Can a Record do that?" Cassen whispered to Mara.

The beam shattered into pale flakes that drifted over the crowd like snow, melting before they touched an upturned face. Sarn’s cords went limp for a heartbeat, her hymn losing the low note it held since the altar was lit.

Lucas lowered the token, "Without a hero to correct, it has nothing left to enforce."

Pryce slid off the fountain with his mouth hanging open, his predictions about the villain’s death scattering like melting flakes. The old woman with the umbrella patted his bald head once, kindly, then pushed past him toward the nearest exit.

"I said he was finished... I said it twice," Pryce whispered to nobody.

Riven let the Rest go at last, his knees almost folding as the borrowed stillness drained out of his ribs. Isolde’s thread caught him under the arms before he fell, warm as a steady hand pressed between his shoulder blades.

"That arm needs six stitches and you will sit through every one," Isolde said.

Cassen lowered Dawnblade, staring at pale flakes melting slowly on his sleeve as though snow were a brand new idea. Behind him the three black panthers dissolved back into Mara’s shadow, tails flicking, her streets finally quiet behind the crowd.

"Where is Dorian, though," he muttered, "a rescue this big is usually his to take credit for."

"Somewhere with a very good excuse," Riven said, shrugging. "Stitches can wait, I owe her a name."

Far to the north the palace towers caught a thin line of light, though dawn was still an hour off.

He stepped over a fallen cord, crossing the flagstones with Overdue lowered, blood dripping from his sleeve onto the paving. Sarn watched him come shaking, her cords trailing behind her on the ground like loose ribbons from a ruined festival.

"Finish it, villain... I am not afraid of you," she said.

"I’m not here to finish you, Sister, I’m here to say a name."

"Whose name could possibly matter to me now, after everything I have sung tonight?"

"Avel," he said quietly, "your brother, the one the Bindery gave away."

Her mouth opened around a verse that never came, the last note cracking in her throat like river ice underfoot. The cords at her neck unwound one by one, falling to the paving as the red drained from each strand.

"Say it once more," she whispered.

Riven crouched beside her, the cut on his forearm dripping onto the paving between them while the bell stopped tolling. The cathedral doors behind them stood open on rows of benches full of pale sleepers stirring under thin borrowed blankets.

"Avel," he said again, "and the name still has weight, I promise."

’He’s alive somewhere under a different name. I can taste it, but she can’t.’

Behind them the Unsung shuddered, its body losing the rhythm that held it together as nine singers inside went slack. The gilded head turned away from the cathedral, white lights searching the rooftops for any vacancy shaped like a hero.

[ Claim Event: the Sung Hero | Owner: none | Status: reaching ]

"It’s ownerless now," Nix said, her voice small. "It will take the first empty chair it—"

Its gilded hand lifted, fingers spread, reaching north across the rooftops toward the palace district.