The first receives. The second answers. The third opens.

The same instruction Fate had found. Only now, carved into a wall instead of copied onto a scrap of paper, it felt less like a ritual sequence and more like a threat someone had spent decades refining.

"Open what?" Arthur asked.

"No one knows," I replied.

Abi’s silence beside me said he knew more than he wanted to say, and I didn’t press him. Not here. Not with listening walls.

The archway opened into a much larger chamber, once part of the aqueduct system, a circular reservoir spread beneath a domed ceiling, its old water channels dry now. Stone bridges crossed the empty basin below, red lamps placed along the walls, their light catching against shallow pools of black water. At the center of the chamber stood a structure made of bronze pipes, silver wire, and red glass, shaped something like an organ. A very ugly organ. Seven narrow pipes rose from its base, each connected to a small bell suspended in a glass casing, no two alike, some bronze, some silver, one made entirely of red glass.

The red glass bell was ringing. No one touched it.

Before the structure stood a man in temple robes, not old, perhaps thirty, tall and pale, dark hair hanging loose around his shoulders, a strip of white cloth covering his eyes. His hands rested against the bronze pipes as though he were listening to a heartbeat only he could hear, and then he began to sing.

The voice was low. Controlled. Too beautiful. That was the first warning. No honest hymn should sound like it was trying to persuade the listener to step closer to a cliff.

"Stop," I said.

He didn’t. The red bell rang again, and a line of silver light flashed through the pipes, and somewhere above us, far beyond the chapel, another bell answered.

The Capital. The sound had reached the city.

Captain Arthur raised his sword. The singer smiled beneath the cloth covering his eyes.

"You came," he said.

"I did."

"The answer heard you."

"How flattering."

Abi moved closer to me, and the pressure around him deepened. The singer’s head tilted in his direction.

"Not only one," he murmured. "The lost road came too."

Abi’s eyes went cold. "Don’t speak as though you know me."

The man laughed softly. "I know what the Choir remembers."

"Then your Choir has a poor memory."

The red bell rang again, and this time a thread of sound reached toward me, not through the air, but through the chest, through the place where a person kept every name they’d ever loved and every memory they hadn’t yet learned how to forgive.

The singer’s voice softened. "Grand Duke. You carry too many wishes."

My hand went to my sword. "Don’t say strange things to me before introducing yourself. It’s rude."

His smile widened. "I am the Cantor."

"A very uninspired title."

"You are not what they said."

"Most people find that disappointing."

"The Keeper said you would be arrogant."

"He’s met me, then."

"The Mother said you would be dangerous."

"Also accurate."

"The Choir said you would come when the children called."

The chamber went quiet. Arthur shifted forward, and Abi’s hand caught his shoulder, not forcefully, just enough.

"Careful," Abi said.

The Cantor turned his covered face toward me. "Did you think the voice below used your son’s voice only to frighten you?"

My expression didn’t change. It took effort, a great deal of it.

"I think you’re a man standing in an empty reservoir, wearing a blindfold, and speaking in riddles because no one taught you how to hold a normal conversation."

For the first time, his smile faded. Good.

"You took the children from the carriage," he said. "You broke the transfer. You disturbed the first hymn."

"I rescued children from a criminal transport."

"You removed notes from their place."

"They are children."

"They are both."

I stared at him, and the words shouldn’t have made me as angry as they did, but there it was, a small heat beneath the ribs, the kind that didn’t need to become visible to be dangerous.

"Arthur," I said.

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"Don’t kill him."

He blinked. "Do you wish him captured?"

"No. I wish him alive long enough to understand why he should have chosen different words."

The Cantor laughed, then pressed both hands against the bronze structure. The bells rang together, and the sound exploded through the chamber. Arthur’s knees bent. One knight dropped a hand against the floor to steady himself. The red lamps flickered wildly, and distant bells answered from the city above.

I heard someone calling my name. Not Skandar. Something else. Something older. The sound brushed the edge of thought, then stopped.

Abi stepped in front of me, and violet light burst from his palm to wrap around the pipes. The Cantor screamed, but the bells didn’t break. They fought. Every glass casing shook. The red bell pulsed with a dark light of its own, thin lines of sound threading outward through the ceiling, each one reaching for the ward lines beneath the Capital.

"Gently," I said.

Abi looked at me. "This isn’t a gentle situation."

"There are people tied to it."

His jaw tightened, then he exhaled, and the violet light changed. It didn’t crush the threads. It loosened them, one by one, and the sound in the chamber shifted. The bells stopped ringing like weapons and began ringing like something trapped. A child cried. Somewhere far away, a woman gasped. The black water in the basin rippled.

The Cantor staggered backward. "No," he whispered.

Abi’s expression stayed cold. "You used their voices badly."

The Cantor reached for the red bell, and I moved, my sword leaving its sheath in one clean motion. I meant to strike the bell, to cut through the glass casing before he could touch it. Instead my blade stopped a breath away.

The red bell trembled. A voice came from it, small, hoarse.

"Please."

My arm refused to move. The Cantor laughed weakly. "Do you hear them now?"

I did. Not one voice. Many. Children. Adults. Pieces of prayers. Broken words. All of it caught inside the bell like insects in amber. Destroying it would destroy the cage, and whatever remained inside it.

How troublesome.

My hand shifted. The sword lowered, and I placed my palm against the glass casing instead. The red bell went silent.

For one breath, nothing happened. Then warmth spread beneath my hand, not heat, not magic as I understood it, something softer. The ringing inside the bell changed. Quieter. Not gone. But no longer afraid.

I stared at my own hand. The warmth moved through the red glass, thin gold threading through the darkness before it faded away almost as soon as it appeared. Abi went still. The Cantor stopped breathing. Arthur looked at me, and I drew my hand back. The bell remained silent.

A very inconvenient instinct. That was all. I did not intend to think about it further.

"Take him," I said.

Arthur moved instantly. The Cantor stumbled back, reaching for the bronze pipes again, but two Sonomi knights caught his arms before he could touch them. He fought with surprising strength for a temple singer, twisting hard enough to dislocate his own shoulder, until Arthur pinned him to the floor and the blindfold slipped.

His eyes were open. They weren’t human eyes, not entirely. The pupils had split into thin vertical lines, and black veins traced the skin beneath them. He looked at me, not at my face, but at my hand.

"You quieted it," he whispered.

"I corrected an administrative error."

His expression twisted. "That isn’t possible."

"Many things aren’t possible. Yet here you are, making noise under a chapel."

He laughed once, then coughed blood across the stone. Arthur tightened his grip.

"Don’t die," I said. "It’s rude."

The man looked at the red bell. "The second hymn has already begun."

"Not very well."

"You think this room is the hymn?"

I paused, and his smile came back, something deeply unpleasant about it. "This is only where we tune the voices."

The black water beneath the chamber began to move, not from a current, but from below. A low sound came through the stone floor, not a bell, a knock. Once. Twice. Three times. The seven bronze bells tilted toward the same direction.

East. Toward the palace. Toward the Crown Prince. Toward the boy who’d been taught to answer voices when he was too young to understand why he shouldn’t.

Arthur looked at me. "Your Excellency."

I already knew.

A shadow appeared at the top of the stairway, breathless despite the distance. He’d run. Sonomi shadows didn’t run unless something had gone extremely wrong. He bowed so quickly he nearly fell.

"Your Excellency. Urgent message from the palace."

I took the folded paper. The Crown Prince’s seal had been pressed into the wax, the impression crooked, not official, not composed, written in haste. My fingers tightened around it as I opened the note.

Grand Duke,

The bells reached the eastern wing. I heard someone singing outside my door. It knew my name. Mother has sealed the corridor. I do not know how long the ward will hold.

Adrien

The knock beneath the reservoir sounded again. The red bell stayed silent beneath where my hand had been, but the palace had already begun answering in its place.

How troublesome. It seemed the Choir had decided to move the performance to a more expensive venue.