Chapter Text
Symphonia was a village that never truly slept. Wind chimes swayed from every eave, strung from glass, bronze, and driftwood, each carrying a different note. The whole town shimmered with quiet sound, the whisper of the river, the hum of carts, the distant ring of the smith’s hammer striking time. Even the wind seemed to sing in harmony.
Cadencia grew up inside Symphonia. Barefoot and curious, she chased echoes through narrow alleys, matching pitch with creaking doors and gutters that dripped after rain. She believed the world was full of hidden songs, and her task was simply to listen long enough to hear them.
From the beginning, she listened too deeply.
When the baker’s oven cracked, she sang to it until the dough rose again, as if the bread itself responded to her comfort. She was the village’s melody, not its brightest, but its gentlest.
Then one winter afternoon, she found a man sitting against the old fountain, his coat stiff with frost. His voice was low, roughened by hunger, humming something shapeless. The market passed him by. Cadencia stopped. She knelt beside him, setting the basket of fruit she carried on the ground, and began to hum along.
At first, her tone wavered, unsure. Then their sounds met, his faltering rhythm and her fragile warmth folding together. Conversation stilled around them. The rhythm of the square slowed. For a breath’s span, the town itself seemed to lean closer.
When their song ended, the man’s eyes brimmed with tears. Cadencia’s too. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t pity; it was recognition. She had felt his sorrow as if it were her own. She offered him some fruit from her basket. He accepted it. That was the first time the world truly listened back.
She sang for every silence until, two years later, the Festival of Renewal arrived.
Lanterns floated on the river like drifting stars, and ribbons clung to the wind. The mayor, charmed by her voice, asked her to open the ceremony. She tried to refuse; her songs weren’t meant for crowds. None of them were entirely written, but with a little encouragement from her parents, she agreed.
She stepped onto the wooden platform, the murmuring of the crowd like a restless sea. The first note caught in her throat. Then she saw a child near the front, wide-eyed, clutching her mother’s sleeve. Cadencia inhaled, found the trembling center of her breath, and began again.
The song wasn’t perfect. Her voice cracked like thin ice, smoothed, and found its way forward. Wind teased the chimes; the river hushed. The sound seemed to belong not to her, but to everyone, like a current passing through her and out into the crowd.
When it ended, there was silence. Not emptiness, but fullness. A stillness that felt alive.
Later, she learned people called it the first Still Chord.
In the days after, strangers came from nearby towns just to hear her sing. Her voice gathered them. The lonely, the broken, the tired. She sang in taverns, in fields, on bridges where lovers quarreled.
One night, as frost threaded the edges of the river, Cadencia walked home from a tavern where she had been practicing after hours. The lamps along the path swayed in the wind, their light glimmering like quiet stars. That was when she saw him: a man slumped against the stones by the riverbank, half-conscious, muttering words the water carried away.
The villagers had gathered at a distance. Some laughed; others turned their backs. “He’s a drunk,” someone said. “A thief,” said another. “He tried to steal a loaf from the baker’s stall.” The baker himself stood nearby, still red-faced, holding the half-crushed bread. “He’s a waste of good grain,” he said, tossing the loaf to the dirt. Cadencia stopped. The man’s hands shook as he reached weakly toward the bread. She stepped past the circle of onlookers, picked up the loaf, brushed the dirt away, and knelt beside him.
He flinched when her shadow crossed his. His eyes were hollow, not cruel, just empty, like someone whom the world had forgotten.
“Here,” she said softly. “It’s still good.”
She tore the bread in half and handed him a piece, then offered the other half to the baker.
The man blinked, confused. “I don’t want—”
“It’s yours,” she said gently. “You baked it. It should feed someone, even now.”
The baker hesitated, staring at her as if she’d spoken in another language. Around them, the murmuring crowd fell silent.
When the drunk began to weep, Cadencia began to hum, an old lullaby her parents used to sing, a tune meant for children who woke from nightmares. The man’s sobs quieted, his breathing slowed. The wind off the river softened, and for a heartbeat, the town seemed to hold still. When he drifted to sleep, she took off her cloak and laid it over him. Someone in the crowd scoffed. “He’ll drink again by morning,” they said.
Cadencia only smiled faintly. “Then I hope he wakes before that,” she replied.
The next day, one of the bystanders asked why she’d helped him.
“He was lost. It costs nothing to help someone remember the way back.”
Several more years passed, and every night, when the chimes whispered through her window, she would wonder how far her song could travel. Could it reach places where no one listened? What if she never reached everyone she wanted to?
She kept walking, always chasing the sound the world had forgotten.
Travelers spoke of cities where music had been forgotten, where people’s words clashed louder than any drum. She listened, and something in her ached.
On her 18th birthday, the morning she chose to leave, the whole village came to see her off. A friend she’d come to know offered her a gift, pressing a small wind chime into her palm. “The world isn’t always kind to hearts like yours,” she said. “The more you give, the more it will take.”
Cadencia smiled and tucked the chime into her cloak. “Don’t worry. I can handle it. I’ll give the world something it won’t forget.” The gift’s sound was softer than the others, a single, trembling note that seemed to hesitate before it vanished.
When she walked beyond the village edge, the chimes of Symphonia followed her, hundreds of them, trembling in the morning wind. Their music chased her down the road until it faded into memory, leaving only her footsteps and the promise of her songs. The river followed beside the road, whispering faintly beneath the chime’s fading tone, a quiet promise that it would remember her song. As she walked, the chimes faded until one thin note lingered in the wind, a promise, or perhaps a prelude.