Transmigrated as the Villainess Princess - Chapter 275

Chapter 275: Seal (15)
The trek toward the Tower of Absence was not a single road but a convergence of paths, woven together by fate and sound. Kael moved west, his steps guided by the discordant tug of broken rhythm that echoed across the fading ley lines of Mira’s Song. Every city he passed was dimmer than the last—places once rich in melody reduced to grayed ruins, colorless skies, and people who had forgotten how to hum. But Kael still remembered. The note in his chest—though wounded—still beat. And with every footstep, he was starting to reclaim what had once been stolen.

He found others along the way. A blind sculptor who had carved an orchestra of wind instruments from shattered wood, each one singing in sleep. A boy who spoke only through drumming, his fingers a blur on any surface, trying to recreate the heartbeat he had never heard. And a woman with no voice at all, yet whose very presence caused flowers to bloom in perfect symphonic time.

Kael touched them lightly, letting them feel the note in his chest.

Some wept.

Some knelt.

Others simply sang—hoarse, raw, out of tune—but beautiful.

He gave them something Serra Vane feared most: memory.

•

Meanwhile, the child danced.

Eyla did not know her name, but the lake remembered. Each twirl awakened echoes of Mira’s earliest symphonies. Each leap stirred winds long trapped beneath the mirrored water. Her limbs, though thin from solitude, moved with perfect awareness—as though they carried not muscle but measure.

The birds returned first.

Then the wind.

Then the stars themselves blinked into existence above the lake, pulled from silence by the rhythm of her motion.

On the final beat of her seventh dance, a figure emerged from the mirrored surface. Not a man, not a woman, but a construct of tone and form—a humanoid reflection made of stardust and string, its eyes twin notes held in impossible harmony.

“I am Crescendo,” it said. “Mira left me behind to awaken you.”

“Am I a girl?” Eyla asked, her voice a trill.

“You are more,” Crescendo said. “You are her Echo. Every note she sang, you remember not with mind, but with body. You are the only one who can complete the Refrain.”

“The Refrain?”

He bowed.

“It is the song that ends the silence forever.”

•

Far above the ruined plains, in the wind-swept Spires of Cryathe, Kelen and Lys stood on the edge of a broken platform, staring into the approaching darkness. The Tower was rising. From horizon to horizon, sound peeled away as if retreating in fear. Birds fell silent midflight. Rivers stopped their babble. Even the wind lost its whistle.

“I can feel her,” Lys said softly, eyes half-closed. “Serra. She was never just a villain, was she?”

“No,” Kelen said grimly. “She was Mira’s sister.”

That truth had been kept from many, for it complicated the myth. Serra had once sung beside Mira—not in opposition, but in duet. Where Mira had brought healing, Serra had brought stillness. In the right context, both were necessary. In balance, they were divine.

But when Mira died, Serra’s song fractured.

And silence consumed her.

•

In a chamber hidden within the Tower of Absence, Serra Vane sat before a voidmirror—a glass not of reflection, but of absence. It showed her what had been lost, what had been buried too deep to find. She watched as Mira laughed as a child, her voice pure and bright, while Serra played the lute beside her. She saw herself, once a girl of gentleness and care, singing to injured animals and lulling children to sleep with her calming tones.

But then the vision shifted.

She watched Mira ascending—chosen by the Resonance, crowned by light, worshiped.

And Serra?

Left behind.

Her voice had always been quieter, subtler. Not meant to inspire armies, but to hush weeping.

No one wanted stillness anymore.

Only triumph.

Only radiance.

Serra’s fingers curled against the armrest.

“I am not silence,” she whispered. “I am the pause before creation. I am the breath between beats. I am necessary.”

The voidmirror cracked.

Not from force.

But from truth.

And she smiled.

•

Kael reached the Spires of Cryathe just before dusk. The reunion was quiet. No triumphant music, no sudden embrace. Only recognition—old souls remembering themselves.

Lys touched Kael’s wrist and murmured, “You found the rhythm again.”

Kael nodded. “And you carry the breath.”

Kelen stepped back, giving them space. “There are others still. The Echo, the Still, the Reflection.”

“Solmere will find them,” Lys said. “He always does.”

As if summoned, the creature of resonance soared down from above, wings alight with a shimmering trail of notes. Upon its back rode the girl from the lake—Eyla—and Crescendo, his form now more tangible, more composed.

“I remember you,” Kael said, meeting Eyla’s gaze.

She smiled. “And I remember how you once held me when the stars wept.”

That was all it took.

The final harmony began to form—not yet sung, not yet written—but sensed. Like the gathering of storm clouds before a blessed rain.

And Serra felt it.

She stood atop her tower, facing the coming dusk, and sang her own dirge.

Low.

Haunting.

A lament not of destruction—but of grief.

Mira had been the world’s song.

Serra?

She had been its silence.

And she would not be forgotten.

•

As night fell across the world, the final pieces began to draw close.

From the sands of Ankaran, a boy who had never spoken began to hum for the first time. His voice carried power, enough to move dunes and stir the stars.

From the frozen wastelands of Nirr, a woman whose heart had stopped years ago opened her eyes and whispered a name: Mira.

And deep beneath the sea, in the Temple of Lost Measures, the First Note stirred once more.

It was time.

The Final Chorus was no longer prophecy.

It was a promise.

And it would be sung not to destroy Serra…

…but to remember her.

To bring her back.

Because even silence has a song.