Transmigrated as the Villainess Princess - Chapter 278

Chapter 278: Seal (18)
The days passed like gentle waves upon a sunlit shore. What had begun as a quest to return harmony to a fragmented world had now evolved into a way of life—a continuous, evolving melody. But for Eyla, the journey was far from over.

Even as the newly rekindled world settled into a rhythm of restoration, a whisper tugged at her spirit. Not a song, not a voice, but a question. Something unfinished. It often came at night when the winds stilled and the stars blinked like patient watchers in the sky.

Crescendo noticed her restlessness. “The song within you still seeks something,” he murmured one evening as they sat beside a fire in the heart of the Verdant Expanse. “The world sings again, and yet you remain untethered.”

Eyla stared into the dancing flames. “Because I keep wondering—what lies beyond the last chord? We awakened the Remnants, yes. We restored the melody between lands, between hearts. But I can feel it, Crescendo… there’s still a silence that waits.”

He tilted his head. “You speak of the Hollow?”

She looked up, startled. “You know of it?”

“Barely,” Crescendo said, wings folding gently behind him. “Legends say it was the first place to lose its sound. Even before the Great Severing, the Hollow fell mute. No voice reached it. No echo returned. The Songkeepers believed it was swallowed whole by the Void, and so they left it alone.”

“And now?”

Crescendo closed his eyes. “Now… it hums with absence. That should not be possible.”

The decision was made, not hastily, but with quiet resolve. Eyla would venture into the Hollow.

Unlike the others, she went alone.

Not because she doubted her friends—but because the pull she felt was deeply personal. Something within the Hollow echoed her name in vibrations so faint that no one else could hear. The only way to face it was to go herself.

She set out at dawn, armed not with weapons but with her voice, her heart, and the Songshard Mira had once given her—the crystalline sliver of sound that still pulsed with the final notes of the Refrain. As she passed through villages and old towers, people offered her food, prayers, and blessings, but none dared follow.

The Hollow was a place no map dared mark.

The closer she drew to it, the more the world dulled. Colors faded into grayish hues. Winds ceased. Even her heartbeat seemed hushed. There were no birds. No insects. No rustling of leaves. Only an oppressive stillness that pressed inward like a physical weight.

At the edge of the Hollow, she found remnants of a forgotten city—twisted towers and sunken plazas now covered in ash and stone dust. And yet, despite the decay, nothing had eroded. It was as though time itself had forgotten this place.

Eyla stepped into the Hollow.

It was like walking into a dream made of stone and silence.

Her footsteps made no sound.

She tried humming. Nothing came out.

She tried singing. Her throat moved, but no melody emerged.

Panic fluttered at the edges of her mind, but she quelled it. She could not fight this place. She had to understand it.

In the center of the ruined plaza stood a great obelisk, half-shattered and covered in unreadable runes. It vibrated—faintly—like the last breath of a dying song. She approached, pressed her hand to its surface, and closed her eyes.

Then she felt it.

Not sound, but memory.

A storm of emotion surged into her mind—anguish, rage, sorrow… and longing. The Hollow wasn’t void of song. It was a place that had buried its voice under grief so deep that even the Refrain could not reach it.

And now, it wept in silence.

Eyla understood.

This wasn’t a dead place. It was a soul in mourning.

She sat before the obelisk and began to listen—not with her ears, but with her soul. She let go of melody, of rhythm, of pitch, and simply became present.

And slowly… ever so slowly… she began to feel the echo of something ancient and aching.

A lullaby.

Half-formed, broken.

It came not from the obelisk, but from beneath it.

She stood and began searching the ground until she found a stone panel slightly off-tone from the others. Pressing her hand to it, she activated the Songshard.

The shard flared.

The panel shimmered—and sank.

A stairway spiraled down into darkness.

Heart pounding, Eyla descended.

The air grew colder. Thicker.

At the bottom lay a vast cavern lit by pale blue bioluminescent moss. In the center was a dais, upon which sat a child-like figure wrapped in layers of gauze-like energy. The air around them pulsed with unreadable notes—attempts at communication choked by despair.

Eyla stepped forward. “I hear you,” she whispered, though no sound left her lips.

The figure twitched.

“I hear your sorrow.”

The being stirred. One eye opened—unfocused, clouded.

“I came to bring you back.”

A pulse of warning filled the chamber.

She did not move.

“You are the source of the Hollow,” she realized. “Your pain built this silence.”

A shimmer danced around the figure, flickering with echoes of the past—memories of a world at war, of promises broken, of abandonment.

“You were left behind.”

The figure trembled.

Eyla reached into her satchel and withdrew the Songshard. It vibrated fiercely now, straining toward the being. Without hesitation, she pressed it into the center of the energy-wrapped chest.

The chamber exploded in light.

Memories poured through her—fragments of ancient wars, songs torn in half, lullabies sung to stars long dead.

And then… calm.

The being unwrapped.

Not a child.

Not a god.

Something in between.

“I am the First Echo,” it whispered into her mind. “I sang before time. But they silenced me to build their own.”

Tears fell down Eyla’s cheeks. “We’re sorry.”

The being looked at her. “You brought harmony.”

“I tried.”

“You can bring me back.”

Eyla took its hand. Together, they rose.

The journey back through the Hollow was transformed.

Where silence once dominated, faint wind now stirred.

Where dust once clung, color returned.

By the time they emerged from the ruins, the Hollow sang.

A soft note. A beginning.

News of her return spread like wildfire.

And when the First Echo stepped forward to sing its first true note in millennia, the sky itself rippled with sound.

It was neither old nor new.

It simply was.

A song not of victory.

But of healing.

Of invitation.

To those still lost.

To those waiting.