Transmigrated as the Villainess Princess - Chapter 280

Chapter 280: Seal (20)
Years passed since the day the Skyvault opened its heart to the world below. The era that followed was called the Harmonic Age—a time of renewal and reflection. The scars of past wars did not disappear, but their echoes softened, interwoven into songs that children learned in village circles and scholars preserved in woven manuscripts made of windleaf and starlace.

Eyla, now known in some circles as the Luminarch, had quietly stepped back from public view. She had no desire to rule, only to nurture what had been sown. The world had grown vast and resonant, with new cities rising where silence once reigned. The Hollow, now transformed into the Harmonic Vale, was a thriving sanctuary where voices of every kind—human, dragon, Mooncaller, and others still unnamed—mingled in collaborative existence.

In a small haven nestled along the Vale’s western ridge, a girl was born on the eve of a triple moonrise. Her parents named her Solenne.

From the moment of her birth, strange things surrounded her. The wind, once shy and erratic in the highlands, always moved with her breath. The stars flickered when she sang. Her lullabies—hummed without knowledge of language—had the power to calm even the restless roots of the dreamtrees planted by the Mooncallers.

Solenne was not just another child of the Harmonic Age.

She was a Seed of the Skyvault.

Many believed that when the Mooncallers awoke, they left behind a hidden library deep in the Skyvault—a living archive, humming with infinite verses waiting for chosen minds to inherit them. Solenne, still only a girl of seven, began to dream of verses she never heard, places no map had marked, and voices that had no form.

One of those voices belonged to a boy named Coren.

In her dreams, Coren stood in a city swallowed by dusk, where the ground shimmered with lost songs and the buildings pulsed with sleeping hearts. He wore no crown and wielded no power, but his gaze bore knowledge of endings and beginnings.

“You’re not alone,” he would say to her in every dream. “They’ll forget. But you must remember.”

She’d ask who he was, but every time she woke up, the answer faded like dew from her lips.

By the time Solenne turned twelve, she began noticing fractures in the harmony around her. The wind that once listened to her songs now carried whispers she did not command. The trees, once soothed by her voice, started leaning toward the east—as if drawn by a forgotten force. Her parents, wise caretakers of the Vale, assured her it was only the season changing.

But Solenne knew better.

One day, she ventured to the ancient stone pillar at the edge of the Vale, where the names of the first harmonizers were inscribed in spiral runes. There, she met a stranger with sun-faded robes and silver-flecked eyes.

He introduced himself as Arien—a wanderer and silent bard.

“You’re the girl who dreams of a city that sleeps beneath its own breath,” he said without preamble.

Solenne’s heart tightened. “How do you know?”

Arien crouched beside the stone pillar, brushing away moss with reverence. “Because I’ve seen the fault lines. The Refrain was only a bridge. Beneath it lies a deeper song—forgotten, chained, and angry.”

She listened as he told her of a force once known as the Dirge, a fractured melody exiled beyond memory during the Skyvault’s sealing. It had no form, only a hunger for imbalance. The Refrain kept it at bay, but time had worn the harmonies thin. The Dirge had begun to seep into lullabies, into harvest chants, and into the dreams of children.

Coren, the boy from Solenne’s visions, wasn’t a phantom. He was the next Chosen of the Dirge—locked away, forgotten in a stasis tomb in the City of Dusk beneath the eastern sands.

“Why would I dream of him?” she asked.

“Because you are the counterpoint,” Arien whispered. “And when the world’s harmony cracks, the counterpoint must decide whether to mend the song—or change it forever.”

With only that cryptic answer, Arien disappeared, leaving behind a fragment of an ancient moonstone etched with notes too intricate for human hands to write.

Solenne’s dreams changed after that.

They deepened.

In them, Coren no longer stood alone—he wept. The sky above him bled ink. Towers collapsed in silent bursts, and voices screamed beneath the silence, not within it. His eyes no longer met hers with calm warning—they pleaded.

Please, remember me.

So she made her decision.

She left the Harmonic Vale under starlight, carrying nothing but the moonstone shard, a single flute carved by her mother, and the final lullaby her father whispered before she left:

“Even in silence, you are never voiceless.”

Solenne’s journey led her to the edge of the Brimsea—a vast, shimmering ocean whose tides were shaped by the pull of the Refrain. The waters, once still, now rose with waves that cried names long lost. Here, ships built of songwood and enchanted steel waited for those called by resonance. One such vessel, the Viressan Gale, took Solenne eastward, where the legends spoke of the Sandfold Ruins and the buried city beneath them.

During the voyage, Solenne met others drawn to the same echoes—Kavien, a scribe who translated voices from shadows; Thera, a child raised by dragons who hummed in her sleep; and Luc, a once-blind singer who saw through vibration and rhythm alone. Together, they shared stories, songs, fears, and dreams. And in that union, the beginnings of a new harmony took root.

When they reached the Sandfold Ruins, the desert welcomed them not with heat, but with silence—unnerving, unyielding. Time bent here. Sunlight forgot its warmth. And beneath the dunes, ancient mechanisms still turned—guardians left behind by the Mooncallers to keep the City of Dusk sealed.

It was Kavien who deciphered the stone code at the entrance.

It was Thera who calmed the dragons carved into walls.

It was Luc who sang the gates open.

And it was Solenne who descended first.

The City of Dusk pulsed with forgotten emotion. Every step echoed like a memory resisting erasure. And in its heart, suspended in a sphere of frozen sound, was Coren.

He had not aged.

His eyes opened the moment Solenne entered.

“You remembered,” he whispered, tears falling upward in the strange gravity of the chamber.

“I always did,” she replied.

But before they could speak again, the chamber shuddered. The Dirge—aware, awakened—spilled forth like black melody, twisting notes into screams. It did not seek destruction—it sought imbalance. A return to chaos.