Jessa found the Exiled One in the ruins of the Echo Opera, where the stage sagged like a drunkard’s smile. Moonlight bled through the shattered dome, painting his mask in fractured silver. He didn’t turn as she approached, but his shoulders tensed—a hunter sensing a drawn blade.

  “You’re stalking me,” she said, kicking a broken prop crown aside. It rolled into the orchestra pit with a hollow clatter. “Which is rude, considering I’m the one who’s supposed to be stalking you.”

  The Exiled One exhaled—a sound like wind through dead leaves. “You’re late.”

  “Fashionably.” Jessa hopped onto the stage, her boots dislodging a cloud of dust. Up close, his cloak smelled of burnt parchment and something older, like rain on a grave. She plucked a stray chord on her lute. “Your little stunt at the festival? Setting Virellia’s flames to the Hollow King’s sigil? That was a message. So here I am. Delivering my reply.”

  She played the first notes of The Lament of Liraeth—a song no living bard should know.

  The Exiled One went rigid.

  Jessa smirked. “Oh, you recognize it? Funny. I’ve been humming this tune for years, but lately, the verses… change around you. Like they’re trying to remember something.” She leaned in, her breath fogging his mask. “Who taught you this song, Exile?”

  For a heartbeat, silence. Then—

  He lunged.

  Jessa barely dodged, his gloved fingers grazing her throat as she twisted away. Her lute clattered to the floor, strings snapping. “Rude,” she gasped, but the Exiled One was already upon her, pinning her wrists to the stage. Up close, his mask wasn’t porcelain, as she’d thought—it was bone, etched with tiny, spiraling fractures.

  And beneath it… something stirred.

  “You shouldn’t sing songs that belong to the dead,” he whispered. His voice was Kael’s, but warped, layered with echoes of other voices, other whens.

  Jessa’s pulse thundered. “Why? Because they’ll answer?”

  The Exiled One reached into his cloak.

  What he drew wasn’t a weapon.

  It was a flute, carved from a human femur, its surface inscribed with runes that made Jessa’s eyes water. She’d seen its likeness in murals—the Hollow King’s pipers played such instruments the night the Sanctum burned.

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  “You want the truth?” The Exiled One pressed the flute to his mask, where a mouth should be. “Listen.”

  The note he played wasn’t sound. It was memory.

  Jessa’s vision shattered.

  —A child (Kael? Younger, softer) singing to a boy with golden scars (Sorin, age twelve, laughing)—

  —The same lullaby, sweeter, gentler, as a silver-haired woman (Liraeth?) braids the child’s hair—

  —A cracked palace, the song twisting into a scream as the boy (Sorin, older, crowned) falls to his knees—

  —The Exiled One, maskless, his face a ruin of Kael’s features, whispering, “You were never meant to endure”—

  The vision snapped.

  Jessa was on her knees, her tattoos alight, glowing like embers under her skin. The music had etched itself into her bones. She gagged, tasting burnt sugar and blood. “What was that?”

  “The first note.” The Exiled One tucked the flute away. “And the last. The lullaby is a key, Jessa. One your precious Kael forged and forgot. It opens doors that should stay shut.”

  Jessa’s hands shook. Her tattoos still pulsed, forming words she couldn’t read. “Then why wear that mask? If you’re him—if you’re Kael’s future—why hide?”

  The Exiled One went unnaturally still. Then, slowly, he lifted a hand to his mask.

  A click.

  The mask loosened.

  Beneath it—

  —was nothing.

  No, not nothing. A void, swirling like ink in water, studded with faint, starlight pinpricks. A face-shaped absence, hungry and howling.

  Jessa recoiled. “What are you?”

  The Exiled One’s voice came from everywhere. “A silence that grew teeth.” He resealed the mask with a shudder. “The song unmade me. Now it’s eating him—note by note, memory by memory. The mask slows it. But not for long.”

  Jessa’s mind raced. Kael’s lullaby wasn’t just a song. It was a cage. A curse. And the Exiled One was what happened when the melody finished consuming its maker.

  She grabbed his sleeve. “Then we break the cycle. We change the song.”

  The Exiled One laughed—a broken sound. “You can’t rewrite an ending that’s already written.”

  “Watch me.” Jessa snatched the bone flute, ignoring his snarl. “You said it yourself—music changes around you. So let’s give it new verses.”

  Somewhere, far off, a bell tolled. The same one that had sounded in Pip’s workshop.

  The Exiled One tilted his head, as if hearing a voice only he could. “Too late,” he murmured. “He’s remembering.”

  Then the stage moved.

  The floorboards splintered. Shadows pooled like spilled oil, forming shapes—a throne, a crown, a child’s outstretched hand. The air reeked of scorched metal and dying flowers.

  Jessa stumbled back as the shadows solidified into a figure—small, silver-haired, its face blurred like a smudged painting. Liraeth?

  The Exiled One drew a dagger. “Don’t look at her.”

  But the figure turned to Jessa, its mouth moving soundlessly. The words etched themselves into Jessa’s skin, her tattoos burning:

  “Find the bard. Sing the song backward.”

  Then the vision collapsed, leaving only a single object on the stage—

  A child’s shoe, tiny, charred at the edges.

  The Exiled One hissed. “The crown is waking.”

  Jessa pocketed the shoe, her mind racing. Sing it backward. Was that the answer? Or another trap?

  The Exiled One grabbed her arm, his grip bruising. “Tell no one what you saw. Not even Kael. Especially not Kael.”

  “Or what?” Jessa wrenched free. “You’ll kill me? Pretty sure that’s your job no matter what I do.”

  For the first time, the Exiled One hesitated. Then, softly: “Or you’ll make it hurt worse when he forgets you too.”

  A gust of wind extinguished the moonlight. When it returned, the Exiled One was gone.

  Only the bone flute remained, lying atop Jessa’s shattered lute.

  And a single, ominous note, humming in the air like a wasp.