The lights above blazed like constellations, washing the stage in shifting hues of blue and gold. The crowd thundered, their cheers rolling like waves through the concert hall, but Templar barely noticed them.
His focus was elsewhere.
One hand clutched the microphone, the other pressed tight against his coat as if steadying the storm in his chest. His rune pulsed with each note, his sockets narrowed in fierce concentration. He sang not just with skill, but with urgency, chasing a thread of sound that didn’t belong to the band, the crowd, or even himself.
There.
Faint as a whisper. A melody, half-formed, slipping through the static of his awareness. Too far away to seize, but too close to ignore. His song bent toward it instinctively, voice straining, reaching, pleading across an impossible distance. The audience thought his intensity was for them. They screamed louder, lifted their hands, sang along. But Templar’s heart wasn’t with them.
It was with the ghost of a song that tugged at his soul from somewhere far beyond the stage.
Far away, in a dim room lit only by the glow of a laptop, Unknown sat curled beneath a blanket, gaze fixed on the livestream. His breath fogged faintly in the cool air, but he hardly noticed. Every part of him was tuned to the screen.
On it, Templar’s silhouette cut through the lights—impossibly brilliant, utterly unreachable. Yet somehow, watching, Unknown felt the performance burrow into his bones. His soul thrummed in time with the music, and then—there it was.
A resonance.
The faintest note in his chest, so quiet he almost dismissed it. But when Templar’s voice strained harder, Unknown felt it rise. It wasn’t just the song on stage. It was his.
His hand pressed to his sternum, trembling as though trying to contain it. The melody hummed against his ribs, fragile but insistent, spilling from him in soft vibrations. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes as he stared at the performer who couldn’t possibly know. And yet—he did.
Because even through the barrier of a screen, through distance and circumstance, Templar’s voice reached for him. And his own faltering song—quiet, hidden, ashamed—reached back.
Unknown’s lips parted, a broken sound slipping free. A single note.
On the stage, miles away, Templar’s sockets widened. His voice surged. The rune on his forehead blazed like a star.
The crowd screamed with joy, believing it was for them.
But it wasn’t.
It was for the one watching from the shadows of a small, lonely room—the only voice Templar had been chasing all along.
