The phantom ringing tore through Liska’s skull, a thousand tiny hooks dragging across raw nerve endings. Crimson text hovered before her eyes, projecting the countdown toward midnight in jagged strokes. Warm trickles of blood coated her earlobes and pooled along her neck. Above her, Yulva continued to snore, a perfectly serene, unbothered rumble that infuriated Liska more than the agony in her head. How could she sleep through this? How could she sleep through *anything*? Liska staggered from the assembly hall, the echoing silence a sudden, cruel mockery after the inferno in her ears. Each step was a battle against vertigo. She needed a plan, something potent, something immediate. Her mind raced, sifting through forbidden arcana whispered in shadowed corners of the Conservatory. There was one artifact, rumored to be housed in the sealed archives beneath the West Wing – the Nocturne Box. A relic designed not for performance, but for subtle, insidious sonic theft. Meanwhile, Yulva stretched, a luxuriously slow unfurling of limbs on the cold dais. The entire hall stood empty, cold vapor curling off the damp floor slabs. She pushed herself up, feeling strangely refreshed, the sticky sap on her robes a minor inconvenience. A week of suspension. A week without lectures, spared from weaving tone threads into taxing acoustic sigils. A week of glorious, uninterrupted sleep. She had been exiled to the Conservatory’s fungal nursery, a maze of humid vaults where phosphorescent growths clicked and muttered beneath low stone arches. The instructor's dismissal had carried a dry sniff: "To tend the vegetative plots, Marik. Perhaps humility will root amongst the hyphae." Yulva merely nodded, picturing soft, yielding moss as a pillow. The nursery smelled of wet loam and rot, veiled in chartreuse phosphor. Giant, bell-shaped fungi, the size of small carriages, hung from the vaulted glass ceiling, their gills shimmering. Patches of lumiglow moss clung to every surface, casting an ethereal glow. Yulva wandered deeper, past chambers filled with rhythmic pulsing spore-sacks and others where the air vibrated with the deep hum of subterranean mycelial networks. Finally, in a forgotten corner, where an ancient watering system had burst years ago, she found it: a dense, waist-high bed of ‘Sopor-Moss,’ renowned for its velvety texture and its tendency to dampen ambient sound. It was cool, pillowy, and quiet. She kicked off her worn Conservatory boots, letting them thud softly onto the damp earth, and sank into the moss with a sigh that bordered on a purr. The earthy scent, mingled with the faint, sweet perfume of unseen fungal blooms, was surprisingly soothing. Within moments, she huddled into a ball, breath evening out as the quiet took hold. Hours later, Liska materialized at the edge of the Sopor-Moss bed, her eyes bloodshot, her face drawn. She clutched the chime-casket, a palm-sized box fashioned from lacquered timber and frost-pitted brass. The phantom ringing was a constant, excruciating companion, amplifying every rustle of the fungal leaves, every groan in the glass framing overhead. She had fought her way past ancient wards and dusty archives, the System’s jagged text a constant, burning command in her periphery. [Siphon Interface: Midnight Deadline Approaching. Talent Signature Unstable. Initiate Extraction Now.] Yulva lay completely still, breathing in deep, steady rhythms. Yulva's relaxed mouth and slack limbs sent bile into Liska's throat. Liska set the casket on the dirt beside Yulva's temple. Its surface bore spiraling gouges scored to trap and magnify discord. With a shaky hand, Liska turned the small, brass crank embedded in its side. A sound, thin and reedy at first, scraped its way into the humid air. It was a single sustained note, sour and off-pitch. It scraped like gravel under a boot. It felt like a fingernail dragging across slate, then multiplied by a thousand. A second tone joined it, then a third, warping into a jagged drone that shredded the damp air. The gentle murmurs of the surrounding caps died away, their bioluminescent caps guttering. The vibrations intensified, not as sound, but as a physical pressure against the eardrums, vibrating the very bones in Liska’s face. She winced, clapping her hands over her ears, but the sound was already inside her. Above Yulva, the conservatory's ceiling panes, rotted by moisture, began to bow. A spiderweb of cracks erupted across the nearest section, then another. With sharp cracks, two rectangular panes gave way, shedding mineral teeth across the moss. Shrapnel glittered around Yulva’s sleeping form, some pieces bouncing harmlessly off the thick moss, others embedding themselves in the earth. Liska cried out, stumbling back, shards of glass skittering around her feet. She had intended to induce *anxiety*, to slowly unravel Yulva’s composure, not to cause a structural collapse! Yet the relic ground on, spitting its harsh rasp through ticking gears. The acoustic pressure surged, far heavier than Liska had planned. Yet, Yulva didn't stir. If anything, the steady clatter seemed to soothe her. Her breathing deepened, a faint smile touching her lips. Beside her, tucked into the turf, rested her acoustic prism—a quartz bar meant to be tempered over the term until it could sustain a null-tone. It was her most difficult assignment, requiring months of precise, delicate acoustic manipulation. The mineral core began to thrum. The box's jagged screech drove straight through the prism's internal facets, locking into its lattice. The null-tone, an exercise Yulva had neglected for weeks, abruptly aligned. A low, hollow pitch slid outward from the core. Its cloudy exterior darkened, settling into an oily, pitch-black sheen. The coursework, solved by accident in seconds, settled into stillness. The racket of the box smoothed into steady gray noise against Yulva's ears, tucking her deeper under. [Siphon Interface: Target Talent Signature Stabilized. Apathy Level Unchanged. Extraction Odds: 0.1%] The message pulsed, stark against the screech inside Liska's skull, leaving her numb with disbelief. Stabilized. The box's shriek did nothing. The heavy nursery doors swung wide, banging hard against the outer stonework. Janko stood silhouetted against the pale Vrostian gloom, his wild hair flying, clutching a sheaf of yellowed parchment. His eyes darted around the glass-strewn chamber, then fixed on Liska and the still-sleeping Yulva. "Liska! Yulva! Move! This glasshouse sits right over the Hollowing Ward! And the grid monitors are tracking our sound signatures!"

The Cursed Lullaby