The name, *Mirellys*, glared from the parchment in fresh lampblack. Syllis creased the program until the fibers split across the print. Revion stepped up behind her, setting fingers against her collarbone to steady her balance, his stare fixed straight ahead like an anvil waiting for a strike. “The Atrium,” Syllis breathed, the word a rasp against her throat. “She’s presenting it. My work.” Tessara observed them with flat detachment. “Indeed. A rather bold move, wouldn’t you agree, Syllis? To claim the Echo-Core as her own.” Her tone lacked bile, though it cut like a paring knife. “I thought you might want to attend the unveiling.” Mineral needles twitched beneath Syllis's skin, pulsing cold reminders from the Silent Hollow. Her head, still muddled from the extraction, fought to string thoughts together against the urge to barge through the Atrium doors and strip Mirellys bare. Then Arch-Tuner Galdien’s voice echoed in her recall: *Proof, Syllis. Truth without evidence is noise without acoustic weight.* “No,” Syllis said, forcing steel into her voice. “Not yet. We need proof. She didn’t just *take* it, Revion. She must have tried to replicate my acoustic cipher. To pass it off as hers.” Revion pressed her shoulder once. “Where would she attempt that? Your workshop.” Tessara appraised them both, brows slightly arched. “Fleeing the floor, then? Predictable.” She pivoted on her heel, silk hem snapping as she stalked away, leaving them alone in the corridor. “She knew,” Syllis murmured. “She knew it wasn't Mirellys's work. She came by to see if I'd crack.” Revion tugged her arm toward the stairs. “That fits her. Come on. To your workshop before the bells finish tolling.” They sprinted down the Conservatory’s corridors as overhead bronze gongs counted the minutes. Syllis chewed the inside of her cheek. Mirellys had come begging for scrap filings and tuning techniques every turn of the moon, pleading weakness, weeping over failed tests. The theft bit deeper than the glass crusting her hand. The latch on Syllis’s workshop hung loose, splintered clear of the jamb. Tuning forks lay bent like discarded wire across the slate benches. Specimen vials, sorted by hue and psychic pitch, lay crushed under heavy boots. Copper conduits snapped at their joins leaked thin violet gas into the draft. The whole bench had been gutted. “Gods above,” Revion breathed, his voice tight with controlled anger. He moved with careful steps, his boots crunching on shattered glass, his gaze sweeping over the wreckage. “She didn’t just steal it. She wanted to obliterate everything.” Syllis stepped past the debris. The spindle rig, her custom lathe for spinning melodic filaments, stood upright beneath scratches in the enamel. A thin whine issued from its gears. “The spindle,” Syllis muttered, closing the distance. A frayed thread caught on the copper cog. It was vitreous thread, patched and spliced together from broken fragments, left behind in obvious haste. Syllis picked a brass magnifier off the floor and brought it to the strand. Every artisan left an overtone mark etched into spun thread—an acoustic seal formed by how they drew tension through their fingers. Hers always carried a distinct triplet burr along the edge. She angled the lens against the window glare. The spliced filament showed that exact triplet burr, pressed into the glass with a blunt stylus. It was an outright counterfeit, meant to pass official scrutiny. Mirellys hadn’t just stolen the Echo-Core; she had counterfeited Syllis’s craft-mark onto the prototype to claim the lineage outright. “She stamped it,” Syllis said, voice dry. “She faked my personal seal.” Revion leaned over her shoulder, squinting through the glass. “Undeniable proof.” He caught her left wrist, turning it into the light. Silvery crust crept another half-inch along the tendons, radiating an ache like frostbite. “You’re bleeding,” he murmured, untying a strip of linen from his belt. He dabbed away the beads of blood where the shards had nicked her knuckles, then wrapped the cloth snug over the mineral crust. The tension in his knuckles spoke louder than any oath. The workshop stayed quiet except for the hum of the spindle gears and the friction of linen. Syllis pulled her shoulders inward, unsettled by how near he stood, smelling of dried lavender and tallow soap. Revion tied off the knot, his gray eyes locking onto hers. “Syllis,” he said, voice pitched low. “You’re more than whatever you produce at this bench. More than what gets drained into vials.” Her throat locked. She wanted to reply, but years of keeping quiet clamped down on her jaw. Before she could force out a syllable, bootsteps clattered against the threshold. “Syllis! Revion! What in the realm happened here?” Arch-Tuner Galdien filled the broken doorway, thick shoulders brushing both posts. His blue robes hung loose at the throat, forehead creased with worry. He took in the shattered glass on the tiles, the bruised wood, and the bandaged hand. “My girl, who did this? And your hand looks half-petrified.” Galdien strode into the workshop and unhooked a silver chime from his belt, its sapphire core glinting in the lantern glow. “You’re shaken. Let me ring a steadying pitch. Clear your senses, then we'll resolve this matter.” Syllis froze. The counterfeit mark, the shattered bench, Revion’s words—the pieces clashed violently in her head. Galdien’s stern warmth had guided her since she was pulled from the gutters, and her instinct to obey him pulled against her rage. “Master Galdien—” she began, but he tapped the chime with a bone mallet. A rounded tone rang across the workshop. The sound settled over her temples like oil on water, damping the ringing in her ears and dulling the knot in her stomach. The urge to sprint to the Atrium slowed, blunted by an artificial calm. Yet her tuner’s ear refused to shut down. Even as the drone smoothed out her panic, her training tracked the overtone intervals bouncing off the stone walls. It was a precise, harmonic sequence: high fifth, flatted second, descending fourth. The exact sequence used to engage the tumbler locks on the vault in the Silent Hollow.

Acoustic Scars