Siliciternum - Volume 1 .1.2

Costa Del Secta

“The light is always on — it just depends on who’s selling it.”

______

Costa Del Secta was a small island in the truest sense of the word — not because it lacked space, but because it lacked ambition. The houses stacked like old books on a shelf, comfortably leaning into one another, each sun-warmed and chipped with charm. It was a place for quiet endings, a future retirement home dressed as paradise. No one left. Why would they? The only boat to visit in sixteen years had never departed — now permanently moored, wrapped in the embrace of sea-vines that mistook it for one of their own.

Everything one might need was here, if one’s needs were humble and one's questions few. A doctor, rarely in. A baker who toiled by moonlight so that the village’s daylight addiction to carbohydrates could be sustained. A Cleric who offered the island's favorite service: absolution flavored with rumor. A café on the sea’s lip served tea strong enough to summon regret from the dead and clarity from the hungover. And there were sweepers, firefighters, officers — uniformed and faceless, as reliable as background music. No politicians, of course. Politicians lived in Metropolis, where their machinations were better funded and easier to ignore.

From above, Costa Del Secta unfurled like a secret the sea had chosen to keep. Its canopy spread in symphonic greens — deep jade and sunlit mint, cresting toward copper-burnished cliffs that bled into crystalline sapphire. The water kissed the edges gently, like a kept promise. The town itself glowed at the island’s center like the coal-heart of an embered memory: rooftops of fractured terracotta crowded close, red and rust and rose, each one catching light like it had something to prove.

Cobbled streets threaded through the town in gentle arcs, never straight, as if the island had refused to be gridded. They curled between gardens and half-walls, around stubborn blooms of lavender and saffron and orange — wildflowers that insisted on being seen. Birds scribbled across the sky in broad strokes. Chimneys exhaled contentment.

At the island’s heart rose a great hall, its dome gilded in weathered gold, catching the sun like a blessing mid-prayer. Around it, the houses leaned inward — not by blueprint, but by instinct. As if even the homes knew this place was sacred, or at least pretending well enough to be. River-glass windows shimmered in pale teal and soft citrine, and laundry lines rippled across alleyways like slow, domestic fireworks.

To the south, the forest grew wilder, its leaves flecked with silver light. It pressed up to the edge of the land where a lighthouse stood — old, iron-bodied, and quietly divine. Its lens, though dim in day, still caught the sun just right, flaring now and then like it remembered what it meant to guide.

And to the north: the ship. Grand, wooden, regal even in sleep. Its masts towered with the dignity of forgotten cathedrals, sails furled like held breath. Moss coiled along the hull in quiet custody. It was not derelict. It was patient. A story mid-sentence. A voyage paused, not abandoned.

From this height, Costa did not merely live — it _listened_. Not forward, not backward. Just here. A moment caught in amber. A place where time did not pass. It pooled.

Like warm water held in careful hands.

The Sanctum of the Radiant Path stood upon the island’s highest inhabitable ridge, wrapped meticulously in terraces blooming with white lilies, its structure itself resembling a blossoming flower—broad at the base and tapering gracefully toward its apex. From afar, it echoed the silhouette of a lighthouse, though it cast no guiding beams toward the restless seas. Unlike the harsh metallic blaze of the southern watchtower, its beacon pulsed softly and rhythmically, a controlled and deliberate flame symbolizing harmony rather than navigation. Yet, the flame had remained unlit for a long while, and the path leading upward was rarely traveled.

The sanctum was constructed in concentric rings—stone corridors spiraling inward like the patterns of a fingerprint toward the central chamber. The outermost circle housed initiates: white-robed attendants whose tranquil expressions bordered on emptiness. They silently tended the flowers, swept spotless marble floors without a speck of visible dust, and greeted no visitors. Inside from them were the scribes, diligently documenting messages they would never send, their existence defined by quiet futility. Further inward still were the Keepers, garbed in robes dyed the pale hue of purified flame, their hands perpetually clasped, their voices always subdued and reverent. At the very center, encased behind glass thicker than holy scripture, stood the **Obelisk**.

The Obelisk emitted a subtle yet profound glow identical to the subterranean roots below—though here, it was revered as divine. Fifteen feet in height and perfectly smooth, it radiated a faint hum, pitched slightly above the threshold of hearing. Worshippers knelt in silent reverence before it; some wept openly, others stared in solemn fixation until their vision blurred from dryness. This was worship, as the sanctum defined it.

Above the Obelisk, a mosaic dome of stained glass soared—a masterwork composed of twelve intricately interlocking panels, each representing virtues whose original meanings had long faded from memory: Restraint, Cleanliness, Harmony, Trademark, Fellowship, Dignity, Illumination, Patience, Obedience, Sacrifice, Ordered Chaos, and Licensing.

The sanctum was permeated by the constant scent of citrus and antiseptics, starkly sterile compared to the vibrant melodies that resonated across the island beyond its walls. Within, footsteps echoed and whispered conversations multiplied into reverberations.

The distant Obelisk was the primary source of all illumination. The sanctum, a mere imitation, explained itself only by mimicking it's distant truth.

The Radiant Path, the primary spiritual structure of Costa Del Secta, was a faith navigated not by physical steps, but by careful observation. Followers here neither marched nor knelt—instead, they raised their eyes toward the sacred glow, ascending inward through focused contemplation. At their belief’s core rested a singular, unwavering tenet:

Light comes from the Maker.

All sources of illumination — fire, bioluminescent plants, even the artificial gleam of the lighthouses — are merely reflections. Echoes echoing other echoes, cast through a loop of imitation that spirals backward forever. The light, they teach, is older than fire and deeper than memory. It lit the first voice, shaped the first bloom, and even now flickers in the chest of every soul that breathes.

Their sanctum, perched above the garden-tiered town in a domed hall of jade-glass and limestone, is neither cathedral nor temple; it's something in between — open on all sides, like a question waiting patiently for its answer. They call it the *Chamber of Kindling*, and its walls are lined not with icons, but with mirrors. Each morning, as the sun crests the sea, those mirrors scatter the light across the chamber in a dance of gold and violet. It is said that if a person enters with a true heart, one of the lights may follow them.

The Radiant Path keeps to quiet rituals, not grand spectacle. Their Sunwater Rites, performed at dawn, involve the washing of hands and face in shallow basins placed beneath stained glass — not to cleanse, but to remember. The water, at this point, contains more bacteria than hydrogen or oxygen. The Circle Meal, held every fifth day, is a shared table with no beginning and no end. No one eats until all are served. The bread is always broken by the youngest voice. But most sacred of all is The Living Silence — a full day each season in which no one in the church speaks, not even the children. It is not a mourning, they say, but a _making of space_ — a day to let the Maker’s light say what words cannot.

This season’s silence is held by **Cleric Junil**, a wiry man with calloused palms and eyes like pressed sunlight. Junil has not spoken in thirty-two days, and yet few feel more understood in his presence. He greets with a hand over heart, bows slightly before every question, and writes only when necessary — and even then, rarely in full sentences. Some say his silence hums. Others say it listens. A child once claimed she heard his prayer in her sleep, shaped like wind in a jar. His origins are unclear — as is often the case with the clergy of the Radiant Path. One day, a new cleric simply appears, and all questions are answered with administrative vagueness.

In Costa Del Secta, belief is not enforced. It is breathed. The Radiant Path offers no threat, no promise of punishment. It offers only the truth of light: that it cannot be hoarded, cannot be forced, and will not settle in a soul that fears the dark too much to enter it.

Zooming back out, to the center of Costa — seated like the heart within a curled palm — stands the Sanctum. It is not a structure one walks to, but one drifts toward, unconsciously, like water finding its basin. It seems less built than revealed, as though the island had grown up around it in reverence, careful not to bruise its foundations.

Its base is wide and elegant, composed of sun-gold limestone quarried from deep beneath the endless oceans — which, truthfully, are rather shallow, barely deep enough to dive for miles past the shoreline — and polished until it glows faintly, even in shadow. Light gathers at its feet like obedient servants.

Multiple arched entryways rise from the colonnade like open arms, welcoming all — fishermen with salt on their boots, travelers with stories in their coats, and clerics with silence in their mouths. The arches bear no inscription, no carved command, only the gentle upward curve of stone shaped to suggest: _you may enter if you are willing to see._

Above this great ring, the sanctum swells into a vaulted dome, shaped not unlike a pearl pressed gently into place by divine fingers. It rises from the colonnade as if exhaled by the island itself — not added, but _formed_. The dome is paneled in alternating slices of burnished bronze and reflective crystal, so finely laid that it captures even the weakest glow and turns it into warmth. It does not shimmer — it _settles_, a soft radiance that feels remembered rather than seen.

Along its edges are etched bands of ancient script in a tongue long forgotten. Not dead — just displaced. The kind of language not read, but _recognized_. Its glyphs do not command attention, only reverence. Each word was etched not for beauty, but to echo their single, enduring theology about the source of light and creation.

Crowning the sanctum is its most sacred structure — the *Mikaran Awara*, the Crown of Light. Fused seamlessly into the apex of the dome, it rises not as an afterthought but as a final note in a perfect chord. Among the common folk, it’s often called the *Costa'n Lighthouse*, though it bears little resemblance to the watchtower on the southern cape that was built to help guides ships that would never come. It does not stand _beside_ the sanctum — it _emerges from it_, as if grown from the faith beneath.

Within the **Mikaran Awara**, encased in a crystalline bulb and held aloft by magnetic stillness, hums a fragment of the **Blacklight Engine** — a stabilized core siphoned from the same *blacklight engine* that powers the *Great Obelisk*. Suspended at the event horizon of a captive singularity, it emits no heat, no radiation — only coherent light, drawn from entropy itself and bent into visible form. A miracle of ancient design, misunderstood by all who now tend it.

The locals call it the **Halo**, and when it pulses across the town at dusk, every window flickers in answer. Not in obedience. In resonance. This light is not for navigation alone — though it guides ships to Costa’s harbor with a faithful hand. It is a symbol, a declaration against the cosmos itself. For where others orbit suns, **Costa's planet orbits a black hole**, its sky forever dark but never despairing. The heavens above are a velvet wound — no sunrise, no moonrise — only the soft turning of stars in their distant afterlife. And yet, here, on this small island, light burns. Not borrowed, but **given**. A gift from the Maker to the people who still believe (and while many will tell you they are believers, this is in name only.)

If pilgrims were still able to reach the sanctum, they would not speak of grandeur, but of peace. They would say the stones seemed to hum, that the salt air tasted sweeter near its walls. They would speak of a feeling — not awe, but something quieter, something warmer — as if the building itself remembered them. The light overhead would not demand worship. It would invite stillness.

But no pilgrim has set foot upon Costa’s shores in over a decade. The harbors have grown silent. The paths to the island, dim.

And yet, the people once gathered. To wash their hands in colored glass basins. To break bread in circles. To listen in silence. And above them, the Halo kept watch — not as a warning, but as a promise:

**Even here, the Maker’s light remains.**

The island quiets as we draw near. The gardens fade behind us, the stone path softens underfoot, and the air thickens — not with heat, but with meaning. We are drawn to The Sanctum, as if the very light has turned inside out, beckoning us inward. The front doors rise from the limestone facade like twin oaths carved into permanence — tall, arching things of lacquered olivewood, veined with filigree silver and inlaid with mirrored obsidian panels that shimmer even in shade. There are no handles. No hinges. Only two curved seams where the doors part, and an inscription overhead in ancient glyphs, read only in reflection.

They do not open with sound. They open with memory.

And so, we pass through. Beneath the dome of the Sanctum, light does not merely fall — it hovers, coalesces, and lingers as though it too is praying. The space within the Radiant Path’s sanctum is vast, yet intimate; its golden limestone walls are veined with ribbons of pale blue quartz that catch the radiance of the light and scatter it into warm, breathing light. The ceiling stretches high overhead, a single curved canvas of divine narrative, hand-painted over generations — the legacy of color and myth, belief and wonder. Visitors do not enter to sit. They enter to behold.

The floor is a tessellated expanse of black and ivory marble, laid in arcs that draw the eye upward — as if the very stone is inviting you to remember where light comes from. No altar marks the center. Only a pool of reflected glow, circular and still, where the dome’s radiance collects like breath on the surface of time. Pilgrims who once dared to cross the ocean stood there, necks tilted back, breath slow, as the ceiling unveiled its story in silence. Some wept. Others whispered. Most simply watched.

Nearest the entrance arches a mural titled **“The Embrace of Man”**, depicting angels walking among humans without fear or superiority. Wings sweep gently over shoulders. Laughter is shared. One angel lifts a child into the sky. Here, heaven and earth are not distant cousins but old friends reunited. The colors are warm — ochre, copper, cream — and the composition vibrates with a sense of belonging, of mutual recognition.

Further along, the light sharpens into fire as **“The Unknown Angel”** emerges from a vortex of flame and mist. The figure bears no clear features, only a sorrowful posture and wings so vast they dissolve into the surrounding frescoes. Her head is bowed, and though she radiates brilliance, there is hesitation in it's stance — a being burdened by the weight of it's own light. No name is given. Some say it was never meant to be known. Others say she is the soul of the world, painted into silence.

At the center of the ceiling — directly above the pool of light on the floor — is a piece known across Costa as **“The Creation of Man.”** Inspired by ancient tradition, it mirrors the classical gesture of two hands reaching. Yet here, the divine hand is not flesh but current — a stream of luminous electricity, branching like veins, arcing with controlled intensity. The human figure reaches not in fear, but in curiosity, eyes wide, chest open. The spark between them pulses faintly at night, leading some to wonder if the painting itself remembers.

To the right is **“The Guardian.”** A colossal, dark-winged figure stands atop a jagged cliff, arms raised, the light behind him forming a starburst halo. His wings stretch outward in a wide arc, cloaking what appears to be the outline of Costa below. Some say his name has been lost. Others whisper he comes when the Obelisk dims. No one speaks during this portion of the viewing.

Near the western eave, the tone shifts. The hues darken. **“Betrayal”** stretches long across the vault, showing an angel bound in glistening chains, his head turned in disbelief. Behind him, a figure in shadow holds a broken torch. The palette bruises — burgundy, soot, tarnished gold. Flecks of ash scatter through the scene like a memory refusing to fade. It is said the artist was never seen again after its completion.

Beside it, **“Injustice”** draws the eye with its quiet agony. A blindfolded angel kneels, wrists manacled, wings dragging behind him in mourning. His face is tilted skyward, lips parted mid-song — though no melody can be heard. Chains coil around her like accusations. Her body is painted in pale shades of pearl and dusk, her bindings in stark charcoal. Visitors linger here. Few speak. Children sometimes ask: _“Why is he singing?”_

Between these masterworks, high in the arch near the base of the crown of light, a nearly-invisible figure lurks — *a shadowy man in a suit*, face obscured, hands held at his sides in unnatural stillness. Light shines faintly off his bald head. He is out of place in every possible way, and yet, unmistakably present. There is no plaque. No title. Only the oldest clerics acknowledge him, and even they do so with unease.

And finally — opposite the entrance, rising toward the apex of the dome — the fresco opens into a scene of celestial geometry: a great **black obelisk**, split by a beam of impossible light. The glow does not descend from above, but rises _from within_, cutting upward through the darkness like revelation. Around it, human figures gather in concentric circles, all facing the light with open hands. The painting is titled **“The Source”**, though the clerics refer to it in hushed tones by another name:

**_“The Return.”_**

The people of Costa awoke to each new morning — not by sunrise, but by ritual. There were no birdsongs to herald the hour, no golden shafts breaking through the dark. Instead, each household rose in quiet agreement, and the first order of the day was always the same: **remove the black curtains**.

Drawn across every window the evening before, the curtains were thick as ashcloth and lined with lead-dyed thread — sewn not just to darken, but to protect. They shut out the permanent artificial glow that made survival possible, but not always bearable. The clerics had long ago named it **The Veil** — their term for the shrouded hours when the sky turned inward and the black hole’s silence pressed against the soul.

To open the curtains was to _let the veil down_. At one time, the Order had even proposed a mechanical dome — a great steel canopy to descend over the sanctum each night like a second skin. But it was deemed sacrilege. _"To hide from the Maker’s absence is to accuse him of leaving,”_ the elders whispered. _“We wait. We endure.”_

And so the people chose fabric over armor. They stitched their quiet defiance into every seam. Curtains became doctrine, not decoration. And their removal each morning a minor resurrection.

Light from the Sanctum filtered in first — warm, soft, gilding the stone floors with a hue somewhere between honey and fire. The children still called it “morning” out of habit, though no sun had risen in generations. Beyond the window, the world remained dark, the stars scattered like salt across a velvet wound. And still, the homes of Costa filled with a light no celestial body provided.

Because the Maker had given them this — the light that did not burn, the morning that did not need a sun.

Nabla awoke this same morning not to sunlight, but to the soft insistence of *Aarom*, his orange-and-white cat, perched at the edge of his cot and meowing like a minor prophet. The room was dim, steeped in that particular kind of morning shadow Costa knew well — not born of darkness, but of denial. The black curtains still hung across the windows, and with them, the weight of the Veil.

He blinked slowly, adjusting to the silence between Aarom’s cries. Through a slit in his neighbor’s curtain across the narrow street, he heard it — a harp, low and questioning. The melody stretched out like a thread tugging at his chest. Someone was playing something solemn. Something old.

With a soft grunt, Nabla rose. Bare feet touched stone. His cream-colored tunic, wrinkled from sleep, hung just below the knees. His hair — chestnut-brown and scattered — shifted as he moved to the window. He gripped the curtains and tore them back in one motion. Light from the Sanctum poured in — warm, golden, like breath returning to a room.

The street outside glowed in that sacred hush Costa called morning. There, across the street, on a flat rooftop tiled in blue glass shards, stood a familiar figure. Cloak billowing faintly. Harp at their hip. They looked up at Nabla and smiled without words. With two fingers, they gestured: (_Come. Bring it._) Their hand swept outward, then returned to the strings.

Nabla smiled — not quite awake, not quite dreaming. He turned toward the corner where his cloak hung: deep blue, trimmed in silver. His harp rested beneath the windowsill. The tunic — cream and sky-blue, still creased from last night — would do. Around his neck, a wooden pendant inlaid with a single blue gem caught the new light.

He dressed without urgency, his movements practiced. Aarom leapt from the bed to the windowsill, curling in the patch of sanctimoneous light now pooling on the floor. Outside, the neighbor's music shifted — minor tones softening into something hopeful.

The wooden stairs creaked gently under Nabla’s bare feet as he descended, one hand trailing along the limestone wall that curled like a soft shell around the staircase. The scent of hearth bread and steeped emberfruit drifted up toward him, mingling with the golden warmth pooling in patches along the stone floor. Their home was small but open — a half-circle carved from Costa’s hillside, with shuttered alcoves for books and herbs, shelves lined with earthenware, and a hearth carved into the back wall like a mouth mid-laugh.

At the counter stood his mother, *Mariel* — sleeves rolled, hair tied in a loose braid, flour smudged across her temple. She moved with the kind of quiet that spoke fluently in place of words. Radiant in the way morning light is when it meets copper: warm, unbothered by time. Her hazel eyes, sun-flecked and soft, lifted as she heard him enter.

“Good,” she said, smiling. “You’re up before the bread burns.”

Nabla smiled back, then signed with mock severity:

(YOU) (SMELL) (LIKE) (SMOKE)

She laughed. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

She slid a small plate across the counter — a heel of steaming bread and a ceramic cup of *fruit*, a rare commodity. Nabla signed again, slower this time:

(THANK) (YOU) (MOTHER)

She nodded, brushing a thumb across her cheek where the flour hadn’t landed. “Your friend’s playing again,” she said, motioning toward the window. “Sounds like a good morning for a song.”

Nabla held up one finger, darted to the wall peg, and grabbed his cloak. His harp, worn at the grip and polished at the curve, was already slung across his back.

As he turned to go, Mariel added softly, “You used to play that same melody when you were little. Kept plucking it until your fingers bled.”

He paused, smiling, then tapped the blue stone at his chest twice — the pendant she had made him — and gave a lazy salute: fingers fanned, then swept to his temple in a slow arc.

(I) (REMEMBER)

And Nabla, bard of the lower sanctums, after bidding farewell to his mother, stepped through the doorway and into the morning Costa had made for him.

___

I’ve only ever met one mute boy in all my life, and that boy is Nabla. Not just in Costa Del Secta, but anywhere — up the mountains, down the coast, even among the silent wanderers of the windshrines. Words move through this world like water, but Nabla carries his differently.

He was born without a voice. So he made one.

The sign language he uses — it isn’t formal, not something pulled from a scroll or carved into classroom walls. It’s his. Every motion, every gesture, carved from rhythm, from years of need, from the ache to be understood. The town never mocked him — Costa has too much sun for cruelty — but most didn’t bother to learn. They nodded, smiled, guessed. Only a few took the time to truly understand.

His mother, of course. The harpist across the street. A few traders with soft eyes and long memories. The rest? Well, Nabla learned to carry a notebook. Quick pen. Careful hand.

He reads and writes the common tongue — fluid and sharp when he needs to be. But when he signs, when his hands shape meaning in the still air between him and another, it feels older. Truer.

There’s reverence in his silence. Not absence — presence held back with discipline.

And though the rest of Costa speaks with voices, I’ve never heard anyone say more than Nabla does with just his hands.

____

The door to Nabla’s home swung outward with a soft scrape against the stone, revealing the rounded façade of the cottage — a dome of golden limestone with a low arched entry and windows tucked beneath curved brick eyebrows. The outer walls were tangled in greenlace vine, a plant that glowed faintly in the dim light and hummed when touched. A wind-chime of cracked teacups clinked quietly by the entrance, still swaying from last week’s coastal gust. His mother’s hands had strung it together.

Across the narrow street stood the neighbor’s home — same dome, same gentle curves, same narrow chimney scaling the rear wall like a metal vine. Their door was blue instead of red. The path leading to it curved a little more. Nabla stared at it a beat too long, realizing the details didn’t matter. All the homes were the same here — softened cubes and sunbaked domes arranged in well-meant rows. In Costa Del Secta, comfort wasn’t earned through variety. It was earned through familiarity.

The street between them was paved in alternating rows of sand-colored cobblestone and black volcanic slate. Thin brick gutters lined either side, guiding rainwater — or what passed for it — down toward the lower terraces. The sidewalks, carved from hand-shaped stone, were just wide enough for two people walking shoulder to shoulder.

As Nabla stepped forward, a flicker of motion caught his eye — tiny brown creatures no larger than a thumbnail, hopping single-file across the cracks. They looked like ants, but with stout back legs that launched them into little bobbing arcs. _Ant Hoppers_, his mother called them. They didn’t bite, didn’t nest — just bounced from yard to yard like they were late for something.

Overhead, the sky stretched open in silent defiance. No clouds. No blue. Just endless velvet stitching with far-away objects, shimmering brighter than they had any right to. A bove it all, massive and unmoving, loomed the Black Hole where a sun should be — not flame, not glow, but absence made visible. A shadow so vast and vortexed* it became a shape, outlined only by what it devoured. The stars around its rim blurred, as if nervous. Costa lived under that gaze every day. And somehow, the people endured. Maybe it was the light from the Dayseed. Maybe it was each other.

Nabla reached the neighbor’s door and tapped gently. No answer, as expected. He stepped to the side, passed through an open gate, and slipped around a narrow alley of yellow-leafed vines. The side door was unlocked — it always was. Inside, the air smelled of warm yeast and candle wax. The furnishings matched his own: stone benches with wool throws, curved wall shelves of hand-painted mugs, a low central table cut from a single slice of driftwood. Even the hearth was in the same place, with the same chipped tile along the lip. For a moment, it felt like he’d forgotten to leave.

The attic ladder groaned under his weight as he climbed. Each rung bent just enough to whisper doubt before holding firm. He pulled himself into the sloped wooden loft, ducking beneath low beams. Dust motes hung in the air like glitter trapped in honey. A square window at the far end had already been propped open — not that it needed to be. Everyone knew the harpist upstairs rarely used doors.

Nabla slipped through, careful not to scrape the frame, and stepped onto the gently pitched roof. The clay tiles were still cold to the skin's touch, softened under his feet. At the far corner, the figure waited — harp in hand, tuning peg turning in slow, deliberate clicks.

And now, the music could begin.

Nabla raised one hand and signed:

(HELLO)

The figure at the corner smiled and signed back:

(HELLO.) (READY?)

They were standing on the highest rooftop in Costa Del Secta — a layered perch above the dome homes, where vines curled along rooftops and the air smelled faintly of citrus and copper. From here, the whole island unfurled below: wooded forests, rolling hills stitched in green and gold, and flowerbeds arranged by unseen hands into patterns only visible from above. It was a view someone had designed to be breathtaking — and succeeded.

Nabla unslung his harp and gave a quick harmonic tap across the top string — a gentle _ping_ that echoed down the slope. His friend — cloak drawn around narrow shoulders, fingers nimble and already dancing — responded with a rising chord, confident and slow.

The duet began.

At first, the music was gentle — like water being poured — but it traveled. Down rooftops and alleyways. Through hanging laundry and cracked shutters. Into windows that never opened and across courtyards that hadn't seen guests in years.

In the lower terraces, a baker paused mid-knead and tilted her head. “They're playing again,” she whispered to no one. Her apprentice rolled his eyes.

Two old men, sitting on a bench outside the shuttered post office, argued whether the melody was new. One insisted it was the same song played three mornings ago. The other, without breaking gaze from the horizon, said: “Still better than the hymn they play at observance.”

A group of children gathered on a balcony and swayed to the rhythm, while one girl tried to imitate Nabla’s sign language with little success. A man with a headache muttered darkly into his mug, “Why doesn’t anyone call the guard?” and immediately realized he didn’t actually _want_ them to.

And on the far edge of town, the doctor heard the music.

He stood inside his office, framed by frosted glass and the stiff scent of disinfectant, mid-paperwork. His coat was wrinkled. His toupee, too far forward. His coke-bottle glasses made his eyes look twice their size — buggy, blinking, always surprised.

When the first note reached his ears, he paused. Then smiled.

Without a word, he stood, walked to the door, and flipped the sign:

**CLOSED.**

Down the cobblestone street he went, humming slightly off-key, hands in his pockets. A passing breeze tried to lift his toupee; he didn’t notice. Around him, storefronts stayed open, unaware. He followed the music like it was pulling a string behind his sternum — the way people follow smells they forgot they loved.

A few minutes later, a boy with a broken wrist showed up at the office.

He knocked with the working wrist. Waited. Knocked again.

“Ugh,” he muttered, kicking a stone. “That doctor is _never_ here when you need him.”

Meanwhile, the doctor kept walking. Past the bakery. Past the steps that led to the Sanctum. Past the house where the walls were painted lilac by a woman who claimed to have seen an angel. The music grew louder.

By the time he reached the base of Nabla’s house, it was as if the rooftop itself were singing.

He adjusted his glasses, straightened his ridiculous hairpiece, and knocked on the door.

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