Page 75 of HeartTorn

But this broken song isn’t entirely Nyathri’s. The unicorn’s explosion not only scorched my flesh, it also unleashed something inside me I’ve been fighting for so long to suppress. My own song—my own brokenness. The guilt of Aurae’s death and the deaths of all those priests, which always hovers just on the edge of my awareness.

“You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?”Taar speaks from my memory, the timbre of his voice adding to the dissonance of my soul-song.“You cannot bear the weight of your sister’s death. It is too great a burden. It will crush you.”

It’s a lie.

It’s such a damned lie.

It is my fault. My weakness, my impulsive thoughtlessness. If not for me, Aurae and all those innocent souls would still be alive. I deserve to burn in this hellish soulfire. I deserve to remain trapped in this scorched corpse. I deserve this horror for as long as it holds me captive here.

Something moves in my blackened gaze.

Though I had thought myself blind before, I realize suddenly that there is darkness deeper than blindness. Branching fingers of oblivion streak across my mind in a flash. My soul jolts, like a startled heartbeat. If there’s one thing I fear more than this burning song, it’s what’s coming—the un-song. The ruination, the intentional destruction of all melody and harmony and resonance.

That black lightning was just a warning; I know what happens next. I’ve got to get away. I cannot stay here, alone and exposed in this valley of death. I need to . . . die. It’s the only escape left to me.

With a supreme effort, I drag my awareness down into the confines of my body. I cannot see, but I can feel the scorched earth around me. Gathering all my will, I move one arm. Shuddering, ash-flaked fingers search. Where is my knife? It must be close. I used it to cut Nyathri’s bonds, and it fell during the blast. It could be mere inches from my fingertips. If I can only find it, if I can only summon the strength to cut my wrist, maybe I can bleed out before—

Hell strikes.

After the burn of Nyathri’s soulfire, this sudden cold is a shock. I did not think I would ever feel cold again. It’s worse somehow. Worse than the fire, which at least I knew was alive in its destructive force. There is no life here.

But there ispresence.

I feel it.Them.Singular and multiple at once. A being, a sentience, full of intent but without soul. A sensation of skittering creeps through my awareness, followed by the hissing of many voices. Voices without song, without soul.

Hands crawl over my body, slow and exploratory, heedless of the way they slough off portions of my burned flesh. I try to scream, but the moment my lips part, something slips in across my tongue, slithering down my throat, stealing even my last weak cry.

Hunger surrounds me, pulsing in the atmosphere. The need to devour, to make all that is intoun. Undone, unmade. Un-song. This is the horror which enveloped Licorna in the hours after the Rift opened twenty-five years ago. How many millions of souls were devoured in a matter of hours? Yet this hunger remains unsatiated. An eternal need for consumption.

And it’s eating me.

I feel it, peeling away my outer layers, searching out my bones and marrow. Many hundreds of fingers, digging deeper and deeper, down to where my soul cries out and struggles and seeks to hide. I have nothing with which to defend myself except . . . except . . .

I don’t know how I do it. Despair drives me, and I act on instinct, taking hold of Nyathri’s broken song—all that burning dissonance. It is the only real thing here with me in the darkness, and though it is reduced to almost nothing, it flares to life when my spirit touches it. Pain shoots through my body once more. I welcome it—it’s better than being madeun. With a surge of desperation, I wrap that song around me before unleashing it, lashing at the hellish dark with bursts of light-sound.

Hell retreats, surprised. Maybe this is how the wild unicorns survive in Cruor. Their hearttorn songs are too great, too powerful for this entity to devour. The pain of their tortured souls is the very thing which keeps them alive. I lash again,wielding that burning song like a whip. Triumph flares in my soul. Is this the secret then? Is this how I will endure? If there’s anything I know, it’s song, and I—

The thought breaks off as hell surges over me once more. My soul screams, my voice blending with the burning song in eerie harmony an instant before the un-song cuts it off. I feel it invading me. Raping me. Consuming me. I feel the nothingness unspooling my rage and rendering it naught.This power is far too vast for me! How could anyone hope to keep it at bay?

Sudden light bursts off to one side of my awareness.

I don’t know how, but I’m conscious of my body once more. I cannot see anything—Nyathri’s blast scorched my eyes. But I feel that pulsing red light with an intensity I cannot deny. Straining what little muscle and tissue I still control, I turn my head toward it.

Like a burning star fallen from heaven, a sphere of light draws near, driving back the darkness, which screeches and retreats to make a path. The un-song writhes, tries to catch and smother that light, but it’s far too powerful, and its source too ancient. A unicorn stands in its center, singing her eternal song.

Nyathri!I try to cry out. The un-song catches my voice, strangles it to nothing. But the unicorn shakes her head, tearing at the dark with her horn. It shrieks voicelessly, hisses, and retreats again, allowing her to approach me. At last she stands above my burnt frame, gazing upon me with eyes like balls of red sunfire.

That is not my name.The voice which sings in my head does not speak with words. It does not need to. The meaning is clear in the sound, in the arrangement of notes and the unpleasant dissonance that pervades her soul.Nyathri—it is not right. I have no name anymore.

I understand. I feel that namelessness myself, cut off as I am from all that made sense of the madness of existence. I sing mysympathy to the unicorn, a line of fiery music all my own. And though I have tried several times before now, for once I detect a moment of harmony between my voice and that dissonant song of hers. It’s incomplete, but there’s the faintest hint of lyric tonality.

The unicorn responds at once, startled. She did not expect that moment of blending songs. She turns, and I fear she will flee yet again, abandoning me to hell.Please,I sing, reaching out with my spirit.Stay with me.

The unicorn bows her head, as though her horn is suddenly heavy.Why did you save me?she asks.

I try to reply but cannot find the right melody.

Why did you save me?she repeats, thinking perhaps that I’d not understood the first time.Twice you cut me free of those hell-tainted bonds, both times at great risk to your mortal frame. Why?

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