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Chapter 113 – The Tower That Wept
The old man arrived without a sound.
No gate opened. No light flared. One moment the path beyond the Beacon's boundary was empty—dust and quiet, scattered motes of half-erased code drifting like ash—and the next, he stood there.
His presence was not loud. Not like a challenger, not like a savior. Just… undeniable.
His robes were grey, patched and weathered, traced with the faded sigils of the Tower itself. His eyes, though—those were still sharp. Not cruel. Not kind. Just awake.
Erevan saw him from a distance and stopped mid-step.
"…That's a Warden's insignia," Yuren muttered beside him, hand twitching near the hilt of his blade. "You want me to handle this?"
"No," Erevan replied. "I think he's already handled himself."
The old man walked with a slight limp as he approached the firepit that had, over the last two days, become the heart of the fledgling Accord. He looked around at the scattered rebels, the memory-scarred, the silence-weary—and did not flinch.
"My name is Veyr Solyn," he said. His voice was like the echo of a bell rung long ago. "Former Warden of Script Vault 12. Former servant of the Tower. And the last keeper of a truth it buried in blood."
Silence fell.
Even the wind seemed to hush.
Erevan nodded slowly. "Then speak it. Let it breathe again."
Veyr stepped forward and reached into his sleeve. From within, he drew a scroll—not of paper or flesh, not of runic glass or coded silk.
But of woven memory.
Bound tight. Sealed in agony. Written in the lifeblood of a fallen rebel node.
"I was there," Veyr said. "When the Tower wept."
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Thirty years ago, the Tower was not unshakeable.
Not to itself.
Script Vault 12 was one of the deepest cores—hidden beneath Layered Node 7, beneath a city where no time passed and no names were spoken. Its purpose was simple: containment. It held anomalies the Tower could not erase, only forget.
One day, an anomaly broke containment.
And the Tower… grieved.
It did not simply send Heralds.
It cried.
Reality buckled. Nodes dissolved. Archivists went mad.
And in the very heart of it all, the Tower recorded its sorrow in a song.
Veyr heard it.
He memorized it.
And he was never the same.
"This scroll," Veyr said now, holding it out to Erevan, "contains the resonance of that moment. Not just data. Not just memory. Emotion. Pure. Tower-born. Forbidden."
Erevan stepped forward and took the scroll.
The moment his fingers brushed its surface, his vision flickered.
A hallway. Endless. Spiraling upwards. Carved with names he did not know, but felt like parts of him.
And in the center—
A note.
A single musical note, suspended in space.
Crying.
Not screaming. Not shouting. Just weeping, gently.
It was… familiar.
Too familiar.
He staggered back, breath caught in his throat.
Yuren caught him. "What the hell was that?"
Veyr's gaze softened, just a little. "That is the Tower's regret. Its first one. Perhaps its last."
Serah's voice was steady. "And you've brought this now? Why?"
"Because," Veyr said, stepping toward the fire and lowering himself to the ground, "the Accord cannot just fight with anger. It must know what it's fighting for. And what we almost became."
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That night, the scroll was opened.
Not read. Not explained. Just… heard.
And from it came the Tower's weeping—woven into a lullaby without words.
Some laughed in disbelief.
Some cried.
Some stared into the fire like it had swallowed them whole.
Nyara, sitting apart from the others, whispered something no one could hear.
Erevan stood in the middle of it all, unmoving.
But inside?
Something was changing.
Because if the Tower could grieve…
If even it had once felt pain for what it had done…
Then maybe, just maybe, victory wouldn't come from tearing it down.
But from making it remember what it used to be.
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Author's Note:
What happens when even the enemy once had a heart?
Chapter 114 will begin the Songbound Sequence, as Erevan traces the Tower's regret to its first creation.
Thank you for reading.
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Let's keep building the Accord, together.
– Dorian Blackthorn
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