The Fallen One stepped into the Chief's room — vast, grand, yet eerily sterile. The polished floors gleamed under soft chandeliers, and a large poster adorned one wall: musical notes swirling amidst flickering lights, as if the melody itself was alive.
In the corner, a group of children, dressed as stick figures, sang in perfect unison. Their voices, light and haunting, echoed like a factory's assembly line—each note precise, synchronized, almost mechanical.
A chill ran down the Fallen One's spine.
"This is… familiar somehow," he murmured.
His eyes shifted upward to a faded, yellowing poster pinned near the ceiling. It featured Amend, the long silver stickman from the ballroom, standing tall with that same confident smirk. Below it, in bold letters, was a catchphrase:
"Red Champoure: The Maestro's Legacy."
The Fallen One's gaze lingered, the weight of history settling heavy.
Something told him Amend's music was more than just a performance — it was a message, a weapon, and maybe… a trap.
The Fallen One glanced at the clock—time was ticking fast. He slid his gaze toward a small camera discreetly nestled in the corner of the room. With a quick flick of his fingers and a few swift keystrokes on his concealed device, he hacked into the feed.
There, on the screen, Velrise stepped gracefully into the ballroom, unaware of the danger weaving around her like a silent predator.
He smiled thinly.
"So, Amend—or no, Syring—has been hiding here all along. That snake of a prince really loves to get under people's skin. Great. Just great."
His eyes hardened with resolve.
"I'll have to get in, save Velrise's friends from this hypnotic trap, and let Velrise herself figure out the chains tightening around her mind."
Without hesitation, he folded away his device and readied himself.
Time to cut the strings.
The Fallen One stepped further into the grand ballroom, his senses assaulted by an eerie symphony. Melodies floated visibly in the air—ethereal streams of glowing musical notes swirling around every entranced stick figure like chains of light. The entire room pulsed with a hypnotic rhythm, binding the crowd in a trance.
With sleek plugs in his ears to block the maddening sound waves, he moved confidently, eyes locked on the towering figure standing at the center of it all: Syring—Amend's true name, revealed in whispers.
Syring turned slowly, a sly smile curling on his lips as the music dimmed around him, leaving only a faint echo.
Syring: "What are you doing here, Fallen One? Or did I interrupt something?"
His voice was smooth, layered with mockery and a hint of challenge.
The Fallen One's gaze hardened.
"Go ahead. Answer me. At least have the courtesy to explain yourself."
The clash between Syring and the Fallen One became a violent ballet of chaos across the very architecture of the building.
The moment Syring launched himself, the Fallen One met him with an iron grip—snatching his skull mid-air and slamming him headfirst into the marble floor with bone-jarring force. A glowing musical note slipped past the Fallen One's lips, jamming down his throat and exploding into dissonance inside him.
His knees buckled.
He vomited blood and the note in a spray of crimson.
But he didn't scream.
He didn't grunt.
He just stood. Silent.
And charged.
They both ran along the walls like spiders—Syring's melodic energy forming platforms and coiling staves of notes under his feet. A symphonic Ferris wheel unfurled from thin air, which Syring used as a springboard, flipping down with impossible grace and tackling the Fallen One mid-run.
But the Fallen One was a creature of punishment and refusal.
He reversed the momentum, slamming Syring to the wall, throwing devastating kicks into his gut and side. The last one missed—Syring dodged and twisted, grabbing the Fallen One's leg and yanking.
A cruel rhythm began.
Syring grinned as he turned the Fallen One's own limb into a yo-yo of pain, each pull slamming the Fallen One's face into his rising fists, again and again like some grotesque percussion instrument.
Then—crack!
The Fallen One's arm swung wide and chopped Syring's legs simultaneously, a clean horizontal sweep.
One leg bent inward with an audible snap, and the notes around them faltered—the music briefly broken.
And then…
A silent boom.
The sound of silence was made thunderous by its absence.
It was the pause before the drop.
Syring's slap was sudden. Jarring.
It rang louder than the music had ever been.
He reeled the Fallen One's leg back again like a tetherball—BAM! His fist collided with the Fallen One's jaw, pulling him back in for another, and another, until—
WHAM!
The Fallen One's free leg spun like a blade, catching Syring in the side of the skull.
Mid-air, the Fallen One curved his body like a falling crescent moon.
Too fast to stop.
Syring was still holding the leg when the force flipped him upside down, and—
BOOOOM.
The prince of melody was slammed spine-first into the wall, sending cracks rippling like spiderwebs from the dent he now decorated.
Dust rained.
The music died.
And silence, once again, reigned.
Syring turns. The notes sharpen. The room shifts.
Suddenly—BAM! A sound wave hits — the kind that would shatter a normal skull.
The Fallen One leans into it, boots dragging across the floor. Still standing.
He grins as—
Notes shoot like bullets. The wall curves and becomes a vertical platform. Gravity shifts.
THE FALLEN ONE:
Flips sideways, planting on the wall, sprinting up.
He dodges a spinning clef-note, catches it mid-air, hurls it back — CRASH! The glass ceiling explodes from sonic pressure.
Syring levitates slightly —
Conducting invisible instruments.
THE FALLEN ONE:
Runs along the wall, drops, kicks off a pillar — rolls into a slide under a sheet of slicing notes.
He grabs a floating music stand, spins, and slams it like a blade against the floor — generating a sonic BOOM that knocks Syring back.
Close-up: The notes start entering people's mouths again.
The Fallen One grits his teeth. He yells through his teeth — "That's it. Cut the crap."
He charges. Hand ignites. Punch infused with frequency-canceling force.WHAM. Syring is knocked off his feet.
The hall shatters around them as the spell weakens.
Chandeliers hang from a swirling sky of shifting staves and broken notes. Floating platforms made of sheet music pulse with electric rhythm, but suddenly—
BAM! SYRING launches upward, KANGAROO KICKS the FALLEN ONE straight off the chandelier with explosive force.
🎶 The orchestra screeches—violins slide into chaos. Drums detune. Cymbals crash out of sync. Everything goes OFF-BEAT. A twisted final boss theme takes over—violent jazz fused with glitchy tempo shifts.
CLOSE CONTACT. NO MERCY.
Syring and the Fallen One collide mid-air.
Fists fly. A swing. A slam. Sparks fly from each blow.
Syring follows with a mid-air roundhouse—pure fluid motion.
But—The Fallen One DODGES at the last instant, vanishing into a blur of speed. He spirals up, spins around Syring's head like a ghostly orbit, and—"tik-tik-tik-tik—"He sprints sideways across the floating musical notes, turning the very battlefield into his path.
Syring, breath caught, eyes blazing—He floats upward, standing on a drifting eighth note as if it's a step of divine rhythm.
His eyes lock on the Fallen One—Who now holds... Syring's Wand.
The wand, once glowing in harmony, now emits a chaotic strobe. The power to control beats, tempo, harmony—now hijacked.
The Fallen One grins, tuning the battlefield like a DJ from Hell. The beat shatters into silence, and then—
"Let's see how you dance when you don't even know the rhythm."
Syring: (quietly, eyes locked)"...Let's dance."
Suddenly—WHUMP!—he drops like a ragdoll, only to blur mid-fall and float back up like he's being lifted by an invisible wave. Before the Fallen One can even blink, BA-BA-BAM! — A flurry of strikes rains down: elbow, palm, knee, spin—like a drum solo in combat form.
The Fallen One is launched—but he twists the chaos in his favor. Midair, he runs on nothing, then kicks backward with a sudden cannonball-style flip. His body rolls through the air, momentum amplified by the flip itself like a gymnast breaking reality.
But Syring isn't done. With a single flick, he makes the musical notes beneath them bounce upward like trampolines.
The moment the Fallen One lands on one—BOOM!—it catapults him straight into the ceiling, but now—
💥GRAVITY FLIPS💥The notes twist. The world spins. The ceiling becomes the ground. Now, up is down. Down is jazz. Nothing makes sense except the rhythm.
Fallen One (gritted teeth): "Shit..."
He sees it. His sword was embedded in the far wall. He dashes sideways, which is now down, sprinting at an angle like he's in a dream that forgot the rules.
But the Gravity Notes slam down in sync, like stomping kicks from a choir of giants—each one a trap beat with mass.
WHUMP. WHUMP. WHUMP.
One hits him. Then another. He's pinned, body twisted, stuck.
And worse…The wand—Syring's wand, the instrument of sound and control—has slipped from his grasp, clattering downward into the silence like a dropped mic in a room full of gods.
Then the ballroom grew quiet—eerily so.
The moonlight poured in from the shattered ceiling, casting silver streaks across the grand floor like divine judgment. Syring, still mid-reach for his wand, froze as the iron-silk bindings coiled around him—threaded like cursed lullabies into his skin and limbs, pulling him back from the air like a puppet with snapped strings.
He growled, "You think you've won, Fallen One?"But no voice came from his opponent.
The silencer note throbbed in the fallen one's chest like a phantom heartbeat. He said nothing, but every step he took toward Syring thundered like a war drum. The ballroom attendees—once puppets of the music—now stood still, blinking, wide-eyed, as they'd awakened from a thousand-year sleep. Some covered their ears. Some cried. Some just stared at the two in battle—one bound in chains of melody, the other cloaked in silence and moonlight.
Syring screamed, his voice hoarse with rage and fear, "You exposed me to the moon…! You know what it does! That light—it's—!"
The iron-silk twisted tighter.
The fallen one raised a hand, fingers open—then clenched them into a fist.
Behind Syring, the floating musical notes shattered like glass. The harmony broke. Dissonance spilled into the air like blood.
The moon above seemed to pulse.
And the sword-liquid binding Syring shifted—not killing him, but holding him—like a cocoon. A prison forged from melody and broken magic.
Syring's voice cracked. "You… traitor... this wasn't supposed to be your story!"
And yet, the fallen one said nothing.
But in that silence, something greater echoed. The music had ended. But the dance was never his.
As the dust settled and the fallen one suddenly felt the effects of the silencer note—
Velrise stepped forward, but her voice caught in her throat as she looked at the fallen one—not just at what he'd become, but what he'd chosen. Christine held Roselit back, who trembled at the sight of Syring's cocoon. Purana's golden eyes narrowed, calculating, while Camila whispered, "…he's not done yet."
Then the fallen one pressed the silencer tool to his throat—a hiss, a pulse, a flicker of tone—and his voice came through: broken, deep, but unmistakably real.
"I'm sorry it had to be this way..."
His words echoed like church bells in the stunned silence of the ballroom.
"...but could you please evacuate the area... and don't forget the hypnotized and drugged stick children in the back… in the Chief's kitchen."
The room collectively gasped. Some attendants began to move instinctively, even as others stood frozen.
Purana raised her voice, sharp like lightning. "MOVE! You heard him—check the back corridors, now!"Velrise grabbed Camila's arm. "Come on. We'll go with them—Christine, Roselit, and sweep the right hall."
The fallen one turned his back on them all, approaching Syring's writhing silk-bound form. The moonlight made his silhouette look carved from shadow and war.
Syring snarled, "They'll never believe you. You're nothing without your voice."
The fallen one looked at him, cold and distant, before saying quietly—
"They don't need to believe me."
He gestured again as waves of attendants began to stir, helping each other toward the exits. The ballroom was turning into a rescue operation.
And the orchestra?Silenced. But a new rhythm had begun—footsteps of the saved, cries of the freed, and the final quiet of a fallen tyrant.
Syring thrashed within the silken iron as the floor beneath him suddenly turned soft, traitorous—quicksand pulling him down, refusing to let him leave the stage he once controlled.
"You can try and kill me," he growled through clenched teeth, "but you know that won't happen."
But the ballroom wasn't listening to him anymore. The very structure had turned against him.
With a low, resonating hum, the sword that had wrapped the entire room in living metal began to draw back. The silken iron tightened one final time, sealing Syring in a suspended cocoon mid-fall—half-buried, half-floating in the now-solidified ballroom floor.
The sword clinked back into its original form. Its edges were still glowing faintly with magic as if remembering what it had just accomplished.
The fallen one staggered.
Blood slid down his throat—dark, real, and pulsing. The silencer note… it had sliced him deeper than he let on. The resonance had cut not only his voice but the connective tissue of his body and magic.
He reached for his neck as he sheathed the sword with a steady hand, despite the trembling in his knees.
And then—his vision blurred.
The chandelier lights above fractured into halos. The moonlight blurred through the now-shattered ceiling. The sound of distant, rushing footsteps—rescued children being freed, the girls calling for help, the chaos of a world being reclaimed from madness—
It all faded…
His body slumped to the ground beside the sealed Syring, a quiet collapse of someone who gave everything, even the words he could no longer speak.
The ballroom—scarred, silent, sacred now—held them both. One, a tyrant finally bound. The other, a voice lost—but never silenced.
Velrise stepped slowly over the fractured floor, the heel of her boot crunching bits of broken note-glass and scorched marble underfoot. The storm of sounds had quieted, but the echo still hung in the air like a ghost refusing to leave the stage.
She dropped to her knees beside him, her sharp voice barely containing the quake beneath her chest.
"Why did you do it?" she demanded, eyes darting between his blood-streaked throat and closed lids."Why'd you come here, huh? You were free. You were gone. You could've stayed gone."
His body didn't answer.
His fingers twitched slightly, but his mouth didn't move. Not yet. His breath came shallow. His skin was pale, but still warm.
Velrise grabbed the collar of his coat and shook him—not violently, just enough to anchor him, or maybe herself.
"You knew Syring was baiting a trap. You knew how strong the orchestra was. And you knew we were in here, too! So why?"
Behind her, the others approached slowly—Christine with wide, bewildered eyes, Roselit biting her nails, Purana gripping her staff tightly, Camila breathing heavier than usual, knuckles white.
None of them interrupted.
Velrise's voice was more annoyed but still panicked now.
"Why'd you come back for us?"
A faint cough left his mouth—barely audible, but enough. His lips curled into the faintest smirk, though he winced from the pain. He tried to speak, but no voice came.
Instead, he shakily reached into his coat and pulled out a crumpled note. Folded twice. Bloodstained. Almost torn in half.
He handed it to her with what strength he had left.
She took it, unfolded it slowly, then read:
"Suggestion from a colleague, nothing personal."
Velrise stared at the words for a long, quiet second.
Then she folded the paper, put it in her chest pocket to throw away later, and whispered under her breath:
"Clown."
She grabbed his arm and gently began to lift him with help from Christine. Camila motioned to the others: "Get the kids. We're leaving this hell behind."
And the scene faded to black—sword sealed, villain bound, heroes wounded but walking.
The war wasn't over. But something had changed.
INT. DREAMSCAPE – ETHEREAL DARKNESS WITH FLOATING LIGHTS
The fallen one lies unconscious, bleeding faintly from his neck. His mind stirs as surreal memories surface, fragmented and half-lucid. He hears Velrise's voice echoing... then sees her younger self: arms scraped from work, dirt under her nails, wristbands glinting with the word "LIMITER."
FLASHBACK:
EXT. ORUB CITY – DAY – AN ARTISTIC, FLAT, WHITE WORLD POPULATED BY STICKMEN
A bustling and oddly charming stickman metropolis. Velrise, a young but sharp-eyed woman, stands at her combo hot dog stand/tailor trailer. Behind her is a painted wooden sign: "VELRISE'S FASHION 'N FRANKS." She flips a hot dog while sewing a patch into a customer's sleeve. Her LIMITER bands shimmer slightly—strange tech hidden in plain sight.
A customer asks, "You ever do hair anymore, Vel?"
VELRISE(without looking)"Not unless it's an emergency or you bring cupcakes."
Purana walks by with a clipboard. Christine and Camila are laughing while carrying shopping bags. Roselit balances a tray of herbal drinks.
ROSELIT"Velrise, we're going to the valley farm later—need anything?"
VELRISE"Just peace and some moonbeans if they've grown in."
INT. VELRISE'S GARDEN – NIGHT
A luminous valley carved into the inside of a great cavern. Bioluminescent plants float on calm water beside dirt paths. Velrise kneels, tending to a small red flower. The moonlight hits her short hair. She hums softly. She doesn't see the shadow in the distance. The fallen one. Watching. Weapon ready. Then lowering it.
FALLEN ONE (V.O.)"She... she doesn't even know she's a target. Just lives. Grows. Loves. And they want to rip her roots out for land?"
FLASH TO: A SUIT IN A DARK ROOM – A MYSTERIOUS OFFICIAL"You take her out, and we can take the deed from her safe. She's just a brat. No family. Just friends and plants."
The fallen one looks at a picture of Velrise smiling with her friends. A single line written on the photo:
"The Garden is stronger than any stone."
BACK TO DREAMSCAPE
The fallen one jolts in the dream. His vision is cracked like broken glass. He murmurs in his sleep: execute mission, exterminate target....
The fallen one's boots tapped softly against the buzzing metal of the transmission powerline, city lights blurred below him like stars fallen from heaven and dragged through mud. His head throbbed—an ache born from more than just pain. It was a memory. It was guilt. It was a choice.
As he adjusted the strap of his gear and slid his blade into place across his back, Splint's voice crackled in through the communicator embedded in his collar.
"Yo, you good? We can take a break from missions for a while. I can update you on how well Jest Cain is doing in his island of a prison cell, and if he's giving them any info."
The fallen one didn't respond right away.
He looked toward the horizon—Orub City's towers cast long shadows under the early morning haze. The air smelled like wet wires, faint ash, and something soft—roses maybe. Probably Velrise's doing.
He blinked hard.
Then he pressed the side of his neck to activate the response channel.
"I'm up. Don't need a break. Just send the coordinates for the next contract."
Splint's voice was surprised.
"Damn. Alright. You sure, though? Jest Cain's been talking—about the Velvet Orders, the nobles, the land deals. You made a hell of a scene last night. Syring's locked. Ballroom's cleaned. But I gotta say, that blood still hasn't dried off your neck."
The fallen one touched the faint scab along his throat.
"Some blood doesn't deserve to dry. Some stains are earned."
Splint exhaled.
"Right… So. What are you gonna tell Velrise? You know she's not gonna let you walk away that easy."
The fallen one didn't answer that. Not immediately. He started walking along the powerline, one foot in front of the other, cloak flaring gently in the wind.
Then:
"Nothing. For now."
And just like that, the wind carried him forward. Another mission. Another weight.