Inside the Fruit — Lirien's Long Dream
Lirien did not die when the Quiet Country collapsed inward.
She was taken.
The Pale Serpent's severed shadow—
the piece cut away when the empire shattered the First Silence—
bloomed like a black flower
and swallowed her whole.
Now she hangs at the center of the unripe fruit.
Naked.
Weightless.
Suspended in a womb of perfect black.
Her horns have grown into the fruit's stem,
obsidian roots drinking the tree's stolen lullabies.
(SFX: slow crystalline hum, hmmm—hmmmmm—)
Her eyes stay open.
They have been open for ten thousand years.
She dreams with them.
She watches every door the tree opens—
every person who steps through—
every possibility born from the Harbingers' defiance.
Patience curdles inside her.
Not hatred.
Hunger.
A precise, surgical kind.
She wants the moment.
The instant the chord sang its refusal.
The second Kael crushed the chess queen.
The flash where Veyra embraced the thing that terrified her most.
The tear in Seraphine's voice when she chose to remain broken.
She wants to stretch that second
until it becomes
the only second
that exists.
She sings inside the fruit.
Not the Horned lullabies of mercy—
something new.
A song for a silence that has learned
the addictive ache
of being wanted.
(SFX: subtle heartbeat, out of sync — thm… thm… thm)
The Original Songs of the Horned Silence
There were only ever three:
The Cradle Song
Sung to the Wound when it was still small enough to cradle.
A promise: You will never be alone.
The Binding Song
Sung when the Wound began to grow teeth.
A promise: We will keep the world separate—for its own good.
The Forgetting Song
Sung when the Horned realized the second song had become a prison.
A promise: We will erase ourselves so no one can ever sing it again.
Lirien was the last throat that remembered all three.
Now she is composing a fourth.
It has no words.
Only rhythm:
Three hearts refusing to stop.
Three lives that should have ended and didn't.
Three people she cannot forget.
She taps her horns against the fruit's inner wall—
tok… tok… tok…
until the entire tree trembles.
Night Beneath the Tree — The Doubt
The fire is low.
(SFX: faint crackle → pop… hiss…)
The Pale Serpent coils around the trunk like a worried cat,
its blind eyes fixed on the black fruit
that has begun to drip.
One drop every hour.
Each drop lands in silence,
eating perfect circles into the dirt
as if the world cannot bear to touch it.
Kael sits with his back against the trunk,
silver scar burning like cold lightning.
He hasn't slept in four nights.
Every time he blinks
Lirien's song tries to crawl into the hollow where the Hunger used to live.
Veyra sharpens Wrathbinder using a saint's rib.
scrape—scrape—SCRAPE
The only steady sound.
Rose sleeps curled against Seraphine,
who has not spoken since the serpent revealed the truth.
At last, Veyra breaks.
"We cut it down," she growls.
"Tonight.
Burn the fucking tree if we have to.
I'm not letting that horned bitch wear our refusal like a crown."
Seraphine's voice is barely air.
"Cutting the branch makes it fall.
And the fall ripens it."
Kael's hands clench until the knuckles crack.
(SFX: krk—krk)
"And if we do nothing," he murmurs,
"she wins.
After ten thousand years… she wins."
Silence settles over them.
Thick.
Heavy.
Then Rose stirs, muttering a single word:
"Mommy…"
Veyra freezes.
The whetstone slips from her hand—
—and makes no sound when it hits the dirt.
Because they all heard that voice.
The voice of someone they failed.
Veyra's sister.
Seraphine's Queen Elyra.
Kael's mother.
Above them, the fruit pulses once—
THM.
A thin crack snakes across its surface.
From inside, Lirien's voice pours out—
soft, tender, horrifying.
"Soon," she sings.
"Soon I'll hold you the way you were meant to be held.
No more choosing.
No more pain.
Just the three of you…
and me…
in the only second
that ever mattered."
Another drop falls.
The eaten circle in the earth is now large enough
for a child to lie in.
Rose whimpers.
Veyra's thorns erupt in panic,
cocooning her in living armor.
Seraphine stands,
eyes old enough to remember the first dawn.
"We have one night," she whispers.
"One night before it ripens.
One night to find a fourth answer
that's not surrender
or slaughter."
Kael looks up at the cracked fruit,
where Lirien's newborn song seeps out
like blood through a wound.
He rises.
His voice is steady—
for the first time in weeks.
"Then we go inside," he says.
"Before it comes out."
Veyra stares like he's snapped in half.
"You're insane."
"Maybe," Kael says.
"But sanity hasn't gotten us anything lately."
Seraphine looks at the Pale Serpent.
The great creature lowers its head
and opens its jaws.
Inside is not a throat—
but a door,
lined with scales that shimmer like dying stars.
The scale it shed earlier glows at their feet,
pointing toward the fruit.
The way in
is the way the serpent once escaped.
Kael steps first.
Veyra curses, scoops up Rose, and follows.
Seraphine lingers.
She stands at the edge of the serpent's tongue,
looking back at the tree
that has been their miracle,
their salvation,
their cage.
Then she sings—
not the Forgetting Song,
not the Binding Song—
just the first three notes
of the Cradle Song
the Horned once sang to the newborn Wound.
(SFX: soft, trembling hum — la—laaa—laaaaa)
The tree shivers.
The fruit cracks wide.
Inside, Lirien smiles—
a smile with ten thousand years of hunger behind it.
The serpent's jaws close.
(SFX: WHUUMPH — darkness slams shut)
The fire goes out.
The world holds its breath.
High above,
the black fruit ripens—
one heartbeat early.
THM.