The message arrived from the wastelands. A digital scream, fragmented and desperate, piggybacking on an old Syndicate weather satellite. It was from Charlotte Soladorn.
The video showed her in a makeshift bunker, surrounded by the guts of old separation machinery. She looked feverish, her eyes burning with a fanatic's light.
"You see? You see what your 'song' has done?" The camera panned to a window, showing a landscape in turmoil. The ground itself seemed to be flowing in slow, crystalline waves. A distant geyser shot not water, but shimmering, solid light into the air. "You unleashed a chaos you cannot comprehend! The Vitae is resonating with latent magic in the dead soil, with forgotten pollutants! It is terraforming the world according to a madman's symphony!"
She leaned into the camera, her voice a raw scrape. "I have rebuilt a separator. A small one. It creates a zone of purity, of silence. A haven from the noise. I am the last bastion of reason. And when your beautiful, singing world collapses under the weight of its own impossible music, you will beg for the silence I hold."
The transmission ended.
The Council watched in grim silence. Charlotte wasn't just hiding. She was experimenting. She was creating a counter-reality—a bubble of the old, sterile order.
"She's not wrong about the terraforming," Lysander said quietly. "The Echoing Font was a localized healing. But the Chord is global. It is singing to everything, not just us. The wastelands are… waking up. In ways we can't predict."
Regina logged the threat. "A hostile entity with knowledge of pre-Chord technology. Probability of conflict: high."
Rex looked ill. "She's offering silence. After hearing the song… could people really want that again?"
Sage watched the frozen image of Charlotte's furious face. The final battle, he realized, wouldn't be for control of the source. It would be for the soul of the future. A choice between a complex, beautiful, dangerous song, and a safe, silent, sterile void.
The work within the Spire was no longer enough. The song had to be defended. Its first true enemy had just declared herself.