On that same night, the air in the Rainbowsplendent Palace was thin and sharp with tension. As the Princes were facing the shock of their lives, the initial shock of Tassel's erasure had somewhat subsided. Left behind was a cold and constant dread that settled into the corners of every room.
In the West Chamber, Fable stood before the Grand Hearth staring into the cold ashes of a fire that had died days ago. The Weaver's prophecy was a chilling pronouncement of a ghost's return. It had been the only topic of conversation, whispered in corridors and debated in hushed tones until there was nothing left to say. The waiting had become its own form of torment.
In the three days since his sons had left, Jethran had barely moved. He was, seated at the head of the long council table, his rainbow eyes distant. His focus had been turned inward; he was feeling, hunting for the hateful beat of his old nemesis. He was searching within the Living Pulse of his kingdom. He couldn’t feel Barnaby, but he could recognize a foul static at the very edge of his perception. It was a whisper of absolute gray that threatened to unravel the vibrant song of his world, but he never could locate it. He could only be aware of its looming present.
"That Tree..." Fable said, his voice doing little to disturb the heavy quiet. "The stories the Here tell... They call it the Final Word. They say that you punctuated. They say you wrote the ending of the Uncrowned story that day. So how does a story that's over simply start up again after the book has already been closed?"
"I don't know, Fable," Jethran replied, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Maybe it's a continuation. Maybe he wants a sequel."
"A sequel? We've already faced fifty of his sequels," Fable quipped, turning from the hearth with a dismissive gesture. "That was an Uncrowned franchise. That… I don't think it needs to be revisited. Besides, if he wants a series, he needs to have a hook that's compelling. And let's face it, Barnaby was not compelling. He was a scar. And I understand the scar might be a story, Jethran, but it's a boring story if there's no character growth. Besides, who would write that?"
"The author of that story was hate," Jethran offered. "And hate never runs out of ink. The magic I used gave him a new form. But I couldn't give him a new spirit. He's been patient, growing his roots into the world that we took from him. He used the very hope that we've held this whole time to fertilize his rage."
"But why now," Fable pondered. "Why wait twenty years to rewrite the ending?"
Before Jethran could respond, the great doors of the chamber burst open. Commander Block stood there, his face haggard, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Not for nothing, Your Majesties," he managed. "The Tree... It's... something is happening."
They ran.
The path from the West Chamber to the central arboretum, a path they had walked a thousand times, felt menacing. The dancing rainbows cast by the Tree of Hope's crystalline leaves, once a symbol of their victory, now seemed like the beautiful patterns of a serpent's skin. The joy that these walls had known was now replaced by the sounds of panic. Then, a single distant scream was cut unnaturally short.
Banner, having returned to his duty, was managing the Rainbow Color Guard into a wide perimeter, their swords drawn and their faces a mixture of determination and stark fear. Beyond them, Rayola and her Well Keep apprentices stood with their hands outstretched. The encroaching horror was a spread of gray nothing as it leached into the room.
The Kings reached the arboretum just in time to see the controlled chaos as it devolved into pure terror. Three pinpoints of light vanished as they rounded the corner to the sound of Dresdi screaming. Jethran put his arm around her shoulders as she sobbed in terror.
"Oh, stitch! What happened?" Banner shouted with a panicked fray in his voice.
"They're gone!" Dresdi screamed. “They were erased, they were just right there!”
Everyone dashed backward to avoid being struck by the wave of nil.
"Everyone is still here," Banner stammered as he turned to address the Kings, his eyes wide with disbelief. "I don't know what she's talking about."
“The Tribrancy!” Dresdi cried. “The Architect of Purpose, the Curator of Feelings, and the..."
Jethran placed his hand on Dresdi's arm. “What is a tribrancy?" he asked.
“Form a secondary perimeter!” Fable roared, his kingly authority cutting through the noise. “Use a lullaby of shielding! Isolate the magical signature! Don’t let the rot spread!”
Jethran pushed past him, his focus on diagnosis. He reached out with his Heartwood hand, feeling the space that contained the tree.
“It’s a nothing. An anti-magic,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “It feels wrong. Profoundly wrong. A null-frequency. It’s eating.”
The empty started at the base of the Tree of Hope, a creeping patch of lifeless gray that seemed to suck the color and light from the seven-hued bark.
“It's a necrosis of magic crawling up the trunk,” Fable shouted.
The crystalline leaves on the lowest branches had turned a dull, cloudy pewter, cracking and falling to the yellow grass where they shattered like cheap glass. It turned the grass and the lilac soil to a dull gray.
“Hold the line!” Commander Block bellowed, his voice straining to be heard over the rising panic. “Keep it contained!"
Rayola and one of her apprentices, with desperate courage, stepped closer, their combined song a focused wave of healing energy. For a moment, the gray rot seemed to halt, even recede under their assault. But then it moved outward.
“Laydo, no! Fall back!” Fable screamed, but it was too late.
The Tree pulsed. A wave of invisible, anti-magical energy rolled outward. Jethran felt it coming, a wave of pure nullity, and reacted on instinct. A shield of shimmering purple light erupted from his Heartwood hand, a desperate attempt to protect them.
But the null-wave was an erasure. It passed through his shield as if it weren't there, the nature of its power rendering his magic useless.
Both Rayola and Laydo gasped sharply. Their forms wavered, their vibrant robes and skin desaturating in an instant, collapsing into a flat gray. Then, it dissolved. A silent implosion and their bodies unraveled into fine iridescent threads. The threads pulled inward on themselves. They tangled into a pinpoint of absolute nothing. Then vanished completely.
“Jethran, they're gone!” Fable screamed. “The Head Well Keep and her apprentice were unmade. Do you remember? We met Rayola on our first day in Whispering Grove. We watched her grow up.”
Jethran only looked at his husband and shook his head. "We met Yola," Jethran argued. "But she was older than than us."
"Yola is her mother," Fable said is he looked from the gray white on the tree to the space where Tierro stood when he lost his friend Tassel. "Jethran what are we going to do to stop this before you or I are forgotten?"
A sudden chill filled the air. As Jethran turned to face the Tree of Hope directly.
“It’s him,” Jethran whispered, his voice a ghost of a sound. "He's here."
Jethran could feel it now, the cold taste of nothing that filled his linghood. He recognized it as the Pulse of the Uncrowned One made manifest.
As if summoned by the terror, a thick black smoke began to pour from the gray rot on the Tree’s trunk. It was the smoke of a deep and profound corruption. It coiled in the air, gathering substance into a malevolent cloud that took a shape above the Tree of Hope.
A tall figure materialized, its form flickering and indistinct, but its silhouette unmistakable. It was the Uncrowned King. The specter’s head turned, its empty sockets seeming to scan the horrified crowd, and then it spoke. His voice was a whisper of pure malice that echoed throughout the Palace, and outward to Evenhere City. Like an old world broadcast that invaded every home.
"This world's song is ending.” The words slithered into the air. "A new quieter age is dawning. The Age of Not. The prince of old will herald the birth of the oldest power. To unmake all that has been built."
The specter raised a smoky arm, pointing its accusatory finger directly at Jethran. Everyone turned to look at the King.
"The flaw will be silenced," the stain on the sky hissed. "The overtaking of Void is nearly complete. Soon your precious Harmony will be taken and the Age of Vibrancy will end. I will make Evenhere gray again."
With that final pronouncement, the spectral form dissolved, melting back into the gray rot on the Tree, leaving behind a silence more terrifying than any scream.nFable stared at the empty space.
“It is him,” Fable breathed, the words a confirmation of their worst fears. “Jethran, he’s found a way.”
Jethran didn’t answer. He was no longer looking at the Tree. He was looking past it, past the palace walls, past the kingdom of Evenhere itself. The threat was a clear and present cosmic danger. He felt the Pulse, or the lack of it. He felt Evenhere breaking, and he could feel the hole where five songs had been ripped from the chorus. They marked a gaping wound. But the words the specter had used. Jethran knew.
“The overtaking of Void. Fable, he’s not just using the Tree as a gateway,” Jethran said, his voice dangerously calm. “He’s corrupted the elements themselves. He’s targeting my brothers.”
"I have to go to them. I have to warn them.” He turned to Fable, his rainbow eyes blazing with purpose. "You and Dresdi need to make sure this entire arboretum is locked permanently."
Dresdi nodded. Fable was not so quick to agree. “Go to them?” Fable's body turned fully. “Jethran, it took you and Saga a week just to find the first two. We don’t have time.”
“I don’t need time,” Jethran said, the truth of his own nature finally settling upon him. “I’m not a king seeking an audience through the trials.”
“I’m Cadence," Jethran said. "They are a part of my song. I don’t have to find them. I just have to listen.”
He closed his eyes, shutting out the chaos of the arboretum, and reached inward, past the Pulse, past the Hum of the world, to the very core of his being, to the source of Spectrasy. He found the six notes he had collected, the notes of his brothers, and he called to them.
He used a pure note of harmonic intent, an internal song sent out across the fabric of reality. The world dissolved. It was a gentle unraveling, a feeling of being unspooled into a million threads of light and then instantly, impossibly, rewoven into a new pattern.
Fable, who had grabbed Jethran’s arm in a panicked attempt to stop him, cried out as he was pulled along, his own essence dissolving and reforming in a dizzying rush.