This moment in time was bound to be a memorable one for many.
An announcement had struck the world like a shockwave, rippling across continents and into the ears of countless Awakened scattered across Earth. The same message echoed within them all, carried in the unmistakable sound of the Song.
A new Songborn had emerged.
Who was a Songborn? Who the hell could even be granted that title?
You had to understand—this wasn't something casually given. The Song only bestowed it upon those it judged to possess frightening potential, combined with rare traits like mindset, resolve, and other qualities found only in the most driven individuals.
So in the end, a Songborn wasn't just a title.
It was a verdict.
One that marked someone as destined to stand at the top of the world, to climb toward the summit of power itself.
To the common people, a Songborn represented hope. Someone destined to stand at the forefront of humanity, to lead them, to carry them forward, and maybe—just maybe—guide them toward salvation.
And a Songborn also represented a calamity if they turned out to be an enemy—or someone with no regard for the Human Race. Worst case, and very possible at that, it could even be someone from the Dissonant Hand, carrying the creed to drag everything into damnation.
So announcing the emergence of a Songborn to mundanes was like announcing the coming of a god—or, in another case, a devil.
News outlets caught the signal almost instantly from Awakeners, and the information spread across the world at a pace so fast it felt less like communication and more like contagion.
"Breaking News: A World Announcement has just been issued by the Song…"
"A Chordbearer has received the title Songborn…"
"Efforts are underway to identify the awakened individual…"
"In addition to the Resonant Prince and Zakon Vagra, the Titan of War, a new Songborn by the name Silent Thread has…"
From The Daily Ember in North America to The Celestial Dispatch in Antarctica, where people watched beneath the blighting cold, the news spread without pause. Across Asia, The Silent Truth relayed it next, voices layered with unease as people stared at their screens asking the same obvious question forming in every mind.
Who the hell was this Songborn?
Was he fighting for the human race, or was he one of the betrayers from the Dissonant Hand?
No one could know.
So everyone reacted differently.
Noonday in Virelion, a metropolitan city in East Asia.
A husband sat beside his wife, both watching the news.
"This is stupid," he said, shaking his head. "How is it possible for the government to have this much trouble identifying an Awakened? Either they're completely useless at their jobs… or they might as well just tell us it's some Dissonant scum."
His wife didn't reply.
Her eyes stayed on the screen.
Somewhere in Europe, a receptionist stood behind the counter of a hotel lobby, her attention half on the TV mounted on the wall and half on the noisy crowd gathered in front of it. The passage was filled with people, voices clashing as they argued over the news.
"Who the hell needs another Songborn now? As if the Resonant Prince isn't already enough pain in the ass!"
"Humph! Just admit you're scared your wife's about to pick up a new celebrity crush if it turns out to be a guy."
"You—ugh! Shut up, fatty!"
The receptionist yawned, leaning her head against her hand.
"As long as this doesn't mess with my paycheck, who cares."
In that same Europe, right at the center of the continent, lay the largest city in the world.
A city of towering megastructures and massive skyscrapers, where even the ordinary buildings carried an architectural style that felt both otherworldly and strangely ephemeral at the same time.
It was like a painter had decided to give life to something that only existed in the deepest recesses of the human mind—something that could only ever be captured by imagination.
Here, very few people walked across the floating districts.
Most of them took to the skies.
Hoverboards carried them through the air, gliding between the layered heights of the city. Each one rang softly as it moved, a constant chime threading through the atmosphere until the entire place felt alive with sound—hundreds of them cutting across the skies at once.
Others moved along the districts themselves, massive platforms suspended like miniature islands above the ground. Some boarded Hovercars that shot through the open air, leaving behind streaks of golden sparks and trails of sound that lingered for just a second too long.
At first glance, the city didn't feel real.
It felt like waking up inside a dream—something too vast, too detailed, too impossible to fully take in.
This was Arvon.
Earth's capital.
The central human domain.
A city that housed the mightiest of humanity—the place where the strongest stood.
And deep within it, rising even among the colossal structures around it, was a towering dome of gold.
It didn't just stand there.
It dominated.
There wasn't a single person on Earth who wouldn't recognize it.
The Lumina Prime.
The gathering place of Earth's greatest heroes—the seat of the Harmonic Council.
Beings who wielded terrifying power. The kind that could level entire cities without hesitation. The kind that stood at heights like Virtuarchs—S Rank—and far beyond.
This was the place children dreamed about.
The place they imagined themselves reaching one day.
Chordbearers bled for it. Fought for it. Threw themselves into one Mirrorth after another, chasing strength, chasing recognition, chasing the right to stand at the top.
To become a Champion.
To become a hero.
To earn the right to step into the Lumina Prime.
But the reality was far less forgiving.
The competition was brutal—borderline impossible. Out of millions of Awakened across the world, only a hundred had ever been recognized as heroes within the Council.
Inside that massive, almost sacred structure, a grand hall stretched wide.
About a dozen figures sat within it.
Each of them carried a presence that pressed down on the space itself, the ripples leaking from their bodies enough to make mundanes—and even some Chordbearers—collapse from sheer pressure alone.
Silence hung for a moment.
Then it broke.
A young-looking man with white hair and red eyes let out a sharp snort. "What a ripoff. You're telling me we can't even identify one Awakened? The fuck?"
He tugged at his jacket, already lighting a cigar as he leaned back with a sigh. His gaze slid toward a man seated across the table.
"Gerald, what the hell is going on? You've never been this inefficient in your damn office."
That was all it took.
The room came alive.
Voices overlapped instantly as the others began speaking among themselves, arguments rising, conversations colliding into a storm of noise.
But there was something off about it.
They were speaking too fast.
Far too fast.
To an ordinary person, it would've sounded like meaningless distortion—like more than a hundred words were being crammed into a single second, impossible to follow, impossible to process.
And yet, to them, it was normal.
Clear.
Effortless.
"That's enough!"
Gerald's voice cut through everything as he rose to his feet.
And just like that, the room fell back into order.
After all, he was the tenth-ranked Hero.
A man known for facing an Abyssal-ranked Echoform that had taken the form of a massive, broken moon hanging in the skies of an Orange-graded Mirrorth—a place just two tiers away from the ultimate Cyan grade.
It had been a fight of terrifying scale.
The kind that left devastation stretching for miles.
A battle that ended with the complete destruction of something that could have brought untold calamity to humanity.
He governed five districts in the city.
A warlock.
A legend.
And the strongest man in the room.
"I admit that I'm partly to blame for the… glaring failure to identify this Awakened," he said, his voice grim. "But we can't rule out one major possibility."
His gaze hardened slightly. "Since the subject hasn't revealed himself, all signs point to him being from that cursed organization."
The mood in the room shifted instantly.
Heavier.
An aged man with tired eyes exhaled slowly, nodding.
"Then there's no question," he said. "We find this Awakened. Man, woman, or child… they die."
Most of the room nodded in agreement.
"Those rats will do anything to protect a new Songborn," another voice cut in—a woman lounging lazily in her chair, the ripples around her forming some kind of illusion hex that made it impossible to properly make out her features. "The cost won't be small."
"What's the cost compared to cutting down a future threat that'll bite us all in the ass?" a burly man scoffed, slamming his cup of beer down onto the table with a sharp bang.
A pale-faced man with feeble features shook his head. "We're digressing. For all we know, the Awakened might be one of our own."
Gerald ran a hand through his glossy black hair, frustration clear on his face. "Doesn't matter anymore. Better to prepare for the worst than assume the best. Until the subject is identified, we treat it as an unknown threat."
His expression hardened, voice dropping into something colder.
"And threats are meant to be nipped in the fucking bud."