He found one the next evening on page 104 of the Compendium.
Not in the restricted section. In the regular archive, on a shelf nobody had touched in years because the binding was ugly and the title was boring.
Compendium of Minor Heresies, Volume III: Musical Applications.
The chapter was called The Order of Silent Singers.
It didn't discuss harmony or praise.
It discussed using sound to disrupt the flow of mana in the human brain.
Specific frequencies, mathematical dissonance and the conversion of auditory input into raw neurological interference.
"Don't look for the note that pleases the ear," Raziel read under his breath.
"Look for the frequency that rattles the bone of fear."
He sat with the book for two hours. He memorized chord diagrams that weren't music. They were math applied to terror.
The System caught up before he finished.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE ASSIMILATED: "Dissonance Theory"]
[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED (Passive): Trauma Acoustics]
[EFFECT: Musical performances can induce altered emotional states (Fear, Sadness, Anxiety). Scales with user's own mental instability.]
[ASSIMILATION COST: -5% Temporary Mental Stability]
[NIGHTMARE PROBABILITY: 100%]
"Great," he muttered, closing the book as dust puffed off the pages. "More nightmares."
He put the book back exactly where he'd found it, positioned so the dust patterns looked undisturbed, and left the library.
The walk back to the dorms was bad his temples were pounding. Vision blurring at the edges.
When he reached room 404 he dropped onto the cot with his boots still on.
"Just a few hours," he said to the dark ceiling. "Survive tomorrow."
The System didn't lie about costs.
***
The nightmare started with the smell of smoke.
This was something different, something he didn't recognize from any death he could remember.
He was standing in a corridor made of white marble.
The walls were cracked and the flames were moving through the cracks from the other side, orange light pulsing behind the stone.
His body was slightly taller, and something was wrong with his hands.
They were glowing.
Gold light in the left and black veins crawling through the right.
'This isn't a memory.'
[REGRESSION ECHO: UNINDEXED TIMELINE FRAGMENT]
[INTEGRITY: 12%]
[WARNING: CORRUPTED DATA]
Raziel was running. Behind him, he heard screams but not the sound of people dying.
The sound of people being drained, a high-pitched whine, almost musical, that pulled the air out of the lungs of everyone it touched.
He turned a corner and saw them.
Three figures in white robes, hands raised, channeling something that looked like prayer but felt like a weapon.
In front of them, bodies of patients or prisoners.
Raziel didn't know the word for what they were, but he knew they were helpless and he knew the white-robed figures were killing them slowly.
He opened his mouth.
What came out was a frequency.
The air in the corridor changed.
The white-robed figures' hands faltered. One of them grabbed his own head.
Another dropped to his knees, mouth open, no sound coming out.
The dissonance was coming from Raziel's throat, not singing or speaking.
A sustained note that vibrated at the exact frequency where human fear lived, the one the book had taught him, amplified by something inside him that wasn't fully human.
The third figure turned to face him. A woman with eyes blank and white.
She was holding something in both hands, a chalice, ornate, gold, and the thing was screaming.
It was pulling souls through the air in visible threads.
"YOU CANNOT STOP WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN SANCTIFIED," the woman said.
Her voice was layered, two voices at once.
Raziel pushed the frequency harder and blood ran from his nose.
His vision fractured.
Through the fracture he saw another corridor, behind the woman.
A group of people, beaten, chained, being led somewhere and in front of them, leading them out, was someone with red hair and a torn nobleman's jacket.
The red-haired man was shouting something Raziel couldn't hear, his fist raised, pulling the prisoners forward.
Lucian?
The woman with the chalice turned her attention toward the prisoners. The threads of light shifted.
Raziel screamed.
The frequency shattered. Everything went white.
***
He woke up on the floor of room 404, face down, gasping.
His tunic was soaked and his nose was bleeding. One hand was gripping the edge of the cot so hard the wood was cracking under his fingers.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
Year 1024. Alive. Fifteen years old.
His hands were shaking and he looked at them.
No gold light or black veins.
But he could feel the new skill sitting in his nervous system, warm and patient, waiting to be used.
Trauma Acoustics wasn't just a performance tool.
In whatever future he'd just seen, it had been a weapon.
One that came from his own mouth, powered by his own broken mind, and it had made three people who could drain souls drop to the ground.
He got up, walked to the washbasin, and splashed freezing water on his face.
The blood from his nose turned the water pink.
The Bard test was tomorrow.
He had a new song to play and he'd just seen what it could do.
It was going to hurt everyone in the room.
He was counting on it.